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Bono & U2: Abho(RED) By So Many Thoughtful People

Tuesday, 31 July 2007

Project (RED)—Scam-ola to assist Boner in quest for Nobel Prize

Let's get a couple things out of the way. The members of U2 are quite talented. Talented marketers, businessmen, team members. The also posess a fair amount of musical talent. They know how to hire the best, produce shimmering collections of songs, and market them as the last true band, the last band that matters.

The fact is that their sound is largely the creation of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Their greatest songs are mostly Eno songs, Daniel Lanois songs. No matter. Poetic pop constructs ... perfectly mixed mastered and printed ... puffery pings the Zeitgeist ... but that's not enough for Bono.

Poor Bono wants a Nobel, or a Pulitzer. He won't say it out loud. But this hustler recognizes that world-class hustler's game, and if I didn't find him such an ass, I would tip my hat.

He and Oprah have come up with Project(RED), whereby consumers consume and a portion of the profits (not the gross) are donated to African AIDS charities. Approximately $100 Million has been spent by huge corporations for advertising, plastering Bono's face all over the world, at their expense. As the British say,"Brilliant!"

So far they've raised perhaps $25 million for charity from sales generated by that $100 Million marketing campaign. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Okay, after the jump. The story that demonstrates to me that U2 are the most self-important ... uh ... dickwads on earth, and, as such, sit at the same table with Sting and his god-awful horse-faced wife.

But before you go, please note this picture of Bono with Dr. Gupta, the man the Bush administration has sent out to trash Michael Moore and his movie Sicko. Bono cavorts with Bush. What else do you need to know?

{okay, now click on read more}

About ten years ago, one of my oldest and best friends was in charge of running a huge charity concert, featuring some of the biggest bands in the world, including U2.

We were, some time later, talking about the nature of art, business, and marketing in the world of rock music. Very knowledgeable, having run huge concerts and some of the biggest-grossing tours of all time, he regaled me with stories about bands and their follies, conceits, and marketing savvy.

One thing stressed was that the bands that pretended to NOT care about money and fame were the worst, across the board: Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Phish, and so on.

At some point in the discussion, I brought up U2,and said, having just seen them in concert,"Well, they seem to be trying really hard to keep it real, to stay connected to the audience."

And he laughed and said,"They are the worst by far! When I was running that show, the acts would come off the stage walk about fifty feet to a tent we had set up for the press. They would have a mini press conference and then they were finished. But not U2. They came down the stairs off the back of the stage and had several [emphasis mine] vans with tinted windows waiting for them to drive them the fifty feet to the tent."

For some reason, this salient fact dovetails nicely with everything else I know about U2.

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