Just a quick report from the road. U2’s U2ie tour rolled through Denver on June 6 and 7, and while already only 10 shows or so in, the performances are really running smooth and energetic, and by U2 standards fairly loose in the performances from the B-stage.

Having seen three U2ie shows so far from three different locations, I can say that for me at least being on the rail next to the B-stage right in front of where the band exits the “divider” is the best seat in the house if you don’t mind not seeing all of the big screen.

I’ve been to nearly 50 U2 shows over the years, and that spot is the closest proximity I’ve ever seen them from, close enough to have conversations with them during the B-stage sets.  You also see little things that you don’t see from the stands, like in Denver where Bono picked up a book copy of Dante’s Inferno and flipped it open and was reading it as he clambered up into the Divider. I think only the closest 20 people or so to that spot saw that sort of thing.

In terms of the musicianship, Larry (who in a shameless brag I’ll admit I got to meet briefly before the show, the last member of the band I’d never met) seems to be enjoying himself – well, at least by Larry standards – and Adam was his usual bemused, baronial self.

Edge seems to not be particularly enjoying himself and was extremely focused on his playing, and Bono seems looser and more spontaneous than usual.

The band is mixing in new or rarely played songs here and there in the set; from Denver the definite high-point to me was two songs in when they played a vibrant version of “Electric Co.” which I hadn’t heard live from them since the 80s.

Bono is also in excellent vocal form right now, even if he doesn’t seem 100% rehabilitated from the bike accident.  If you have any doubts about his vocals, see the video I “shot” for Every Breaking Wave below…

U2 take flight on the premiere nights of the “Innocence And Experience” tour in Vancouver on 2015-05-14 and 2015-05-15 and reinvent the arena rock show in the process.

NOTE:

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This review is essentially just one extended spoiler of the new U2I&E  (or “U2ie”) tour from the first two shows on 2015-05-14 and 05-15 in Vancouver, British Columbia. If you want to be surprised at the show, read at your own risk.

This is fan’s review from what theoretically are the best (RED zone front row, first night) and worst (first section behind the band, second night) seats in the house.

 U2 “first nights” are like a first kiss – full of hope and expectation, but usually a little uncertain, hesitant and sloppy. The band really seemed on their game for these two shows though; it was clear that they were on their game.

 Yes, there was the glitch at the every end of the first show where The Edge fell off the stage, err, “downloaded himself into the audience without permission”, as Bono clarified at the second show, but other than a couple of slow transitions between set pieces, it was a powerful, energetic show that went off in mid-tour form.

But yes, because it’s the thing everyone was talking about, here’s the infamous opening night moment:

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The months (heck, years) leading up to U2’s new U2ie tour have been difficult for U2. Several stop/starts during the recording process with multiple collaborators and producers were then compounded by the well-intentioned but clumsily executed album release debacle on iTunes. On the subsequent early promotional tour for Songs Of Innocence it appeared that the Grim Reaper had finally come to collect his dues on Bono’s charmed life, from the incident where a cargo door fell off a plane Bono was flying in and then of course Bono’s bicycle accident that required several months of physical therapy and that has left him unable to play guitar.

When combined with the atypically modest chart success of The Miracle (which the band has taken to renaming “Joey Ramone”) and the reworked piano/voice version of “Every Breaking Wave” U2 could have been forgiven for just sitting this round out from a tour standpoint. Given their tour history, they don’t have anything to prove to anyone at this point, and there’s no way that they could get bigger than the U2360 tour, whose stage was literally so big that it poked out of some of the stadiums that hosted the U2360 “claw”.

However, the band really believe in the songs on the new album, and one truism is that U2’s songs come alive in a concert setting in a way that transcends the album versions, so clearly there was going to be a tour up to U2’s expectations, but they kept the stage setup under more secrecy than usual.

The press hype leading up to the U2ie tour was more subdued than any tour in recent memory, and so it was hard to know what to expect from U2ie. The band seemed to be really downplaying the expectations for this tour to focus on the music and less on the extravangant stage show ala U2360.

