As some of you may have noticed, last week the most important international and unofficial website from the late 90’s and 2000’s about The Cranberries went definitely offline.

As announced in May by its webmaster Alex Kraus, the website was supposed to go offline early june but for some reason had an extended time until mid-July. Even if the site officially closed in the fall of 2007 it stayed online until last week, enabling fans to keep on checking old pages. Let’s thus hope everyone had enough time to save those precious pages for personal archive or later use.

Anyway now it is gone, so… rest in peace ZG and thank you Alex for all those great years.
Now it’s part of History in The Cranberries world.

The very last ZG homepage

For those who might have doubts, an article entitled “New album comes up ‘Roses’ for The Cranberries as profits jump to €320k” and published in the Irish Examiner today reveals The Cranberries are still making money as a band.

The article is interesting but quite technical as the journalist Gordon Deegan gives fairly precise figures earned by the band’s Curtain Call Ltd in 2012, a year boosted by the album “Roses”. All four members have a 25% shareholding in Curtain Call Ltd.
Even if the revenues are not in million(s) anymore probably due to the crisis in the music industry these last years (but which artist is not impacted!) this is still a good news.

Yesterday Noel Hogan informed us on Tumblr that he was giving one of his personal award for charity auction with no more explanation.
We do not know where this “To The Faithful Departed” Argentinian Gold Award will be auctioned, let’s hope we’ll get a clue soon for those who’d like to get their hands on such a pretty rare item.

Disco de oro presented to Noel Hogan –  Argentina

UPDATE – FEBRUARY 4

The award is actually on eBay. (link no longer available)

Yesterday a new bootleg of The Cranberries surfaced on the internet. It is almost 11-year old as it was recorded live in concert on June 1, 2002 in Pompano Beach, USA (near Miami) during the “Wake Up And Smell The Coffee World Tour ’02”.
We usually don’t write any news when a new bootleg comes out and we simply add it to our bootleg database (which is small for now but is bound to grow over the coming months and years).

This new old recording is an exception as it is quite special and deserves a few explanations.
Why?
Because we usually know 2 ways of recording a concert: Professional made by professional and authorized people and Audience made most of the time by fans in the crowd and unauthorized.

The bootleg that surfaced yesterday belongs to a another category as it is an IEM Feed source and this is the first ever IEM recording of The Cranberries known to date for now. Many of us just have no idea what an IEM Feed is and what it means. IEM is for In-Ear-Monitors. Let’s make it simple, it is the headphones that all musicians have on stage nowadays. And each musician have its own mix inside, for example a bass player might want to hear the bass louder than the other instruments etc…
Datfly (the uploader -and maybe taper?- of this new bootleg on dimeadozen.org) tells us, in file description, that the recording features very heavy Dolores vocals so there are good chances that the IEM Feed recorded here is Dolores’ one.

There we have a professional source recorded by a non-professional and probably non-authorized person. The result is kinda unique and everyone will have its own opinion on the quality and interest of the thing. It’s up to you to listen. Hear the accuracy of Dolores singings like rarely heard before. Anyway what is for sure, The Cranberries Fans Community definitely have a new collector piece!

more details:
Audio/Video recordings (2002.06.01)

Happy roadies day to all The Cranberries fans in the world… one-two one-two one-two  😉
Special wink to Declan and Murt!

For those who don’t get it, that’s usually what all the roadies of the world say to test a mic before a show.

Here comes -out of the blue- the song that no one requested. How could that have happened when we knew Dolores couldn’t sing it anymore? Get ready for our video of “Ode To My Family” recorded in Montbéliard, France.

One of us was lucky enough to catch sight of the setlist a few minutes before the lights were turned off, hence the fact we were prepared to capture what would necessarily be the highlight of the show. If some of you were moved by “Roses” in Luxembourg or Paris, get your tissues ready cause this was even more poignant! As you all know now, this was the one and only time Ode was performed on this European tour, simply because it was the last show of the European tour.

