Friday 15 May 2015

First.

The sea knows where are the rocks
And drowning is no sin
You know where my heart is
The same place that yours has been
We know that we fear to win
And so we end before we begin
Before we begin
DUDE.

Hands down easily the best show I've ever seen. The band brought all the class. The sound was great, the crowd was nice, the merch was fast, the projection screen/concept (innocence and experience tour so the stage was an i and an e connected by a catwalk) was original and well-executed and the band was..well,

They were U2.

They sounded precisely like their albums. No lie. I was stunned at the quality of the show. They brought humor, politics and raw given talent. They brought it all.

I cried like a fucking baby during Pride. I got three songs off my list (Pride, Vertigo and City of Blinding Light) plus a little bonus because at the end of The Miracle of Joey Ramone, Bono took his first little walk out into the crowd singing Radio, radio, radio from the end of Promenade and I lost my shit.

Every Breaking Wave and Raised by Wolves are now both easy favorites.

Edge fell off the stage at the end. I didn't see it until I read about it later and watched the video. He's okay. Sucks to be scratched up for tonight's show. Makes me remember how fragile these guys are and how ambitious to embark on a huge tour knowing that things happen, people get injured or sick. Cancelling is expensive and trepidatious.

But yeah. That was a life-altering show and I'm grateful for having gone. Here are the requisite pics from our once-thought-to-be-terrible seats which turned out to be the best view in the house. I never sat down once but still had to go up on tip-toes to see over arms and heads.

(The pictures are watermarked because the internet is a terrible place and these are my memories but enjoy them in all their fully-compressed Blogger quality nonetheless.)



For those who are not U2 fans and come for the drama, there was none. Both Caleb and Lochlan were on their best behavior. Lochlan had an absolute blast and Caleb even let his hair down for a couple of hours, drinking beer and grinning his face off. He may have danced. I'll never tell.

Okay, he totally fucking danced.