So if you’re U2, what to do?

Just reinvent the arena concert experience, that’s what.

The secret weapon of U2ie is “The Divider” – a giant double-sided video wall that runs the entire arena from the main stage set at one end of the arena to the satellite B-stage. At first it just looks like any video wall, but then as you look closer you can see that there’s a catwalk-width corridor running the entire length, and then look even more closely and you can see that the walls are slightly see-through, have ladders on either end and trapdoors underneath for reasons that only become obvious later.

More than a gimmick, the Divider is an integral part of the show. During the show, there are times where it is used for “just” projected images, but there are other times where the images interact with the band members who periodically climb inside the Divider and play from the inside in what must seem like a cage. You can see them pretty clearly inside the Divider, who knows what they can see. More on all this below in the song-by-song discussion.

Much has been made of the sound mix at U2ie, and the hype is justified. The sound at U2 shows has been exceptional starting with ZooTV back in the early 90’s, but they’ve definitely gone one step closer to perfect arena sound with the U2ie setup.

Whether it’s because they run some of the speakers down the length of the main stage, or whether they are doing electronic sequencing and processing, the sound is extremely well balanced throughout the arena. The sound level and mix seemed the same to me from the front row in the RED zone to the stands behind the band.

The volume is never too high or too low and the equalization between the four main band performances (as well as the sweetening magic for the additional arena sound like the Lykke Li background vocals on The Troubles and the sequencer on Bad) is near perfection. I see a lot of shows by a lot of bands and I think that the U2ie setup is the new canonical standard for arena sound.

One last point – having a satellite B-stage is nothing new, but bands typically don’t make good use of the space between. Even U2’s previous runway “heart” stages weren’t really used to full effect other than occasional Bono-forays out to sing from the tip, or the nutty U2360 performances of “I Know I’ll Go Crazy”. Here there were set pieces where the band was strung out evenly spaced down the runway stage, and pieces where band members would prowl the runway while another member was inside the Divider. This was used to best effect on Cedarwood Road and Until The End Of The World (see more below).

Overall impressions:

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Overall the band was in superb, mid-tour form. Bono’s voice sounded as good as ever, and he still goes for it to the end of his range as much as ever. I didn’t notice any lingering effects from his prolonged rehab after the bicycle accident, and if he didn’t run around the stage like a maniac like at times on even the U2360 that can be forgiven at this stage of their career.

Edge, Adam and Larry were also in mid-tour form, with Edge as usual being a wizard in the sounds being coaxed out of his kit, and creating an orchestra’s worth of volume as always. Adam was his usual comfortable and bemused self as he prowled his end of the stage and Larry was workmanlike and intense as always, possibly heightened by the loss of his 92-year old father earlier in the week.

All four members appeared to enjoy best playing the new songs from SOI with nine of the twelve tracks (if you include “Invisible”) showing up over the two nights (seven of which were played both nights and which were the lynchpins of the show).

One note: early on U2 had intimated that on this tour where they’re typically playing multiple nights at the same venues that the second nights would have radically different setlists than the first nights. Rumor is that they had practiced sixty songs for the approximately twenty-five that they pick nightly. And while to be fair the six songs they only played on night two is more than they typically mix in from show to show; still don’t expect to see a radically different show on nights 2 and beyond.

The visuals they have mapped to some of the songs are ones that they’ll want to use every show and the way that some of the songs are specifically sequenced for effect tells me that the shuffling of songs will primarily come at three points – at the start before the visuals kick in, at the B-stage mid-set, and at the end of the show and encore. These are the times where the band is “naked” without the Divider visuals and so this gives them a bit more flexibility.

For the fans that were expecting the “first night” shows to be the main experience and the “second night” shows to have a deeper-cut playlist, I’m not sure that it will play out that way. I think the mix of songs will be consistent at multi-night venues with typically a surprise or two each night.

