Okay, I am taking on the 400 lbs. gorilla in the room named Duals, the recent perk/giveaway from U2.com for it’s members.
We have know about this U2.com perk for the past four months and there has been a lot discontent spewed on other sites about how U2.com subscribers were given something of a sham for their hard earned cash. I am not here to speak to those issues. What I am here to discuss is the project as a whole and how this disc, with this many duettes, would be the envy of any up and coming band to have in their catalog.
Ask any singer song writer who they would want to record with and I am sure they would answer Frank Sinatra, Elvis or John Lennon. Well, all of those musical heroes are long gone, but in the case of U2, they came pretty close. Singing with the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Mick Jagger, Johnny Cash, B.B. King and Willie Nelson would be any artist’s dream studio date. U2 has recorded with all of them. I dare ask you to list a contemporary band that comes close to this great collection of artists, whom U2 has creatively conspired with, in their catalog and I think that list would be very, very short.
Yes, I am disappointed in the album because I have most of these tracks, but I like the concept. What is cool is that these are not the only “Duals” U2 has in their catalog. They have many, many more. In hindsight, I wished the band would have created this album with even harder to find duettes, but we have to remember that the music industry is fraught with contracts, rights and ownership. Yeah, there are a lot of “Duals” that they probably cannot touch. For example, when they were on Elvis Costello’s television show, Spectacle, two years ago. I hope you saw it. U2’s performance was commanding. They shared the stage with Elvis and ripped through a performance of Pump It Up married with Get On Your Boots. It was a hair-raising mini-concert. There are countless examples of these recordings in their “catalog” but again, does U2 have the rights to them or are they willing to pay the financial price, above and beyond what our subscription raises in cash, to give them to us as part of our membership? I’m not sure, but I am sure we can all agree that we would have loved to have that collection as a special gift.
In closing, let us be thankful that U2 has been able to invite, or be invited, to perform with others. As we have seen on the 360˚ Tour, U2 has brought onstage performers important to the country where the band is performing on that given night. For example in Sao Paulo, they brought on Seu Jorge who is a Brazilian singer songwriter. He came onstage to great applause. Yes, it was U2 appealing to the crowd but more importantly; it was this respect, to Brazil, that U2 was playing into. Duals is doing the same thing. Within the fifteen tracks, U2 are rejoicing with those who have paved the way before them. Also, U2 are sharing the creative time with contemporaries who can push U2’s sound that much further. I never thought I would hear a rapper, let alone Jay-Z, jump in on Sunday Bloody Sunday, making it sound fresh, but he did. It works and so does Duals.
