ZooMacPhisto800
War Child
ever been played live?
Has Alex Descends Into Hell For A Bottle Of Milk...
- Thread starter ZooMacPhisto800
- Start date
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ZooMacPhisto800
War Child
Chizip said:
Me too!
Axver's going to accuse me of Trolling. I'm glad you know this is a real song.
Korova1
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
ZooMacPhisto800 said:
Of course we know it's a real song, but it's pretty obvious it's never been played live.
ZooMacPhisto800
War Child
BonoVoxSupastar said:
I think I've heard it in a movie.
ZooMacPhisto800 said:
A Clockwork Orange
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
ZooMacPhisto800
War Child
Favourite B-Sides that have never been played live:
1. Lady with the spinning head (from EBTTRT single)
2. A room at the Heartbreak Hotel
3. Alex...
1. Lady with the spinning head (from EBTTRT single)
2. A room at the Heartbreak Hotel
3. Alex...
david
ONE love, blood, life
ramblin rose said:
No.
Movie: Johnny Mnemonic
Year: 1995
Song: Alex Descends Into Hell for a Bottle of Milk / U2
Notes; The song used in the movie and appearing on the soundtrack are the same as the version found on The Fly single.
ZooMacPhisto800
War Child
david said:
I think it's on "The Fly" soundtrack too.
david
ONE love, blood, life
ZooMacPhisto800 said:
The Fly came out in the 80's.
ZooMacPhisto800
War Child
Axver said:
Acrobat... there's a great song.
Funny when AB! came out, my least favourite songs were Ultraviolet and Acrobat. Now they're my two faves.
ZooMacPhisto800
War Child
david said:
Right, I'm thinking of Robin Hood (Prince of Thieves).
biff
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
This thread reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask here for a while.
We know that Alex Descends was written for the Royal Shakespeare Company's stage performance of A Clockwork Orange. But what about the rest of the music that was written for that play? What happened to it? Why have we only heard the one piece? I know it was released as a B-side but I find it strange that no recording of the rest of the music from that play has surfaced. It was performed.
We know that Alex Descends was written for the Royal Shakespeare Company's stage performance of A Clockwork Orange. But what about the rest of the music that was written for that play? What happened to it? Why have we only heard the one piece? I know it was released as a B-side but I find it strange that no recording of the rest of the music from that play has surfaced. It was performed.
Canadiens1131
ONE love, blood, life
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- Aug 18, 2004
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Mmmm, ultraviolence 
rjhbonovox
Refugee
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- 2,139
david said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but this song was originally written for a stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange hence the title refers to the lead character in the film/stage production whatever who was called "Alex", played by Malcolm McDowell in the Stanley Kubrick movie. In fact, yes I am correct, it was from the RSC production of 'A Clockwork Orange' directed by Ron Daniels! Great song by the way!
rjhbonovox
Refugee
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biff said:
Ok Ok I was too late.
biff
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
powerhour24
ONE love, blood, life
Axver said:
Of course it would be a great lead in to Acrobat...because that would mean we're finally hearing Acrobat live. Haha
Both of these songs have about a 99% chance of never being heard live.
butter7
War Child
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2004
- Messages
- 785
biff said:
I was wondering the same thing too.
If it was pre-recorded for the stage play, the music must be in some CDs and the people who ever worked in these theatre would have access to them.
I thought I read some forums long time ago, a few people mentioned that they've attented the play.
vaz02
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
A clock work orange = BEST FILM OF ALL TIME
The play's full title was "A Clockwork Orange: 2004," even though it was done in August of 1990.
A google search only provides a little info about the play and its author, plus an occasional note about Alex Descends...
But yeah, there's got to be other music somewhere.
A google search only provides a little info about the play and its author, plus an occasional note about Alex Descends...
But yeah, there's got to be other music somewhere.
LMP
Blue Crack Supplier
Axver said:
I'd love it as a Lemon (Perfecto Mix) type intermission song and as it builds the band comes back on stage then blasts into The Fly right after "Alex Descends..." 's climax.
chocky
Refugee
I have an article about the music that Bono & Edge recorded for this. I just had a quick look but can't find the article right now (packed away somewhere) but it was in an Aussie rock mag similar to NME ('Jive' I think) back in late 1990.
From memory they recorded either 10 or 12 tracks. There were no 'real' Bono vocals - some were instrumental pieces and some had a choir, but there were a couple of tracks that featured ramblings from Bono.
