I Eat Music

U2 bassist Adam Clayton has said that the band would like to follow in the footsteps of bands like The Beatles and Metallica and have their own videogame.

Clayton told USA Today: “We definitely would like to be in there, but we felt some of the compromises weren’t what we wanted. That could change. I love the idea that that’s where people are getting music, and we’d love to be in that world. We’ll figure something out. What The Beatles have done, where the animation is much more representative of them, is what we’re interested in, rather than the one-size-fits-all animation. We didn’t want to be caricatured”.

I look forward to the release of ‘Bono Kong’ and ‘Sonic The Edge Hog’.

So, I thought Jay-Z might be able to hold on to the number one slot for more than one week. But no, that position does seem to be very slippery of late and he’s dropped down to number three, making way for Pixie Lott to have a crack at grasping on to the top. There are a couple of new entries vying for position, too. Mika is at four with ‘We Are Golden’, Mini Viva are at seven with ‘Left My Heart In Tokyo’ and Muse are at eight with ‘Uprising’.

Outside the top ten there’s less going on. Shakira is the next new entry at 25, with ‘She Wolf’, while U2 are at 32 with ‘I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy’, and Livvi Franc closes proceedings, coming in at 40 with ‘Now I’m That Chick (feat. Pitbull)’.

The album chart is just weird this week. Vera Lynn has done what she failed to do last week and knocked Arctic Monkeys of the number one spot. Just in case you didn’t get that: Vera Lynn is at number one. Vera Lyn. Vera. Lynn. At number one. At 92 years old, she is the oldest person to ever hold the position – a full 25 years older than the previous holder, Bob Dylan, who went to the top of the chart at the sprightly age of 67 in May this year.

And if that wasn’t weird enough, The Beatles have four albums in the top ten. Not to allow Vera Lynn to take all the glory, they’ve broken two records, racking up the most number of albums by a group simultaneously in the top ten, which has been held by The Monkees since 1967 (when they had three), and also the most number of albums by an act in the top 60, with sixteen. The previous holder of that record was Elvis, who had 14 albums in the top 60 in 1977, thanks to a Michael Jackson-style mass purchase of his back catalogue following his death.

It’s not all old stuff in the album chart, though. Jamie T’s second album, ‘Kings & Queens’, goes straight in at number two, and The Cribs’ latest offering, ‘Ignore The Ignorant’, their first with former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, is also new at eight.

Further down the chart, there are a few non-Beatles new entries in the top 40 (though they do have a further six in addition to the four in the top ten). Beverley Knight is in at 17 with ‘100%’, Frank Turner is at 36 with ‘Poetry Of The Deed’, and Prefab Sprout (still relative newbies compared to The Beatles and Vera Lynn) are in at 39 with ‘Let’s Change The World With Music’.

And I wouldn’t be doing this properly is I didn’t keep you up to date with Mercury nominees’ chart movements. There’s little activity on that front yet, though it’s still less than a week since the award winner was announced. In reverse order, La Roux is at 34, Friendly Fires are at 32, Kasabian are at 16, are Florence And The Machine are at 12, all of which are drops from their positions last week.

The charts are compiled by the understandably quite excited Official Charts Company.

U2 broke the record for the largest ever attendance at Wembley Stadium on Friday as they played to 88,000 fans, 5000 more than the previous record set by Rod Stewart in 1995.

The higher capacity is due to the band’s “claw” stage structure, which allows for a 360 degree view of the band. Tour architect Mark Fisher explained to the BBC: “Usually a show like this plays to two-thirds of the capacity of the stadium because you put the stage at the end and you don’t sell any of the seats at the back and at the sides. We sell all the way round, so we carry about 25% more stuff than a normal stadium rock show. We have a video screen round the back, lights that light the band when they go to the back and loud speakers both on the sides and behind, in addition to those that are on the front. We do fewer shows to perform to the same number of people”.

However, with the three steel structures that make up the stage costing between £15m and £20m each to build, and around 100 lorries required to transport it all, the band have – as previously reported – come in for criticism that the cost and environmental impact of the tour is at odds with their politics.

Former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne recently said: “It sure looks like, well, overkill, and just a wee bit out of balance given all the starving people in Africa and all”. Angry residents of Dublin also formed a blockade stopping the band’s crew from leaving the city’s Croke Park stadium after they worked noisily through the night deconstructing the stage.

The Edge brushed of any criticism of the cost, telling BBC 6 Music: “We’re spending the money on our fans, I don’t think there’s a better thing you could spend it on”.

