U2 Tour Dates - Now Official! — Page 88

Argh, okay, Mabs, #1, if either of you happened to have downloaded Boston II, would you care to send it to me (online)? I followed the YSI link from Interference but everything past Vertigo/Walk This Way is considered an invalid or stale link. This Zip doodad is taking FOREVER too - it probably won't be finished for another 6 hours or so. I've got MSG on .zip but apparently I'm not registered for WinRAR so I'm screwed there too. Care to share, my darlings?

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Tiff, I have MSG I can send you, just PM me your email address if you want me to email it to ya. I haven't downloaded Boston II yet, but I plan on doing so and I'll let you know when I have it!

Well, let me just say this about that and then I'm going directly to bed. Always thought Wild Horses was an okay song. Just okay.

BUT IT WAS SMOKING LIVE TONIGHT.

And Boston rocks. I thought the place was going to collapse.

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Updated On: 5/29/05 at 02:02 AM

Yes, I was there and very much enjoyed the set list. I didn't think I needed to hear "Pride" again, since I've seen them do that live a lot. But it was effective.

Did some digging and noticed that the concert I saw last night came 24 years and one day after the first time I saw U2:

05/27/81 Toad's Place - New Haven, CT: The Ocean, 11 O'clock Tick Tock, I Will Follow, I Fall Down, An Cat Dubh, Into The Heart, Another Time Another Place, The Cry / The Electric Co., Things To Make And Do, Stories For Boys, Boy-Girl, Out Of Control, Twilight, I Will Follow, A Day Without Me, Fire

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It's very weird to say this, but I don't really know how many times I've seen U2.

I saw them every step of the way, from tiny clubs to theaters to arenas. I think the above-referenced Toad's Place show is the one Bono talked about during the rock and roll hall of fame speech about him getting into a fight with The Edge.

I have a very distinct memory of him kicking Larry's ass as they walked off stage before the encore. I also remember talking to my friends about Larry and asking if he was old enough to even be in the club, he looked about 9. What was funny about the first three times I saw them was that the audience was less than half the size of the number of people who were inside the stage elipse on this tour!

The first stop I saw 'em on the October tour, it was in a club that was a converted bowling alley. When a band with a big audience played, they were on the "big stage" and crowd capacity was a couple thousand. When U2 played there, they played the small stage, which maybe accommodated 500-600 people in the audience. My friend Prudence and I were right at the front of the tiny stage. In a typically "spontaneous rock star moment" of Bono's, he leaned over to me and Prudence during "Out of Control" and said, "pull me in!" He was instructing us to make him crowd surf over us.

That's the thing I find endlessly fascinating about U2. How such complete hokum also manages to come across as heartfelt. I'm not a fan of big arena shows, but somehow they manage to make even those feel intimate. I really don't know how they do it.

Also, inevitably, Bono does something so pre-packaged and planned and manipulative that I am SHOCKED that I always find myself weeping at a rock concert. THREE TIMES last night he made me cry. THREE TIMES.

I guess what I love is the total theatricality, in the best sense of the word. It's rock theater on a grand scale, and it works so well that it pulls me in.

I saw them multiple times on the Boy, October, War tours and then I think only once on Unforgettable Fire. As far as I can recall, I was never able to score tickets for any concerts after that, they just suddenly were the new Rolling Stones and tickets vanished within 90 seconds of going on sale.

I was pleased to get tickets for this tour, just by hitting "refresh" a lot on the Ticketmaster site when the third Boston date went on sale. (I have since heard that Ticketmaster now has a time-out thing that kicks you out for hitting "refresh" too many times. To "prevent scalpers.")

I was far from the stage and still sucked in. My friend Eric said, "It's just stupid rock star moves and Bono somehow makes it all work."

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The thing that amazes me is that basically I am so resistant to the huge rock star gestures and trappings and yet I am taken in by the shows (when I get to actually see them). I'm from punk rock! We came along to remind people that rock and roll was for small sweaty clubs and not big hockey rinks and football stadiums.

A friend of mine ran a record store in the early '80s and I remember on the October tour he was chatting with Bono and said, "You guys are getting so big I'm not going to be able to like you anymore." And Bono said, "Why?" And he replied, "It's just going to suck if you start playing arenas," and Bono said, "Oh, we WANT to play arenas." And it was just the fact that they always wanted to do that and clearly were trying to figure out a way to connect on a massive level with the same intimate impact that they had back in the clubs.

And somehow, they figured it out. I'm impressed by the fact that *I* can't figure it out. I don't know what the key is. I just know that they do it effectively.

I think the best things about art is the exploration of contradictions. So much of what Bono does is BS. And. It. Works.

Genius.

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My sister-in-law brought my nephew to his first U2 concert last night in Boston (the third and final show in Boston until the fall). My sister-in law is the biggest U2 fan I know. She has seen every U2 tour in the past 20+ years starting with the Unforgetable Fire tour at the Worcester Centrum in the early 80's. My nephew is 5 years old and is loves U2. He watches the DVD's, listens to the CD's and knows all the words to almost all of their songs (Vertigo and Sunday Bloody Sunday are his favorites). He wore my sister-in-laws Unforgettable Fire tour shirt that she bought over 20 years ago at her first U2 concert to last nights show. She said that several people at the concert wanted him to take the shirt off and buy it from her. Of course she wouldn't part with it.

They both said the Vertigo tour was amazing and my nephew is dying to see them again. He might be in luck because she has tickets for one of the October shows and two of the December shows in Boston. Does anyone know if last night's concert is somewhere online to download?

Sorry for the long post. I just thought you might want to hear that U2 has dedicated fans of all ages!

Lucky kid!
There's a torrent of the show already, you can find it on U2torrents.com. Interference should have it (probably as an mp3 or shn file) in a few days.

Ya know, I lost track of the guy who ran the record store. His coke issues brought about the losing of his business scenario. I THINK another friend ran into him in a San Francisco record store in the '90s, 3000 miles away. I would guess he no longer likes U2.

I hadn't been reading anything about the tour before I saw the show. So I didn't know that they were mostly opening with City of Blinding Lights. But since Love and Peace or Else quickly became my favorite on the new album very quickly, I was psyched to hear those two low notes playing as they walked around the elipse with those bright lights in their hands.

It was a perfect opener. Then of course, the segue into Beautiful Day and I thought the roof of the place was going to blow off.

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My nosebleeds were perfectly fine. And at 50 bucks, it seemed like the bargain of the year!

Having them do Vertigo twice reminded me of that first time I saw them in '81, see the set list above, when they did I Will Follow twice.

I remember thinking back then that they didn't have enough material, but this time, I thought it was funny and audacious. Hell, I woulda liked to hear it a third time instead of "New Years Day," but that's maybe because I saw the War tour at least three times and feel as if I have heard that one too many times!

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I'd actually love to hear a smidgeon of Pop and Zooropa in October. I thought they were great, although I am glad they've left that experimental phase behind. Staring At The Sun isn't the only good song! Tsk, you call yourself a fan.

The Fly, Even Better Than The Real Thing, Stay and One are all from the 90s too, so I wouldn't discount that decade altogether. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, Tiff. Put the Best of 1990-2000 into your player now - it's great stuff! I listen to it regularly.

Oops, my mistake. I tend to skim your posts, inane as they are. Have fun getting a "job", whatever that is.

Updated On: 5/30/05 at 04:56 PM