U2

For the eighth time I had the pleasure of seeing U2 last night! While every U2 show is great, this show ranked in the lower eschelon of my experiences with them. Of course this may be only because they cut off beer sales before the concert even started (us 40 year old U2 fans are real trouble makers ya know). I thought that Bono seemed flat and shy tonight, but he didn't get much back from the crowd either. I could see him trying to get the house going in the first few songs ("City of Blinding Light", "Elevation", & "Vertigo"), and during "Elevation" he succeeded as it was the high point of the concert and absolutley one of the best songs I've ever seen performed live - worth the price of admission alone (or almost at least, as the tix were $175 each face value - yikes). But the crowd never seemed to buy in and from there on out it felt as if the band was going through the motions most of the songs. The setlist was disappointing - U2 reached back for a lot of older material tonight at the expense of some tunes from more recent albums that I would have loved to have heard. The middle of the set was the politically charged heart of the show with "Love and Peace or Else", "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Bullet the Blue Sky" (the worst version I've ever seem them do - they cut out the "Slappin' 'em down....100!....200!) and were dare I say, gulp, sort of boring. Nonetheless there were several awesome highlights...."Miracle Drug" was an amazing surprise...."Where the Streets Have No Name" as usual rocked the house.....during "One" Bono asked everyone to take out their cell phones, which produced an amazing visual that reminded me of watching fireflies on a summer night in upstate New York when I was a kid....."All Because of You" just plain rocked with Bono playing tamborine.....and "Running to Stand Still" from the Joshua Tree was fresh and it seemed amazing that the whole crowd, with no prompting from Bono, knew all the "La da da da dee day's" from a non-hit song recorded 18 years ago.
Though perhaps not my favorite U2 performace it will go down as one of the most memorable, as my date (yes, that would be the wife) took a muscle relaxant before the show for back tension and was absolutley, positively GONE! She sat through the whole thing as the whole arena stood and one time when I was sitting down with her I could feel her fall asleep on my shoulder....we were laughing about it on the way out and E said "good thing this wasn't our first date - don't think I'd get another."