(RED), the famous Aids awareness organization, is joining forces with some of its BFF’s to throw a benefit concert. “Hal Willner Presents: An Evening with Gavin Friday and Friends” will feature performances from longtime friends and (RED) supporters like Bono, The Edge and Scarlett Johannson, as well as Shane McGowan and Courtney Love, who, if anything, will help sell tickets by appearing as toothless trainwrecks. The event, to be held at the Carnegie Hall in New York City, will also feature Laurie Anderson, Antony, Elizabeth Ashley, Adam Clayton, Andrea Corr, Flo & Eddie, Joel Grey, Bill Frisell, Guggi, Scarlett Johansson, Lydia Lunch, Patrick McCabe, Maria McKee, Eric Mingus, Larry Mullen, Jr., JG Thirlwell, Martha Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright and Chloe Webb, as well as surprise guests. Tickets go on sale at 11am (here), so get your AMEX out, as you do not want to miss Kanye inevitably telling the Wainwright Siblings that they are good, but their Dad made one of the best albums of all time. Hopefully (RED) will have Courtney Love live tweet the event.

We were awfully amped to report not too long ago that Bono and the Edge’s Spiderman on Broadway project was going forward, full steam ahead. Rolling Stone is reporting today that major roles have now been cast with Evan Rachel Wood to play Mary Jane Watson. You may remember Wood as that crazy girl from Thirteen or Marilyn Manson’s most recent special friend. We’ve developed newfound respect for the starlet as a result of this little bit of sound-byte magic:

“Bono and the Edge are doing the music. It was hysterical, I got to do the workshop, sit down with them playing guitars going over the music, and I was making jokes going, watch by the end of this, I’ll be telling them what to do. And by the end I was! I was like, Bono, I know you want to save the world and everything, but in this song you’re talking about poverty and world hunger and it’s Broadway, can we lighten this up a bit, can I just not sing this? And he was like, [in Irish accent] ‘You’re right, I know, we have to try, we have to try.’”

She’s bold. Alan Cumming, who will be playing the Green Goblin, provided no additional laughs.

In March, the editors over at Nerve posted their picks for the Forty Sexiest Frontwomen in Rock History, and after receiving a bit of flack for their picks, the editors have struck again; only this time (more importantly) with the Forty Sexiest Frontmen in Rock History.
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You and I have absolutely nothing in common with the members of U2. The Irish quartet has sat at the zenith of fame for twenty straight years. They sell out stadiums at every end of the world, own hotels and restaurants, talk with the U.N., and live a life unimaginable to most (though it should be said that 95% of U2’s fame is really Bono’s fame). Bono’s international prestige and abundance of global experiences have insulated him from real world experiences. It’s not that Bono doesn’t understand the proletariat anymore — after all, U2’s ostensible raison d’être is humanism — it’s that Bono’s wealth of experience has resulted in a righteous and celestial persona that has produced the worst music of his career. Indeed, there have been several bloody Sunday’s to sing about, but Bono’s now the one ineffectively mediating the crisis at the U.N., not the one protesting at the front line. This is why Bono’s motives are viewed with suspicion, why his idealism in regards to African aid is considered naïve, and why he is a constant parody of the “celebrity meets activist” paradigm.
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Bono finally took some time off from his busy schedule of being the most charitable person alive, and look what happened — U2 are releasing their first studio album in five years, No Line on the Horizon, in March.
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