Early Freestylin' Friday!!!

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Edgette

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Early Freestylin' Friday!!! - Music Rising Edition

Happy early Edge day (weekend) everyone! :wave:

Here are new pictures from the Music Rising campaign that were released today.

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The Edge and U2 offer aid to New Orleans

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A few years ago, New Orleans came to the rescue of U2's The Edge. Now he's paying the city back, helping provide instruments to musicians blasted by Hurricane Katrina.

He and his band were in New Orleans in 2001 when tragedy struck at home.

"We lost an awful lot of instruments in Dublin in a flood... The storage area where we had all our equipment was completely flooded. But luckily my main guitars were with us in New Orleans... the Gibson Explorer that I've had since I was 17-years-old, and the amplifier I've used on every album for every show since we got a record deal."

In 2005, after Katrina devastated New Orleans — a city he calls "very unique and very special" — he was inspired to try to help. The result was Music Rising.

For The Edge, aka David Evans, that relief work topped off a packed year of touring, family trauma and five Grammy nominations for U2's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. The Grammys will be handed out Wednesday.

The normally soft-spoken guitarist, 44, grows passionate when he talks about Katrina's impact and his efforts to help with Music Rising, which he organized along with Gibson Guitar, the Guitar Center Music Education Foundation and the MusicCares Foundation.

"When I heard about the hurricane, the devastation of the city and the area, I pretty soon started thinking about the musicians, started to think about the cultural loss, not just to New Orleans, not just to America, but really to the world," he told the Associated Press.

Does that mean he's planning to follow band-mate Bono's worldwide activist footsteps?

Not likely, he responds.

"Bono is kind of a one-off character in music. His skills as a communicator are amazing, and his powers of persuasion are equally amazing," he said, smiling. "I would never think of trying to take on quite that level of commitment."

True, but New Orleans' mark on the modest musician — known for his humility as well as his thunderous melodies — runs deep. Rising Music is clearly a labor of love.

In the early '90s, a visit with Bono to a small New Orleans club had an unexpected impact.

"We walked in and the place was jumping. There was this little funk band, but they were all playing brass instruments, which is something I'd never heard of or seen before," he recalled.

There, the pair saw a 12-year-old trombone player named Trombone Shorty.

"We were just mesmerized by him," The Edge said. "I ended up with Bono, after a few tequilas, and we ended up dancing with a bunch of girls on the top of the bar. It was one of those sort of nights."

The birthplace of jazz, and a major influence on rock and roll, New Orleans captivated his attention, he said.

He returned last November and found a different, less fun-loving city — one torn apart by natural disaster and a lack of aid.

"Going through the streets of New Orleans and seeing the homes of musicians I knew and respected, seeing Fats Domino's home completely destroyed ... It does bring it home in a very personal way," he said.

At a recent Music Rising event in Hollywood, the native Irishman showed up in his customary beanie, black leather jacket, jeans and sneakers, and chatted easily with some New Orleans transplants.

Affable and humble, he even asked for their e-mail addresses and talked about music "gear" — more a regular Joe than guitarist for one of the biggest bands in the world.

U2, its long history including 11 studio albums and 16 Grammy wins, rocked the music world last year with its Vertigo 2005 tour, and was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As for its 2006 Grammy nominations — including Album of the Year and Song of the Year for Bono's emotional ode, Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own— The Edge said he has no expectations.

"Being in the country the whole year, I almost felt like people would have been sick of us by now, that the last band they would want to see is U2."

"I would be surprised if we won everything we were nominated for," he said, adding that How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was "a very strong record, I think maybe our strongest ever in terms of the overall range of the album."

But the middle-aged musician acknowledged that newer Album of the Year nominees such as Gwen Stefani and Kanye West — whose albums he likes — may have an advantage.

"I think in some ways people will go for something new, that's just arrived, me included," he said, a glint in his eye.

The band plans to start working on new songs after returning from an upcoming tour in South America, he said.

And watch out Rolling Stones: U2 won't stop touring any time soon.

"We grew up on the road ... It's such an integral part of what we are. I don't think we could give up touring. I don't think we could do what the Beatles did, just pack it in."
 
He just can't keep silent any longer

U2 guitarist the Edge strums up support for New Orleans musicians hard-hit by hurricane.

By Geoff Boucher, Times Staff Writer


It's pretty easy to keep your mouth shut when you stand next to Bono for 25 years. By the same token, it's also pretty easy to become a good listener. The first reason is why the Edge, the guitarist for U2, has long projected the same poker-faced presence on stage as Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones. The second reason is why he is now assuming an atypical role as spokesman for a charity benefiting the beleaguered musicians of New Orleans.

"I didn't ask Bono for advice, no, but I have been influenced by watching him and inspired as well," said David Evans, who in his youth picked up his now-famous nickname for the angular cut of his profile. "As a band, U2 has done quite a bit of work for different causes, but when we do it as a whole, it's Bono as the lead singer who naturally steps up to do a lot of the talking. And he is quite good at it."