Song wise, with them believing so much in the SOI songs, something has to go in the setlist and so several past favorites have been retired, at least as songs that get played every night: no New Year’s Day, In God’s Country, All I Want Is You, The Fly, no One on first night (more below on this below), no Elevation or Walk On, and nothing from Pop or No Line On The Horizon.

On the down side it feels like something is missing to not have NYD, Elevation, Walk On or One; on the other hand I admire that the band has so much faith in the new songs. If previous U2 tours are any indication, I’d expect that over the course of the tour they’ll cull a couple of the SOI songs as they discover which ones work best in the U2ie context.

One other point – on both nights Bono kept the political and humanitarian speechifying to a minimum. I never minded that and I hope that he’s not cutting back on his ideals because of pressure from the folks who give him so much trouble about his “boring preachy part”.

Here’s a quick song-by-song impression (forgive the spoilers):

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SET 1

Pre-show:

Interesting pre-show warmup music which seemed to be same both nights, pretty much post-punk and new-wave songs that were all (or pretty much all) from 1980. Clearly they were trying to lock in a groove from when they were first starting out, even if there were some artists that were probably favorites of theirs at the time (Patty Smith, The Clash, Simple Minds) and some that would have been at best guilty pleasures (A Flock Of Seagulls, Plastic Bertrand (!)).

There were several false alarms where the crowd thought that the show was eminent, but be listening for the Ramones’ “Baby I Love You” and “Beat On The Brat” which the band lists on their set-list call sheet as part of the set (see at bottom of this post)

“Beat On The Brat” is the cue that the show is starting, with what sounds like a bit of sweetening from Edge’s guitar. From behind the stage you could see the band enter the arena and walk under the stage during “Beat On The Brat” and then take the stage.

1) The Miracle (Joey Ramone)

Both night’s began with rousing renditions of Joey Ramone (as the band calls the song on the setlist) that get the night off to a festive start from the main stage that the band calls the “Square Stage”. For the first four songs they don’t use visuals from the Divider, the only visual is the single lightbulb spotlight about the stage and for the folks lucky enough to be in the front of the GA and RED sections it’s like being transported back to 1980 and seeing them in a club. The audience clearly knows the song by heart already and was in full throat for the “Wo-o-o-o” choruses. Not my favorite song from the album but a perfect beginning to the show, announcing that U2 are back and ready to go.

2) Out Of Control

Night 1 went straight into “Out Of Control” with a snipped of “Do You Remember Rock and Roll” prefaced with the same “…this is our first single” patter they’ve used on previous tours. I’m always surprised by how much the audience seems to know this song.

3) Vertigo

Out Of Control went straight into Vertigo with no over-the-top visuals, just the band playing straight-ahead.

4) I Will Follow

Back to 1980 with I Will Follow which had the whole stadium bouncing. First high point of the night.

Sidebar:

On Night 2 they skipped Out Of Control and went straight from Joey Ramone to Vertigo, but then added in a nice version of California (There Is No End) for song 3 preceding I Will Follow. As much as I like Out Of Control, I think that the night two order worked better.

5) Iris (Hold Me Close)

After the first bang-bang four songs, Bono slows down the tempo and has a nice heartfelt interlude about his mother Iris, mentioning something along the lines about not wanting to live in the past but needing to remember it. This is was the first time that they started using the catwalk stage and the first time they started using the Divider for more than band performance shots, with what appeared to be home-video footage of Bono’s mother and a very young Bono. Bono’s vocals were heart-felt and vulnerable and you could tell that no matter what the haters think the new SOI material really does matter to him.  Listen for the snippet from “Mofo” during Iris, a song that couldn’t be more different musically but does link lyrically.

6) Cedarwood Road

Here’s where U2ie starts to get really interesting. At the conclusion of Iris, a ladder descends from the Divider from the square stage and Bono invites the crowd to take a walk with him along the Cedarwood Road of his youth as he climbs the ladder and goes inside the Divider as the crowd anticipation builds.

