Regina O'Numb
War Child
14.12.2006
Touring is hell...
‘Touring is hell, or it used to be. These days it's an amazing privilege, and it gets better each time we go out.
We fly around the world getting applause from our fans for just showing up, and we get to do the thing we most love: playing our music. On days off we get to see some of the most beautiful areas of the country we’re in.
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Hawaii are the part of a world tour that everyone looks forward to. Normally at the end of a long run through continental US or Europe it's the promise of a few days in a city like Melbourne or Tokyo that gets you through the more mundane stretches. In this case - as a stand alone tour - it's like a long holiday with a few shows thrown in.
Australia is an unfathomably ancient place with landscape and wildlife to match. Anything here that possibly can be is venomous. We had a pet Funnel-web spider for a brief period during our time in Sydney. They are evil looking things: shiny black and chunky, they look like they are made of plastic. Though aggressive and highly venomous I’m told they don’t jump at your throat as some people believe, so if you have one in a large ice-cream container you’re safe to study it with the lid off. We did exactly that for a bit and then released it into the wild, well away from any houses. It's probably still there under some leaves oblivious to the fact that I'm writing about it. I was hoping to see some snakes around Brisbane, maybe a red bellied black, but none showed up at the hotel.
The native Australian culture is at least 50,000 years old. It was going strong way before man arrived in the Americas. Probably also before man was in northern Europe because it was under a few hundred feet of ice at that time. Aboriginal people are by necessity very tough, with a unique take on art and music. We found a diggeridoo player of mixed Aboriginal and Irish decent, Tim Moriarty, who played with us during the Australian leg closing the show every night on the song ‘Kite’. Bono took to releasing a Kite symbolically into the night sky towards the end of the song - a beautiful, poetic way to end the show. Of course you can't really let go the string of a Kite and expect it to fly away, but we discovered that it does exactly that if you attach enough
helium balloons. We also discovered that you need more balloons if there's a strong wind or if your Kite string is wet….
We met up with Pearl Jam in Melbourne and Bono and I played a version of ‘Rocking in the Free World’ with them at a Make Poverty History gig. It sounded alright! Got a huge adrenalin rush from playing together and that was it - one song and we were done. I went off and had Chinese with Morleigh and the kids.
New Zealand gave us a chance to get off-side. We stayed for a couple of days on Great Mercury Island. It was amazing. We resolved to go back one day and call in on the Fay family for a week or two. It turns out that in New Zealand there are two types of sheep dog. The ones that bark and the ones that don't. The barking ones drive the sheep away, the quiet ones bring them back. We established that they do not have to remove the vocal chords of the quiet dogs - they are wired that way naturally.
Edge
http://www.u2.com/bloglite.php?id=19&pg_id=1
Touring is hell...
‘Touring is hell, or it used to be. These days it's an amazing privilege, and it gets better each time we go out.
We fly around the world getting applause from our fans for just showing up, and we get to do the thing we most love: playing our music. On days off we get to see some of the most beautiful areas of the country we’re in.
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Hawaii are the part of a world tour that everyone looks forward to. Normally at the end of a long run through continental US or Europe it's the promise of a few days in a city like Melbourne or Tokyo that gets you through the more mundane stretches. In this case - as a stand alone tour - it's like a long holiday with a few shows thrown in.
Australia is an unfathomably ancient place with landscape and wildlife to match. Anything here that possibly can be is venomous. We had a pet Funnel-web spider for a brief period during our time in Sydney. They are evil looking things: shiny black and chunky, they look like they are made of plastic. Though aggressive and highly venomous I’m told they don’t jump at your throat as some people believe, so if you have one in a large ice-cream container you’re safe to study it with the lid off. We did exactly that for a bit and then released it into the wild, well away from any houses. It's probably still there under some leaves oblivious to the fact that I'm writing about it. I was hoping to see some snakes around Brisbane, maybe a red bellied black, but none showed up at the hotel.
The native Australian culture is at least 50,000 years old. It was going strong way before man arrived in the Americas. Probably also before man was in northern Europe because it was under a few hundred feet of ice at that time. Aboriginal people are by necessity very tough, with a unique take on art and music. We found a diggeridoo player of mixed Aboriginal and Irish decent, Tim Moriarty, who played with us during the Australian leg closing the show every night on the song ‘Kite’. Bono took to releasing a Kite symbolically into the night sky towards the end of the song - a beautiful, poetic way to end the show. Of course you can't really let go the string of a Kite and expect it to fly away, but we discovered that it does exactly that if you attach enough
helium balloons. We also discovered that you need more balloons if there's a strong wind or if your Kite string is wet….
We met up with Pearl Jam in Melbourne and Bono and I played a version of ‘Rocking in the Free World’ with them at a Make Poverty History gig. It sounded alright! Got a huge adrenalin rush from playing together and that was it - one song and we were done. I went off and had Chinese with Morleigh and the kids.
New Zealand gave us a chance to get off-side. We stayed for a couple of days on Great Mercury Island. It was amazing. We resolved to go back one day and call in on the Fay family for a week or two. It turns out that in New Zealand there are two types of sheep dog. The ones that bark and the ones that don't. The barking ones drive the sheep away, the quiet ones bring them back. We established that they do not have to remove the vocal chords of the quiet dogs - they are wired that way naturally.
Edge
http://www.u2.com/bloglite.php?id=19&pg_id=1
here speaks the scientist again!
I wonder if they told him about the preying mantis!
and... that´s one of the reasons U2.com are still running 
He is such a nerdy little thing, but oh such an adorable one!
so 