It also stated that Bono played some drums although it was mostly drum programming by Dave Clayton. Edge played guitar, bass & keyboards. Paul Barratt (the producer) also played some instruments - but I don't think they mentioned what they were.
I remember getting the impression from the article that the actual performances of the play used tapes of the Bono/Edge recordings rather than musicians on stage, but it wasn't clear.
From memory they recorded either 10 or 12 tracks. There were no 'real' Bono vocals - some were instrumental pieces and some had a choir, but there were a couple of tracks that featured ramblings from Bono.
It also stated that Bono played some drums although it was mostly drum programming by Dave Clayton. Edge played guitar, bass & keyboards. Paul Barratt (the producer) also played some instruments - but I don't think they mentioned what they were.
I remember getting the impression from the article that the actual performances of the play used tapes of the Bono/Edge recordings rather than musicians on stage, but it wasn't clear.
mistress
Babyface
Hi All - maybe the info below might be of interest?
A Clockwork Orange - Propaganda 12, 01.05.90
At the start of the year in London, the Royal Shakespeare Company unveiled their new production of Anthony Burgess's controversial book, A Clockwork Orange 2004 - complete with a musical score by the Edge and Bono. With another project in the can and the band members slipping away for well-earned holidays, Edge took some time off from a heavy cold to talk about the project to Propaganda.
He explained that uppermost in his mind now is the next U2 record, but that it won't see the light of day very soon because there is at least a year of recording to do first: "We have ideas and marker buoys for where we want to go but nothing much firmer than that as yet. Anyway, our objectives always alter during the course of the recording process and although we have intentions at the moment we don't have a manifesto, only a rough outline."
The summer will be spent in the studio, mostly in Dublin, but possibly trying out one or two other places around the world. "The downside of that is that it's very expensive, it takes longer and it can confuse the direction of an album, but it can be very inspiring." He says this period in the birth of a new recording is always a lot of fun because it is mostly working at home, interrupted by the odd four- or five-day session in the studio. "At the moment we're just humming into cassette machines."
First published in 1962, Anthony Burgess's novel follows the adventures of Alex and his gang of droogs - thrill-seeking teens who get their kicks putting their boot into anyone that gets in their way. Sent to prison for murder, Alex avoids a long sentence by volunteering for treatment by Ludovico's Technique, an attempt to "cure" his criminal nature by conditioning him to become incapable of violence. In the book's terms he gets turned into a clockwork orange - a programmed piece of machinery which is then actually incapable of functioning in what is a very violent world. Burgess has been accused by critics of writing a piece of "gratuitous violence." In fact, his book and the RSC's production is a complex morality tale exploring dark evils, particularly in portraying society's decline into ever-increasing violence. Burgess hoped his readers would be forced to ask how to deal with it.
Edge explained how he and Bono came to be involved: "The RSC originally approached us in the spring of last year with a view to us working on some music for this new production. Ron Daniels, the director, likes collaborations and wanted us on board to work alongside. We met up to talk about our ideas and our understanding of Burgess's book.
"We realised immediately that it would be impossible to get songs together in the time and we also felt that songs as such would not be on the cutting edge of this kind of theatre - they would run the risk of turning it into some kind of a musical.
"We talked with him about what we thought of as the prophetic side of the book, the fact that clearly in the black ghettoes of the U.S. in the machine-gun culture of the rap artists, Alex and his droogs appear to be alive and well. Ron really liked this and got excited. It was when we went to Stratford last August to see his RSC production of Macbeth that we got excited and realised that this could be a really interesting production, but we were well aware all along that the RSC are not exactly rock 'n' roll and the potential for the collaboration to flounder was very good!
"On top of that, after my experience in working on the soundtrack for the movie The Captive, I had decided that the only way I feel comfortable in this arena is if I can get as close as possible to the finished work before I start on the music - and with Clockwork Orange this was clearly not remotely possible. The production was still evolving and in development until days before opening.
"We put these reservations aside and decided to go for it, and in September Bono and I spent four or five days in the studio in Dublin doing demos, during a period when, as a band, we were rehearsing for the Love Town Tour. It was mostly myself and Bono but Adam dropped by to play bass for one piece. Then we left for Australia for the tour and I left Paul Barrett, our producer, to do some mixes and give the pieces some structure.
"We let things simmer away while we were on the road and when we got home the production was really coming together. We had given ourselves a month originally to finish it off, but because a few shows had to be put back due to Bono's voice problems, we ended up with only two weeks leading up to the opening.
