Phil Romans has organised the 2nd photo auction in support of the African Well Fund‘s ‘Build a Well for Bono’s Birthday’. Last year, his efforts raised $11,000 for the charity.

The African Well Fund is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization that was founded in 2002 by a group of U2 fans. Since that time, AWF has raised more than $300,000, which has been used to fund clean water projects that have benefited over 60,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nineteen U2 fans and photographers (including myself) have donated over 100 pictures of the band (and one of one of their best friends) to be auctioned off on eBay. All proceeds will be donated to the 5th Annual Build a Well for Bono’s Birthday fundraising drive.

The photo auction starts April 14th, and will last for 7 days. The first auction starts at 12pm EST, and each auction will subsequently start at one minute increments.

Go check out the photos and put in your bids. If I may make a suggestion: this photograph by some Dutch woman would be a fine choice.

Tomorrow morning 10 AM, pre-sales for some of these concerts start. Hundreds of hardcore fans will be going insane, click-click-clicking, trying to score tickets (registered fans are allowed 2 to 4 tickets for one single show) through the abominable Ticketmaster sites. I’m sad to say they’ve taken over handling in my part of the world too.

The object of the operation? Get tickets that allow you inside the oval. In the USA, these are the cheapest tickets. What the pricing in Europe will be, I’m not sure yet.

I had planned a trip to IKEA today, for CD cases and a dining table, but on second thought that money will be needed to fund this year’s U2 trek: Brussels, Gelsenkirchen, London, Paris, Amsterdam and maybe more. New York, perhaps, in November or so.

Looks like my 2005 is all mapped out.

eight comments:

Might have to pass… much as it pains me to do so but it’s just too expensive. Maybe.
Gordon (link) – 25 January 2005 – 00:22

{ Lawn, Tivoli – de Helling, Utrecht }

A lot of people around us are dressed in dark red colours. We can’t figure out why. Perhaps it’s some thing fans of bands do, some quirk like The Mission fans who called themselves ‘Eskimos’ or the early online community of U2 fans who took to wearing tags with the name of their mailing list written on it.

Or it could be they’re dressed in red to go along with the Fire-engine themed ‘disco’ that’s planned after the gig.

I didn’t know ‘Sophia‘, but I knew their predecessor, noise-mongers the God Machine. They had impressed me as a young band, having made the decision to live and record in London rather than stay in their native America. I remember that the death of their bassist came unexpected and that I felt so sorry at a time that a band that had seemed so promising would meet such ill fate.

Robin Proper-Sheppard, the God Machine and Sophia’s front-man, nearly gave up music after his friend died, but in the end decided he could not live without it. He looks like a young David Brent with a little Sean Penn on the side. When he’s on stage pre-show to set up some girls, fans, comment “Oh there he is!”, adding with a certain air of disappointment, “He’s not even wearing performance clothes…”

{ Sophia, Tivoli – de Helling, Utrecht }

Sheppard dresses to impress your mother and if he’s hoping to do it in the rather affected or arty way Interpol seem to do it, he’s failing. His songs, his lyrics lack that same irony. They’re just completely mundane, the kind of thoughts you and I have, without even a hint of poetry or vision. And that’s their appeal, despite the lack of joy and their utter self-indulgence. It’s unassuming, just like his rapport with his audience. But this ‘one of the guys’ persona is an act, because you can just feel the screaming diva inside him when he orders the lighting tech to keep the bright lights out of his face. Perhaps it’s that undercurrent, controlled rage, that keeps it interesting.

Right at the start he mentions that his daughter, ‘Hope’, is 10 years old. A fan says: ‘Last time she was 4, has it been that long?’ A conversation ensues, but Sheppard cuts it short: “You know, I like this conversation, but maybe we should have it… after… I know I have this kind of relationship with my fans, but…”

He promises to tell a joke his daughter taught him and then continues to sing a – depressing – song about ‘her mother’. All through the gig people keep reminding him to tell the joke, which he does eventually. He asks a guy in the front:

“What’s your favourite colour?’

“Red,” the guy says, pointing at his shirt.

“What’s your favourite animal?”

“Cat.”

“What’s your favourite food?”

“Mie!” says the guy, which sounds like ‘me’. He means ‘noodles’, proving once again that no, the average Dutch person doesn’t speak English as well as is generally thought. It confuses Sheppard, who tells him he’s supposed to name a food product.

“Pizza!”

“Well, have you ever heard of a red cat that eats pizza?” It’s not that funny and Sheppard agrees, but when he told his daughter this she had answered: “I know, but all the kids at school think it’s funny.”

In the meantime, my friend — sharper than most — leans in and says: “A red cat that loves pizza? Um… Garfield?”

I shouldn’t like this band at all, with its wishy washy music that is never completely out there and never completely original. It meanders between all kinds of genres, with a warm organ sound straight out of REM’s cookbook, the country influences of Neil Young, the fire and brimstone melodies of Nick Cave, the Britpop streak completely stripped of all irony and the echoes of their own God Machine past.

I shouldn’t like it at all, but I do. Their ‘from a whisper to a wall of sound’ gimmick should be annoying, but it’s not. Like their support act ‘Lawn’, who I should like even less, Sheppard and his band have a wonderful knack of writing melody lines that please and surprise. They’re just annoyingly engaging. Like Crowded House, another band I only grudgingly appreciate, I’ll have to admit they were good.

Good enough for a Saturday night out.

Here, have a listen.

• Album ‘People are like seasons’ @ official site
• Belgian radio session (bit boring)

Pictures taken with Nokia 3650.

I was skeptical about Friendster from my very first invitation on the day it launched. I joined kicking and screaming and never did anything with it. Friendster and its clones seemed primarily dating sites to me. I am not comfortable (in real life and online) in social environments. Making small talk online is as hard for me as it is off line so I wouldn’t naturally join any site of its kind. I opted out of Orkut.

But Flickr’s a little different. I joined despite its somewhat unfortunate name (especially in Dutch) because I “trust” the people behind it. Though Ludicorp‘s GNE wasn’t my thing, it was extremely slick. It made Flickr worth checking out.

Now I’ve seen the light.

First of all, Flickr looks all kinds of sexy, runs smoothly (a few beta hiccups here and there) and so far it’s been very easy to find my way around. It did take me a while to figure out there was more to it than the Groups and userpages and how to launch Flickr proper. I guess the huge pink button escaped my view…

I soon caught on that Flickr is useful outside the dreaded ‘networking’ area. I still have problems with the whole ‘friends’ issue. (“One or two e-mails and a night on IRC don’t make you my friend.”) This may wholly be a cultural difference, as others have noted. Fortunately there’s an ‘acquaintance’ designation in Flickr. But it is Flickr’s image sharing tools in combination with chat and IM that could be very useful to communities like the one we have at U2log.com.

Next year, U2 will start touring again. (U2 fans, don’t laugh — let’s just hope they will.) Flickr will make it very easy (think ‘effortless’) for fans to share their photos immediately after and during the shows (using mobile phones and Flickr’s ‘upload by e-mail’ service ) in the chat and IM environments.

Using Flickr this way can be quite useful to me, current author of “U2 Live: A Concert Documentary”. I could verify events taking place at concerts. Fans will be able to tell me their stories and illustrate them at the same time. All this makes my information gathering for the book a lot easier.

I’ve set up a U2logTalk group at Flickr.com — hopefully the U2log.com readership will ‘get it’ and join. I’m not saying it will all happen the way I dreamed it up, but it might.

‘Course they’ll all start discussing B’s hair, rather than provide me with essential concert details…