Elvis Costello with Bono and Edge

This just popped up in my recommendeds, never saw it before or heard of this show in general either.

Elvis Costello interviews B&E. There's some performances.

Mysterious Ways - Elvis C and his band, interesting take.

Stuck - with B&E, Elvis and full band. This imho is the best of show, great energy, love Elvis's contribution.

Stay - B&E alone, standard 360 acoustic. Bono's voice is kind of clogged and he's not breathing well so it's meh.

One Shot of Happy, Two Shots of Sad - easier for B to sing so it comes out fine.

Bono's Elvis Costello impression:

Great find...I'm gonna watch it first thing tomorrow. Well, after coffee.

Good watch! Really cool to hear Pete Thomas is one of Larry's favourite drummers.

Bono touched on it in the interview, but U2 songs don't really do well when jamming with others, do they? A few exceptions, but on the whole they're not like the Stones or Beatles who can impromptu jam with country or rock or blues.

Yeah, they admit it, too.

They seem to be attuned to each other but aren't conventional musicians. I'm sure Larry could survive with another band but overall U2 is its own thing.

Stay - B&E alone, standard 360 acoustic. Bono's voice is kind of clogged and he's not breathing well so it's meh.

Yeah he was chugging water and getting a bit hoarse speaking just before performing. He looked really self-conscious too, it's easy to forget he can get nervous.

Yeah, they admit it, too.

They seem to be attuned to each other but aren't conventional musicians. I'm sure Larry could survive with another band but overall U2 is its own thing.

Yeah they've said they were better when they didn't know what they were doing. It's part of their issue post-2000 too, trying to be conventional musicians and songwriting like other bands do. They're best when they forge their own path and way of doing things.

Really eye-opening honesty from Bono at around 30mins too. It's what Bono gets a lot of hate for, how his "save the world" extracurricular activities impact the band. He explains it so rawly here, even the harshest critic would step back a bit.

U2 ripped off “Pump it Up” verses for “Boots”


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I suppose it does not really matter because ultimately you do your own thing/put on your own show etc and playing with others is only something you'll do rarely - but the way u2 are as a band is incredibly limiting when it comes to just plugging and playing and doing it off the cuff.

I watched the pump it up/boots thing and you can see elvis just rip into no bother, improvising, just playing off the cuff and edge is standing there just looking so uncomfortable thinking 'where the fuck are my pedals and my tech etc'

It isn't a criticism by the way, just an observation....you could imagine elvis there going 'ok now let's rip into pride in the name of love' and doing so and edge saying 'hold on i'll need my pride guitar and to find the song in my rig computer, give me 10 mins'

It is just the way they operate and the shows down the years work/worked.

I don't think it's a "choice" really - Elvis C is a musician and U2 are alchemists. They made gold out of lead. This is all they can do - but they did great things with their lead.

Wasn't aware of this collaboration, will check it out.

Oh, I remember this one, one of my favorite interview sessions. Other musicians ask much better questions than journalists generally do. I'll have to watch it again sometime.

Will you be reporting to the 60 songs thread?

http://forum.talku2.com/index.php?topic=4822.0

The NLOTH/360 era is the last time Bono looked halfway good. He needs a new stylist.