When U2 took the stage this week at what amounted to a review of Island Records musicians, it startled everyone around! U2 isn’t only one of the most popular bands in the world, but also one of the hardest to book. Basically, they show up where they want to. And they showed up at Shepherd’s Bush and rocked the house. They were almost in danger of outshining Cat Stevens and others. This was one of the most interesting performances, it started with an African musician onstage who began to sing U2 songs and suddenly the rest of the band was onstage too! What a fun show, and keep your eye out for more of those kinds of shows in the next few months!

There is more information out right now about U2’s new video Magnificent. Turns out, a lot of it was filmed in Morocco, with the band walking around the streets of Fez, and hanging out in the desert. It’s a nice place for a person to be, it seems from the video. The location also fits the song very well. It’s nice to see people who take pains to make the video fit into the style of the song even better. This band is going to do really well this year, between their videos, CD, and concerts!

There is a little retrospective about Island Records, which was one of the first labels to give U2 a chance to put out their music on the international scene. When the band first came to the fore, it took a brave set of executives and a lot of interested people to roll the band out into the real world. Island Records gave a bunch of different people a career start, including Bob Marley, Roxy Music and Nick Drake and clearly had its finger on the pulse of the popular music world for a long time and in the last 50 years have given many great musicians a chance. While U2 keeps touring and making new exciting albums, let’s never forget where they came from!

In the latest season of American Idol, there several very talented singers. There is one, however, that fits in with our interest in U2. Apparently, Adam Lambert sang a song by U2 in one of the most recent episodes. U2’s “One” is one of those songs that is sure to make him a winner if he sings it right. Some articles raise the possibility that he might decide to slow it down to make it less rocking and a little more ballad-like. He’s done this on a few other episodes before, and it has worked out well for him. Most importantly, he’s showing the U2 is popular among all age groups. We knew this already, but this is further evidence of it and we wish him the best. He’s got great material to work with!

Bono read a poem on the radio in the UK about one of his idols, Elvis Presley. Elvis died in the late 70s and was one of the people that was really respected as a musician back in the 50s. Bono was apparently well disposed to like him back in the older days and has been working on these poems for awhile. The poem also calls attention to Elvis’ flaws from his lifetime as well. It’s a sad poem but also very respectful. It has offensive words in it, so I will not be posting it here today, but you can hunt it down for yourself if you want. It’s always interesting to see what Bono is up to!

When you look at the U2 video from last week, you might have noticed something that I didn’t notice at first: there were some other videos too. For one thing, there are several remixes also available on their site, with a redone version of Magnificent and several of “Get On Your Boots”. This group just keeps producing interesting music and it’s going to be a lot of fun to hear the next music they come out with. Everything from their projected new album later this month to the other remixes slated for release. It’s so fun to hear their music being produced more and more often now! Keep an eye out here and on their site for the next updates!

U2 just released a new video from their new album. The only other video that they released was the “Get on Your Boots” which was a nice song. But there’s only so many times you can hear the same song on a music video. I’ve had to delve back into my archive of old U2 music videos. But now they’ve released “Magnificent” so we can see that there are some really fun things that they’re doing in their music and with their videos. We’re quite happy to see this video on this show. If you’re ready to see this video click on the link on this EW site. It’s a fun video so enjoy!

The Edge remains in trouble right now with a lot of different people. As we mentioned before, he is in a land dispute of sorts, in which he’s being disallowed from building on a site that he bought in Malibu. The U2 player has been planning to build 5 mountaintop mansions that are supposedly going to be ecologically sound. He’s launched a website to clarify his situation and to try to get some good PR going. It’s an interesting website and gives a lot of important information. Meanwhile, the members of U2 are touring and planning the rest of their tour in the next few months. Their album is doing well too, so keep up on it!

For some reason, Bono interviewed George Clooney this week about politics and the acting profession. It’s not clear why he did this, but it was an interesting interview. Clooney didn’t really say all that much beyond “I like Barack Obama, who’s the right guy to fix these problems we have” and “acting is like journalism in a way.” It’s not all the revealing, but it’s always interesting to hear entertainers interview each other, because you wonder if this is the kind of interview that they might especially like to have with the late night show hosts and such. Make sure not to miss this interview, and there will probably be some other parts of it out there on the net if you look around.