"The re-scheduling of the Amsterdam shows was almost the nail in the coffin. But during that time in London we went to the rehearsals of the production in Clapham, and found it very inspiring - there was no set and no costumes - just the actors, which was powerful and gave us the momentum we needed to go back into the studio and finish the music.
"Originally, Bono had this phrase - 'spoken-opera' - for what we were trying to do, which was not really rap but more about rhythms with spoken dialogue over it. In fact, it turned out that the play made more demands on us as composers, and we found ourselves moving away from that and writing music for the narrative rather than writing just to the theme.
"We worked in some liturgical pieces and blurred the original hip-hop flavours so that it gelled much more with the production. But we have managed to include some samples of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, as well as some pretty heavy rhythms - there are some very abrasive tracks in there. I wouldn't expect a U2 fan to recognise this music as that of Edge and Bono, except on a couple of tracks. It is not really to do with U2, it's a different attitude. In fact, not only is it not U2 music, it's not really Bono and Edge music either - if we have a style, we definitely laid it aside for this project.
"There are no plans to release the soundtrack and I like the idea that this music only exists in the theatre context - that's what we wrote it for and I don't think it would make a great record without major reworking.
"Anthony Burgess didn't seem to like the score that we wrote for Clockwork Orange, nor did he like the production itself. I don't know - he's very old, it would have worried me more if he had liked it. He's written 17 symphonies, you know - no one has heard them but he says they are brilliant.
"The finished production of A Clockwork Orange 2004 show, which I've seen four times, is very good, but oddly, I felt the rehearsals we saw actually had more fire about them and that perhaps the staging and set dissipated some of the energy. Having said that, it did get better every night I saw it. Phil Daniels, who plays Alex and who we got to know, has done an incredible job on stage in making the character so believable.
"Burgess's script is very wordy and so quite difficult to play. Phil has done a great thing to bring Alex to life in the way he has particularly by making the role humorous. He plays a much more human Alex than Malcolm McDowell in Stanley Kubrick's film.
"In the end Burgess's story is a very dark work, but the RSC production - unlike the film - ends with Alex having gone through the experience and coming out cured of the brainwashing and having grown out of the instincts to run around as a yob. This has been criticised as a lame ending and it is true that it does let you off the hook a bit. I mean, I never thought of Alex's ultra-violence as a phase he might grow out of - in fact, it is more of a theological rounding up than a dramatic rounding up. But the strength of this is that it takes the audience by surprise and gets people thinking, 'Is Burgess right?' My own view is that Burgess is out of date - urban violence is no longer an expression of teenage boredom. It's become a way of life. It's big business."
© Propaganda, 1990. All rights reserved.
A Clockwork Orange - Propaganda 12, 01.05.90
At the start of the year in London, the Royal Shakespeare Company unveiled their new production of Anthony Burgess's controversial book, A Clockwork Orange 2004 - complete with a musical score by the Edge and Bono. With another project in the can and the band members slipping away for well-earned holidays, Edge took some time off from a heavy cold to talk about the project to Propaganda.
He explained that uppermost in his mind now is the next U2 record, but that it won't see the light of day very soon because there is at least a year of recording to do first: "We have ideas and marker buoys for where we want to go but nothing much firmer than that as yet. Anyway, our objectives always alter during the course of the recording process and although we have intentions at the moment we don't have a manifesto, only a rough outline."
The summer will be spent in the studio, mostly in Dublin, but possibly trying out one or two other places around the world. "The downside of that is that it's very expensive, it takes longer and it can confuse the direction of an album, but it can be very inspiring." He says this period in the birth of a new recording is always a lot of fun because it is mostly working at home, interrupted by the odd four- or five-day session in the studio. "At the moment we're just humming into cassette machines."
First published in 1962, Anthony Burgess's novel follows the adventures of Alex and his gang of droogs - thrill-seeking teens who get their kicks putting their boot into anyone that gets in their way. Sent to prison for murder, Alex avoids a long sentence by volunteering for treatment by Ludovico's Technique, an attempt to "cure" his criminal nature by conditioning him to become incapable of violence. In the book's terms he gets turned into a clockwork orange - a programmed piece of machinery which is then actually incapable of functioning in what is a very violent world. Burgess has been accused by critics of writing a piece of "gratuitous violence." In fact, his book and the RSC's production is a complex morality tale exploring dark evils, particularly in portraying society's decline into ever-increasing violence. Burgess hoped his readers would be forced to ask how to deal with it.