On the subject of the number of vehicles required to transport the tour around the world, he added: “I think that’s probably about as realistic as you can be right now. We’d love to have some alternative to big trucks bringing the stuff around but there just isn’t one”.

Now, there are a number of reasons why what The Edge said doesn’t hold up. Firstly, they aren’t spending money on the fans, the fans are paying for the stage by buying tickets. The fans bought the stage and I think they should all be allowed a go on it before they leave the venue. Secondly, surely the alternative to having so many lorries moving around is to have a less extravagant stage. Look, there, I thought of that without much effort at all. Shut up, The Edge.

Twenty two stations on the Bauer Radio network will broadcast a U2 concert live from Sheffield on 20 Aug, as part of five hours of programming dedicated to the band. They reckon 6.53 million people will tune in. I reckon all those people shouldn’t be allowed radios if they can’t use them properly.

The concert at the city’s Don Valley Stadium will account for two hours of the U2 360° Tour special, the rest of the torrent of awfulness filled up with an interview with the band by Clyde One DJ Billy Sloan, and a live report from the venue by IN:Demand’s Alex & Lucy and Bauer Scotland’s Romeo.

As well as the tedium of the ’special’ broadcast, Bauer stations will have other U2 features on shows in the run up to it, with on air promotions and competitions. Plus there will be a U2 microsite and some social media stuff. Basically, it will be almost identical to the massive promotion the BBC did around the band’s album release earlier this year.

Big City Network programme director Steve King told reporters: “Our U2 360° project is set to be the biggest commercial radio event of 2009. Bauer Media are delighted to have secured this sought-after opportunity to host this major live cross-network broadcast. We are passionate about innovative programming and committed to delivering entertaining content to all the communities we serve. U2 are the world’s biggest band and we are sure our multi-platform approach and bespoke programming plans will deliver a true appointment-to-listen music event for millions of our listeners”.

Surely this amount of promotion is completely disproportionate to U2’s actual popularity. Why does this keep happening? In a sane world, they would now have been left to slip into the quietly-releasing-albums-merely-to-promote-tours phase of their existence. Like the Rolling Stones, only shit.

		While Damon Albarn has said he’d like to let Blur go out on a high after the recent reunion shows, Graham Coxon has other ideas: "I’m up for doing another [album] – it would be a really interesting thing to do. I don’t want it to be like ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ or nostalgic bollocks. I want it to be a development. There’s nothing saying there’s a great big ‘No’. My gut feeling is, ‘Why not?’"
		According to Phil Spector’s publicist, Hal Lifson, prison isn’t actually that nice: "Phil Spector was always a highly productive, creative person and now he’s in a five by nine foot cell with no windows and maybe a half hour outside to walk around. It’s essentially solitary confinement. It’s a terrible existence for a millionaire record producer who lived in mansions and most recently in a castle, a 35-room home"
		The Game says he’s ready for war over derogatory lyrics on Jay-Z’s new album, even though Jay-Z says they’re not about him and rap feuds are silly: "He’s slick, man. You gotta watch that cat, man. I’m probably the only rapper in this world besides Nas that’s really not scared to go at this dude’s neck. He knows if he goes to war with me, then it’s going to be never ending, man"
		Good Charlotte frontman Joel Madden reveals that he’s working on an autobiography, probably (it’s due to be published next year): "I’m lightly working on one, but I don’t want to put a book out there if it’s not actually meaningful. I’m not going to go there unless I can deliver. If I put a book out, I want it to be something that matters to me. It has to be real, you can’t just put a book out to put a book out"
		Ian Brown reveals he’s written songs for Kanye West and Rihanna. And where can we hear these songs? Er, Ian Brown’s new album: "We wrote this song called ‘Vanity Kills’ [for Kanye] but we were a bit late sending it in, so I’ve kept it for the album. ‘Stellify’, we wrote for Rihanna, but as we got to the end of writing it I thought, ‘You know what? I’m gonna keep this for myself, we’ll give her another one’"
		David Byrne takes a shot at U2 for perhaps not being as right on as they’re always telling us to be: "Those stadium shows may possibly be the most extravagant and expensive (production-wise) ever: $40 million to build the stage and, having done the math, we estimate 200 semi trucks crisscrossing Europe for the duration. It sure looks just a wee bit out of balance given all the starving people in Africa and all"

These quotes, as regular readers should now be aware, were taken from the 31 Jul 2009 edition of CMU Weekly. In it we gave away a Chris Isaak Christmas DVD. Imagine! Read it in full here.