Greetings from a rainy, icy and darn-right cold Portland, Oregon! Yes, ice your only rivers *do* run cold! But enough about the weather….
On behalf of everyone on the @U2 staff, I would like to thank everyone who braved the ice storm to come out to celebrate our 10th birthday with us. We had over 200 fans join us – amazing! It was fantastic to see some familiar faces, as well as to meet so many new people.
Our birthday party got kicked off with the results from the official @U2 fan survey. During November, we asked fans worldwide for your opinion in our comprehensive survey. We were excited to see that over 4100 of you took our survey. Typically, when Time Magazine or CNN does a survey, they’re lucky to get 1500 responses – and they use those numbers to generalize about the entire population. So, with almost 3-times that amount responding to our survey, we are assured that we have a pretty good idea of the “typical” U2 fan.
We plan on having the survey results up on the site in the upcoming week or so, but to give you a little sneak-peek on what the results are (and to recap for everyone at the event)…the “typical” U2 fan is….
Male, aged between 25-36, still living with his parents, listens to U2 at least once a day, thinks that Larry would win on the television show Survivor, and feels that Edge is the best musician in the band. The typical fan also believes that Adam’s 1981 afro was the worst fashion mistake U2 has ever had….beating Bono’s Live Aid mullet and everything associated with PopMart. As I said, the survey was quite comprehensive! (More to come in the following days.)
After about an hour of presenting the survey results to everyone, we broke into the birthday cake, handed out some prizes, and then listened the musical stylings of Scott Perretta (who does an *awesome* version of “Acrobat”, by the way). Then, Zoo Station took the stage, performing for about two hours.
After surveying the @U2 readership, it was the hands-down conclusion that we all wanted to hear “Mercy”, and Zoo Station took on the challenge! To the best of our knowledge, this was the first time “Mercy” had been performed live by any band.
The fans wanted more, and Zoo Station happily gave them one more song at the end of the night, closing out their set with “Unchained Melody”. Other surprises they pulled out of the U2 discography included “Lady with the Spinning Head” (blending that with “The Fly”), “Two Hearts Beat As One”, and “Twilight”.
It was an absolute blast getting to listen to them, and we are very thankful to Zoo Station for coming all the way up from California to join us. If you get a chance to see them perform, don’t miss it!
Good times were had by all last night. Congratulations to all of our prize winners! Thank you to Kells for hosting us and for keeping the Guinness, and Vertigo specialty drinks flowing last night. I would also like to give a special thank you to the @U2 staff who traveled a long distance to come to the event.