ben heffernan

he/him

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@MRGilly93 @U2start 1000000% agree

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

phoebe bridgers’ punisher is such an odd album for me because song for song it’s close to a perfect album but it was nearly all i listened to in late 2020-early 21 so i don’t really go back to it all that often these days

strange times

[our band could be your wife @grace_roso]

a few questions for a piece i’m working on:

are there any 2020 albums that you don’t listen to very often (or at all) because you associate them with the lockdown era? any albums that you enjoy less (or more) because of that association?

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@misterminsoo @eunuchfx explain

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@samwilbur sounded like Max went to start Ghosts at the end of Two Hearts and then Bruce went into Darlington haha

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@u2gigs a bit of a nerdy take here but from a musical perspective, Love Me Tender and UTEOTW are played in the same key (G) while One and Unchained/Shes a Mystery/other Zoo snippets were played in the same key (C), so from that angle Love Me Tender should be listed as a UTEOTW snippet

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@AdHocEmilie hi Emilie! very interested but can’t DM as I don’t pay for verified

[Feeling Distant @annkpowers]

One other thing about Pitchfork: it's super important that the coverage there has evolved to be well-balanced across genres. Many of you don't remember the '90s era of "rock" mags and "hip hop" mags, the racial divide was real 1/

[Joshua Minsoo Kim @misterminsoo]

people who say this never actually read the site. there was still a good, healthy amount of coverage of underground and experimental music there, and some of the best music writing on the internet was there. some of those sunday reviews are all-timers, especially.

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@accountofadam @u2gigs I thought Zooropa > Streets on I+E was incredible

[Liam @LegoRacers2]

Taylor's people turning a casually popular star into a Kpop style mass spiritual phenomenon almost 18 years into her career is one of the greatest coups in marketing history. Books will be written about this

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

roll on november 1 and 3. the boys are BACK

[Trung Phan @TrungTPhan]

The U2 x Las Vegas Sphere show took two years to create and will make ~$270m.

In Fall 2021, the band was approached to open the $2.3B mega-structure (with a capacity of 18k).

Willie Williams — U2’s creative director since the early 1980s — initially thought it was a “terrible idea”.

Why? U2’s iconic tours have been breakthrough custom sets from Zoo TV in the early 1990s (pioneering giant screens on stage) to the 360 Tour of late 2000s (360-degree stage for stadium shows).

They weren’t keen to build an act around the Sphere’s requirements, especially one with the most ambitious audio-visual specs ever: 

▫️160k+ speakers
▫️366ft tall x 516ft wide (9 floors)
▫️Largest LED screen ever (160k sq ft)

However, the idea of a residency — instead of a moving tour — appealed to U2 because of COVID travel uncertainty.

One major obstacle was that dome-shaped buildings are typically awful for audio, per Variety.

The Sphere solved the issue with its 167k speakers including one in each seat. Effectively, every person is “getting studio-quality sound” according to James Dolan (owner of NY Knicks, NY Rangers, MSG and the man behind the Sphere). 

Meanwhile, the visuals were a collaboration with the world’s top creatives (Es Devlin, Marco Brambilla, John Gerrard and long-time producer Brian Eno).

The amount of data created to fill the LED screen is mind-boggling, per Wallpaper:

▫️ there are 268,435,456 pixels…
▫️ …which is equal to 72 HD TVs
▫️ … which is equal to 12k screen resolution 
▫️ …which means “every minute of content produced for Sphere is the equivalent of one hour of streaming television”

“With all the big stuff I’ve done for U2 and anyone else, we don’t start with the equipment, we start with the idea, and then figure out what we need to realize that idea,” Williams tells Variety. “And sometimes it involves big video, sometimes it doesn’t. Whereas here, the only given we had going in was the building — and a building that didn’t exist, and in fact isn’t finished now. So it was odd starting a show with hardware and with a space rather than the other way around.”

Here’s some napkin math for “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere”:

▫️25 dates x 18,000 per show x $600 per ticket (range is $400 to $1400) = $270 million

The entire U2 team — Williams, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Bram van den Berg (who is subbing in for the injured Larry Mullen Jr) — clearly made a risky bet.

But the viral clips and buzz from opening night show it has paid off big time.

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

oh man this had me for a second

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

I don't like the look of those acoustic guitars in the background. don't need them

[U2Songs.com @u2songs]

Bono accepts a Goalkeepers Global Goals Award from the stage of the Sphere, and gives a preview of the stage and venue: https://t.co/V9sYbwekJg (Starts at 1:40 if link doesn't take you directly to Melinda Gates' introduction) #U2UVSphere

[UtdPlug @UtdPlug]

🚨 Full statement protesting the potential re-inclusion of Mason Greenwood

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

i love live chats. i am not going to call. live chat troubleshooting only

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@b_sands5 @shawntcooke @MonrovianPrince they corrected it to a 10 in the “revisited” article they did a couple years ago, which felt meaningless because the reviews themselves didn’t actually change

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@GloryusFailure Happy to hear this

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@GloryusFailure Yes

[ben heffernan @ben_heff]

@LuvFB_HateFifa @DevilsITDPod this would be unreal