This just arrived in this morning's e-mail from BPD member
AboutFace:
The Irish rockers kicked off their two-hour set with Breathe, from their latest album, No Line on the Horizon.
They had a 150-foot-tall, mammoth spaceship-like stage and a 54-ton state-of-the-art cylindrical video screen that eventually came apart and formed a long cone around the band later in the show during The Unforgettable Fire and City of Blinding Lights.
The group played up the futuristic bent blasting David Bowie's Space Oddity before they came out on stage, and later connected with an astronaut at the international space station in a pre-taped segment during the Passengers rarity Your Blue Room.
There was also a circular catwalk around the perimenter of the band and the musicians took a moving bridge across to get closer to the audience with Bono doing a major lap during Until the End of the World. (Not like he usually does during Where the Streets Have No Name, which was still a standout song last night.)
Having launched the 360 Degree Tour on June 30 in Barcelona, the biggest rock show of the year is, by now, a well-oiled machine even if it did take about a half-hour into the set to really ignite the crowd.
After four songs from No Line on the Horizon, which hasn't produced any real significant hits, they finally offered up the first crowdpleaser of the night, Beautiful Day and finished the song off with a snippet of Costello's Alison.
Bono also played with a lit-up, oversized dangling microphone during the second encore songs, Ultra Violet (Light My Way) and With Or Without You, while wearing a lit up jacket.
Here¹s the U2 setlist:
Breathe
No Line on the Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Beautiful Day (with snippet of Elvis Costello's Alison)
Still Haven't Found What I¹m Looking For/Stand By Me
Elevation
Your Blue Room
Unknown Caller
Until The End Of The World
Stay (Faraway So Close)
The Unforgettable Fire
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo (with snippet of Elvis Costello's Pump it Up)
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight (remix)
Sunday Bloody Sunday/Oliver's Army
MLK
Walk On
One (with Amazing Grace)
Where The Streets Have No Name
ENCORE
Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender
I've seen the band a few times before. I'm sure that from the front, this wasn't their best outing. But this was my first time in the back, and from the back U2 ruled!!
"We got old songs, we got new songs, we got songs we can barely play, we got that spaceship," Bono confided to me backstage. Other great backstage stuff included Bono's "Without Edge none of us would be here. But in our defense, without us, Edge would still be in his bedroom twiddling knobs." The line of the night, however, belonged to bassist Adam Clayton: "The effortlessly stylish, citizen of the world, and sexual predator, the only man in U2 who uses face cream."
LOL
Thanks ever so much BPD.
Glad we could make it happen for ya.
Join now and let us make it happen for you too (no pun intended)
