OCTOBER 2: Happy B-Day Sting / audience problems in Brisbane / Edge attends 'Chernobyl Heart' / U2 defends move to avoid Irish tax raise!

"Sting"october 2, 1951 - Sting was born (Gordon Smith) in Newcastle / UK.

"Boy" tour - october 2, 1980 U2 perform in Leeds, England at the Fan Club.

"October" tour - october 2 1981 U2 perform in Nottingham, England at Rock City. Support is "Wall of Voodoo".

"The Joshua Tree" tour - october 2, 1987. U2 perform in Brisbane, Australia at the Entertainment Centre. The first night is marred by audience problems. Bono stops the concert momentarily to address the crowd: "I'd like to thank you all for coming here and going through so much trouble to get tickets. I think the thing about the U2 audience is that there is something about them that sets them apart--The look after each other. At least, that's the way it's always been. So what I want you to do is just ease back a bit here. Some people way up here got some breathing problems...So everybody try and ease back a bit. We can do that, can't we?" During "Bullet The Blue Sky", "So, anyway, I got into bed...and I must have fallen asleep for about an hour when suddenly an explosion went off in my head. It was the doorbell....I got down, fell over all my cassettes and records, and went to the door. I looked into the little hole that we have in our doors as paranoid rock & roll people...an on the other side of the door I saw myself...Just about two years younger. And I thought, "What's going on? What am I doing out there? Anyway, it turns out it was some guy from a Bono look-a-like competition, who managed to sneak in the hotel elevator, and was knocking on my room! He's gonna eat my porridge, and watch my video tape recorder! Well, I felt really pissed off at the time, but tonight I thought, that's the sort of thing I might have done myself actually..." Support is "Weddings Parties Anything" and B.B. King.

"Edge at Oscar-winning documentary opens in Dublin tonight" - october 2, 2004. 'Chernobyl Heart,' the Oscar-winning documentary that was inspired by the Irish-based Chernobyl Children's Project, premiers in Dublin this evening. It is also the first European screening of the film which is named after a medical condition affecting more than 7,000 youngsters in Belarus following the nuclear disaster there almost two decades ago. Adi Roche said the response to the film in the US was low-key despite the prestigious award it received earlier this year. She added that she hopes the film will act as reminder for a forgotten tragedy. Adi Roche, founder of the Chernobyl Children's Project, stands with U2 band member the Edge, and film-maker Maryann De Leo, at the screening of De Leo's film, Chernobyl Heart, Saturday, Oct. 2, 2004, in Dublin, Ireland, which was part of a four day documentary film festival.

U2 defends move to avoid Irish tax raise - October 2, 2006 - "Of course we're trying to be tax-efficient. Who doesn't want to be tax-efficient?" - Bono, the rock star and campaigner against third-world debt, is asking the Irish government to contribute more to Africa. ... David Evans, the guitarist known as The Edge, this month defended the publishing company's move as a sensible decision for a group that makes 90 percent of its money outside Ireland. "Our business is a very complex business," Evans said Oct. 2 on the Dublin radio station Newstalk, breaking the band's silence after weeks of public criticism. "Of course we're trying to be tax-efficient. Who doesn't want to be tax-efficient?" ... Remaining in Ireland would have forced Bono to pay a 42 percent tax on such earnings. Alternatively, the band could have channeled profits through a company to pay the 12.5 percent corporation tax. Some fans accept the band's explanation of its tax planning because U2 has been generous in the past. "They've paid plenty of money up to now," said Peter Cooper, who lives in Bray, near Bono's home in Dalkey. "I think they are quite right" to move the company abroad. iht