Yes, to say the least. Bono has become a global political figure (and, sometimes, a mocked celebrity) for using his microphone to champion the cause of African poverty relief. Now the Edge is stepping front and center for Music Rising, a campaign to replace musicians' instruments destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and the devastating floods in its wake. Last week, that campaign brought the 17-time Grammy-winning rock star to the cavernous Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

He apparently has picked up some of Bono's sly humor as well: "I can't believe it; I've been here an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and I haven't heard anybody play the opening of 'Stairway to Heaven.' "

The Guitar Center may be infamous for bad amateur noodling, but on this day it was the site of a meeting between the U2 star and some of the New Orleans musicians getting new amps, keyboards, guitars and other gear to resume their music careers. "Sometimes it doesn't take much to get them back and working and making music," the Edge said after quietly huddling with the wide-eyed visitors from Louisiana.

Walter Barrilleaux, wearing a battered old New Orleans Saints cap, talked about eating MREs, the military rations that became lifeblood when the waters overtook his hometown. Keyboardist Barrilleaux began playing R&B in New Orleans clubs 40 years go.

John Henry Kelly explained how his rock band's entire collection of instruments and gear not only suffered water damage but literally fell apart at the seams from the noxious petro-goo carried by the flood.

The Edge listened intently and afterward said the stories can't begin to tell the true tale.

"I spent some time there, just to see what was going on," he said, "and the sheer breadth of it all, the area covered by the tragedy, it's hard to conceive if you didn't actually see it yourself."

The Music Rising campaign sprang from the Edge's conversation with music producer Bob Ezrin about donating some guitars to musicians from the Gulf Coast states. The Edge felt they could do more; that led to a partnership with Gibson Guitar and the Guitar Center Music Education Foundation to create a special instrument. The result, a limited-edition Music Rising Gibson Les Paul guitar that Guitar Center is selling for $3,334, is hand-painted with a design evoking Mardi Gras colors. Parts that typically would be fashioned from plastic (the backplate, pickguard, etc.) are made from wood grown in the Gulf states. Proceeds from the sales go entirely to the Music Rising cause.

The Edge and his band mates will appear on the Grammys next week, and the attendant media interest will give him a platform to promote the Music Rising guitar sales and requests for donations. He also is appearing in a series of public service announcements for Music Rising, which may be his most significant face time and the most his voice has been heard by fans since "Numb," the quirky, muttering song off the 1993 U2 album, "Zooropa," that had Bono give over the rare lead-singer job to his old pal.

The Edge was asked if the very targeted cause of Music Rising has been an issue — to put it another way, shouldn't the needs of hospitals, schools and public safety come first?

"People know that music is so central to the spirit of New Orleans and that helping these people regain their livelihood can only help the economy and the spirit of the entire community," he said. "The music of New Orleans — which is a wide, vast array of styles and sounds — is a valuable natural resource for the region."

The guitarist recalled that on one of U2's first visits to the U.S. the band members spent a night prowling the French Quarter and ended up staring, slack-jawed, at an "amazing" local brass-heavy band playing in a dive bar. The visiting Irishmen ended up drinking too much and dancing on tables with the waitresses.

"It was everything I wanted America to be; it was everything I wanted New Orleans to be," the Edge said with a fond smile. "It was a wonderful night. And that band, at that bar, you got the feeling that you could find exceptional music like that on every block."

U2 albums have long conveyed a greater sense of place than most rock — the early work was steeped in the feel of Ireland, "Joshua Tree" musically mapped the American West and "Achtung Baby" was a buzzing odyssey through Berlin backstreets. With all that the Edge has seen and heard about New Orleans, will the Crescent City be in the mix of the next U2 project?

"It's very possible. We know Daniel Lanois [producer of "Joshua Tree" and "Achtung Baby"], who is from that area, and working with him on that would seem fitting," he said. "The place has meant a lot to me and to musicians everywhere, and I hope dearly that it can recover. And for New Orleans to recover, it will need music."


(From the Los Angeles Times - http://www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-et-edge3feb03,0,2616460.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels )
 
MTV UK -
http://www.mtv.co.uk/mtvuk/news/article.jhtml?articleId=45132712

U2 guitarist The Edge has thrown his weight behind Gibson Guitar's campaign to help New Orleans musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina.

With creative input and endorsement from The Edge, Gibson Guitar has created 300 limited edition Les Paul guitars, in the colours of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, all of which are being sold with proceeds going to the Music Rising campaign that will provide instruments for musicians hit by the tragedy.

A minimum pledge of $1million to Music Rising has been assured.

"New Orleans is a crucible for great music,” said the U2 axe man. “The idea that it would be just a place of history for music is awful to me.

"Coming from Dublin in the Seventies, when music was something you had to search out, I'd never dreamt that somewhere like New Orleans could exist. Music was coming out of the walls. It seemed not just a form of escapism, but like it was weaved into everybody's life."

Others supporting the Music Rising campaign are MTV, VH1, Rolling Stonemagazine and Ticketmaster.

Click on the link on the right to watch a clip of The Edge talking more about the campaign and New Orleans.

http://www.mtv.co.uk/mtvuk/news/art...GXEXB0JQFIAIJCFEWAVABA4IV0?articleId=45132712
 
Thanks Edgette! It's a wonderful Edge interview, and I'd love a copy too, if anyone can figure out how to save it. He's got a great speaking voice.
 
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