The U2 Are Jerks Thread

[Helm]

Apparently Henry Rollins at one point said that "The Clash are what U2 really wanted to be". This provides for even more reasons to hate U2, seeing how The Clash weren't that great to begin with.

Also from the sale article:

U2, the supposed band of integrity and protest, recently decided to screw over independent record retailers, by signing an exclusive contract with the Best Buy, the 1,900-store consumer electronics and appliance monolith. According to the terms of the agreement, Best Buy would have a two-week exclusive to sell a brand new U2 live DVD for $18 and also get the rights to sell an out-of-print U2 Greatest Hits Album. In exchange Best Buy will help to promote a broadcast of the concert on DirectTV's Freeview Event series for paying customers and spend up to $10 million promoting U2 through transit bus and newspaper advertising.

So while Bono was all over CNN talking about helping to restore the economies in Africa, he and his mates had already screwed thousands of small music retailers who would lose revenue and customers to a large chain that is expected to rack up $20 billion in 2002. In 2000, Best Buy bought out the Musicland Chain, which runs Sam Goody here in the States, and more recently bought the 83-store Future Shop chain in Canada. For all intents and purposes, they are quickly becoming the Starbucks of the consumer electronics world - a store in every town, sometimes even two or three if necessary.

To make matters worse, Best Buy expanded in the music distribution business by creating Redline Entertainment, a wholly-owned subsidiary that acts like any other record label. One catch, by silently owning Redline, other chains and music retailers are padding Best Buy's pockets by selling CD's from Redline's artists. To quote Best Buy's CEO from a brief article in Forbes (about the only publication to cover the story): "Consumers are telling us they want to depend increasingly on one guy." The Babbitizing of America continues…

Not unexpectedly, this little bit of news was missing from the pages of Rolling Stone or VH-1 broadcasts. And meanwhile, the fabulous images from the photo-op of Bono and US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill travelling to Africa still flood the airwaves.

U2 are jerks and only canadians with problems like them.