Recorded from the seated area in the back of the venue and close to the center, this view appears to be quite perfect. Feel free to share it, steal it, download it or whatever you want… ENJOY!

“Ode To My Family” – Montbéliard – December 9, 2012

Here comes another requested song, “Waltzing Back” live at Elispace in Beauvais, France for the penultimate concert of the European tour. Recorded from the very front row almost dead center.

“Waltzing Back” – Beauvais – December 8, 2012

Back from Lille tonight where we identified 3 highlights of the show:

• “Sunday”, a song rarely played on this leg and tonight was the 3rd time on the whole European tour so far (premiere was in Bucharest). We’re sorry we didn’t record the song as we didn’t see this one coming.
• “Empty”, just like Sunday this one has not been played a lot on this this tour (premiere in Madrid). See our video below.
• Promises” requested by a few fans in the front row and which has only be played on request on this tour (premiere in Barcelona).

“Empty” – Lille 2012

Terrible weather but a great show in Brest, France. One of our team member chose to film “Schizophrenic Playboys” shot from the front row dead center, can’t be closer! Hope you’ll like it.

Schizophrenic Playboys – Brest 2012

What a special show tonight in a sold out Zénith in Paris. As you may know, this show took place on the 1st death anniversary of Dolores’ father.
As a consequence The Cranberries played a very unusual show starting with the “Analyse” setlist but dedicated most of the encore to this anniversary.

The band thus returned a darkened stage after “Zombie” with a bunch of red roses on a table and a candle. Dolores explained the situation and dedicated “Roses” (the song) to her father. She then told the crowd how funnily her son -Taylor- has the very same eyes as her father, which led the band to start playing “You & Me” and skipping “Schizophrenic Playboys” for the first time on this tour.

A beautiful moment which was emphasized by a happening organized by French fans members of the forum “Pretty Dolores” led by Camille. They once again successfully managed to ask the audience in the first rows to hold almost two hundreds white roses in the air to pay homage to the band, the Roses album & tour, as well as Dolores’ family.

We tried to film these songs from the back to see the whole atmosphere so if good enough we will upload them asap otherwise no doubt there will be good ones on YouTube soon. In the meantime enjoy our few pics which we didn’t manage to post live on Twitter because of a bad connection, as well as the setlist.

Last thing, the concert was NOT recorded for a DVD as originally planned.

Back from Lyon where we attended a more intimate show than expected. Only 5000 in a 15 000 people venue. The stage was moved closer to the seated area so that we couldn’t perceive any empty space at all. Good point. Excellent band & crowd on that night, we really enjoyed the great atmosphere. As Dolores said “Lyon totally rocks”. Watch her sing “oleee oleeee oleeee oleeee”

As we were not able to properly film the night before in Clermont-Ferrand (sorry about that) we decided to film 2 songs in Lyon, so here they are:

“Show Me” – Lyon 2012

“Still Can’t…” – Lyon 2012

Last but not least, for those who wish we had filmed a song in Clermont-Ferrand, below a nice video of “Dreams” filmed by YouTube user socalo03. Many thanks to this person.

“Dreams” – Clermont-Ferrand 2012

As promised, all CW team members try to film one song at each show they’re attending. We choose the songs according to what we think is a key moment of the show, or on your request. Be sure our crew does its best and we can’t guarantee success every time as camera policy totally varies one venue to another. We’re rarely meeting any problem though with the compact photo camera we’re using for these videos. However please keep in mind that recording videos prevents the one who films from enjoying the show as one may thus focus more on the screen of the camera than the concert itself. No need to say that our team do want to enjoy the show first (probably like all of us).

Below are new videos as well as some old ones you may already know.

“Electric Blue” – Orléans – November 11, 2012

“Twenty One” – Antwerpen – November 4, 2012

“Astral Projections” – Esch-sur-Alzette – November 2, 2012

Interlude (Shattered instrumental)” – Toulouse – October 25, 2012

“No Need To Argue” – London – October 2, 2012

Today The Cranberries are playing at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Roma for the 3rd and last show in beautiful Italy. Italians fans do love The Cranberries & there is no doubt The Cranberries do love Italy. The whole band arrived in Roma yesterday and had a day off there after 2 great shows in Padova and Milano.