Edge explained how he and Bono came to be involved: "The RSC originally approached us in the spring of last year with a view to us working on some music for this new production. Ron Daniels, the director, likes collaborations and wanted us on board to work alongside. We met up to talk about our ideas and our understanding of Burgess's book.
"We realised immediately that it would be impossible to get songs together in the time and we also felt that songs as such would not be on the cutting edge of this kind of theatre - they would run the risk of turning it into some kind of a musical.
"We talked with him about what we thought of as the prophetic side of the book, the fact that clearly in the black ghettoes of the U.S. in the machine-gun culture of the rap artists, Alex and his droogs appear to be alive and well. Ron really liked this and got excited. It was when we went to Stratford last August to see his RSC production of Macbeth that we got excited and realised that this could be a really interesting production, but we were well aware all along that the RSC are not exactly rock 'n' roll and the potential for the collaboration to flounder was very good!
"On top of that, after my experience in working on the soundtrack for the movie The Captive, I had decided that the only way I feel comfortable in this arena is if I can get as close as possible to the finished work before I start on the music - and with Clockwork Orange this was clearly not remotely possible. The production was still evolving and in development until days before opening.
"We put these reservations aside and decided to go for it, and in September Bono and I spent four or five days in the studio in Dublin doing demos, during a period when, as a band, we were rehearsing for the Love Town Tour. It was mostly myself and Bono but Adam dropped by to play bass for one piece. Then we left for Australia for the tour and I left Paul Barrett, our producer, to do some mixes and give the pieces some structure.
"We let things simmer away while we were on the road and when we got home the production was really coming together. We had given ourselves a month originally to finish it off, but because a few shows had to be put back due to Bono's voice problems, we ended up with only two weeks leading up to the opening.
"The re-scheduling of the Amsterdam shows was almost the nail in the coffin. But during that time in London we went to the rehearsals of the production in Clapham, and found it very inspiring - there was no set and no costumes - just the actors, which was powerful and gave us the momentum we needed to go back into the studio and finish the music.
"Originally, Bono had this phrase - 'spoken-opera' - for what we were trying to do, which was not really rap but more about rhythms with spoken dialogue over it. In fact, it turned out that the play made more demands on us as composers, and we found ourselves moving away from that and writing music for the narrative rather than writing just to the theme.
"We worked in some liturgical pieces and blurred the original hip-hop flavours so that it gelled much more with the production. But we have managed to include some samples of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, as well as some pretty heavy rhythms - there are some very abrasive tracks in there. I wouldn't expect a U2 fan to recognise this music as that of Edge and Bono, except on a couple of tracks. It is not really to do with U2, it's a different attitude. In fact, not only is it not U2 music, it's not really Bono and Edge music either - if we have a style, we definitely laid it aside for this project.
"There are no plans to release the soundtrack and I like the idea that this music only exists in the theatre context - that's what we wrote it for and I don't think it would make a great record without major reworking.
"Anthony Burgess didn't seem to like the score that we wrote for Clockwork Orange, nor did he like the production itself. I don't know - he's very old, it would have worried me more if he had liked it. He's written 17 symphonies, you know - no one has heard them but he says they are brilliant.
"The finished production of A Clockwork Orange 2004 show, which I've seen four times, is very good, but oddly, I felt the rehearsals we saw actually had more fire about them and that perhaps the staging and set dissipated some of the energy. Having said that, it did get better every night I saw it. Phil Daniels, who plays Alex and who we got to know, has done an incredible job on stage in making the character so believable.
"Burgess's script is very wordy and so quite difficult to play. Phil has done a great thing to bring Alex to life in the way he has particularly by making the role humorous. He plays a much more human Alex than Malcolm McDowell in Stanley Kubrick's film.
"In the end Burgess's story is a very dark work, but the RSC production - unlike the film - ends with Alex having gone through the experience and coming out cured of the brainwashing and having grown out of the instincts to run around as a yob. This has been criticised as a lame ending and it is true that it does let you off the hook a bit. I mean, I never thought of Alex's ultra-violence as a phase he might grow out of - in fact, it is more of a theological rounding up than a dramatic rounding up. But the strength of this is that it takes the audience by surprise and gets people thinking, 'Is Burgess right?' My own view is that Burgess is out of date - urban violence is no longer an expression of teenage boredom. It's become a way of life. It's big business."
© Propaganda, 1990. All rights reserved.
powerhour24
ONE love, blood, life
U2 By U2 talks about the play as being a jumping off point for the sounds of Achtung Baby, but I don't think they talked specifically about any songs.