Roma is the 11^th show of a tour that counts 33 shows, meaning one third of the European Leg of the Roses Tour 2012 has now been played which enabled fans to notice a regular pattern in setlists change from one night to another. Besides the London show which was the premiere (and a premiere is never too representative) one can identify 2 setlists, the first one starting with “Just My Imagination” and the other one with “Analyse”.
These 2 setlist greatly differ in terms of dynamic and of length. If the Analyse set contains 25 or 26 songs, only 20 or 21 songs are featured in the other set!
As a consequence, don’t be too surprised if ever you get to read really good reviews (from the media, we’re not speaking about fans here) from a concert whereas that on the following evening tends to contrast.

If some fans do identify the setlists by speaking of the “energetic & long” one and the “slow and short” one, we, meaning Cranberries World, do not think things are this black and white.
Having seen a couple of shows, we can say both shows feature amazing and rare songs as well as beautiful moments. What stroke us the most was mainly the discrepancy in terms of song number.

Things are not frozen though, the running order is never exactly the same and some old rarities do pop up surprisingly sometimes to our greatest delight. Plus consider there are still a lot of dates to come, the band can always refine its choices at all times.
The Cranberries are in great shape and appear to be still amazing performers. The 3 boys play goddamn well and the still blond Dolores changes her clothes 3 times a show, most of the time for beautiful dresses exclusively on this tour. Dolores’ vocal cord nodule seems to be an old story now as her voice has been particularly good since the beginning of the tour. One may note Russell Burton’s amazing performance on keyboard on the “Interlude” which is an instrumental version of “Shattered” as well as Johanna Cranitch’s (recently hired this year) great back vocals. The Roses Tour is thus going pretty well!

Finally, let’s just mention briefly the topic we’ve been trying to avoid for a while as we don’t want to turn into a tabloid website 😉
Doubt is raising among the fans and people start gossiping about it, so here we go: whether or not our favourite singer has had breast surgery recently, this we do not know, but it does look like her breast’s bigger now when looking at random close up pictures. Keep in mind it does not necessarily imply surgery though, who knows if this is not just all about getting older, gaining a little weight or whatever…

Anyways!

Happy Halloween everyone, and let’s see if the band will surprise us tonight on this special evening as mentioned on an Italian article. (article no longer available)

The Cranberries just cancelled their show in Minneapolis at The Brick on May 17. Dolores wasn’t feeling well and was unable to perform. here is the official message published few minutes ago on Twitter directly by the venue:

THE BRICK @TheBrick_MN
Sorry to all who made it out tonight! Dolores of The Cranberries fell ill and is unable to perform. We will be issuing refunds Monday.

Message is very clear and it looks like the show won’t be rescheduled at all as only refund is offered for now. More details very soon….

EDIT #1:
If like Bob, you know a little more about the exact circumstances of the cancellation, just let us know like he did. Thanks to him.

EDIT #2:
Thanks to you all below for your comments. Very interesting. Don’t hesitate to continue if necessary.

The “Roses Tour” started exactly 2 months ago and more than 20 shows have been done so far. As you may know or not, there already are some live bootleg recordings surfacing the internet and mostly made by fans for fans (meaning recorded in the audience).

Like said in the “About CW” section, there is no recording available for download on Cranberries World. It doesn’t mean we don’t like bootlegs. Like any die-hard fans that you are and that we all are, it’s pretty much the opposite and one of our goals in the coming months (and years !!) will be to database them all.

In the mean time, a new recording from Washington, DC‘s 9:30 Club surfaced today. Yes it’s yesterday’s show! The file was released on the internet on the famous torrent site dimeadozen.org and it’s pretty simple to find link(s) if you are interested…