As the song begins you don’t see Bono making his way down to the B-side of the Divider but then as the video wall lights up you see an animated side-scrolling movie evoking the Cedarwood Road of their youth as they remember it. As Bono slowly walks down the inside of the Divider, the bright animation scrolls past and because you can see him inside it appears that he’s walking down the road, down to the graffiti of the time and the blossoms falling off the trees. It’s a very simple but powerful effect. It’s also the first time in the show where you see band members simultaneously on the stage beneath the Divider and in it, with Edge on the main stage immediately below Bono while Bono is inside the Divider. It’s as if Edge is providing a musical narration of the road while Bono walks down it.

7) Song For Someone

As Cedarwood Road ends the video wall animation moves to the inside of a teenager’s bedroom with a young Bono (with the animation of the teenage Bono purportedly played by his real-life son) sitting in his bedroom beneath Kraftwerk and Clash posters.

As the intro starts Bono talks a bit about songwriting as a youth and trying to find the way to describe first experiences like first love, first kiss, etc., and then gave a shout-out to his wife Ali. This was really a surprisingly poignant way to set up the song and fit the mood, the lyrics, the vocals and the music perfectly. Very impressive, and the first time that Bono is singing by himself from the “round stage” at the far end of the arena from the rest of the band who stay on the square stage, evoking both physical distance and the distance of memory.

8) Sunday Bloody Sunday (acoustic)

After Song For Someone the rest of the band all moved as a group down the runway stage and spread themselves out equally across the length of the arena, Larry carrying a lap-snare and Edge his acoustic. They they laid out a surprisingly elegiac, funereal acoustic version of Sunday Bloody Sunday, played straightforward and almost hymn-like. From the floor you can’t really tell this but they light show paints an Irish flag on the runway.

At the end, the video screen showed the victims as if to bring the crowd back to the moment of the attack to appreciate why this had such an effect on the nascent U2, along with a Bono quick patter celebrating Ireland’s current relative peace, saying that “because no-one won, we all won”.

9) Raised By Wolves

SBS ends with a montage of sounds, news overdubs, sirens and crashes and with Larry doing slow snare hits as if intoning funeral bells, and then they go straight into a thundering, pounding version of Raised By Wolves with what sounded like a Psalm 23 snippet. A highlight of the album and a powerful moment in the show.

10) Until The End Of The World

This was my favorite example of how they combine the visual wall with band members inside it. Edge is inside the Divider playing the classic riffs of UTEOTW with Bono out on the B-stage in full Mephistopheles mode, and as the temptation lyrics unfold Bono is projected onto the video wall in full size “Attack of the 50-foot Bono” mode and the stage crew projects Bono is if he is playing with life-size Edge almost as a prop in his hand, poking, teasing and waving at him in a playful yet menacing way.

I’ve always thought the bullfight-style interaction between Edge/Bono was a highlight of previous tours; yet there is something that’s even more powerful about God-size Bono playing with Edge here that is even more evocative of the lyrics.

The direct interaction between Bono and Edge gives way as Bono waves his hands at the “waves of regret” portion and the remainder of the song puts Technicolor animation over the wall as Edge wails away at the guitar like a caged animal, a man possessed. The crescendo builds up to the point where the single lightbulb from the main stage shows up on the video wall and shatters, denoting loss of innocence.

I don’t if it’s because Edge is essentially trapped in a cage inside the Divider or whether he’s just not distracted by the crowd, but when he’s inside the Divider he was playing some of the most snarling, vicious guitar that I’ve ever heard from him.

Overall, an unforgettable setpiece that really puts the new setup to best effect, and brings the first set to a rapturous and breathless end, and leaves the crowd needing a respite.

Sidenote 1: At the end during the “la-la-la-la’s” the band drops buckets of pages from the rafters ala earlier tours, only this time the pages (at least the page I grabbed) were bible pages; I got Psalm 43. Between this and the giant Bono, I know that my Bono-hating friends would just be cringing and rolling their eyes. There comes a point where you either buy Bono’s schtick or you don’t. To a true believer it’s close to the Holy Spirit moving on a crowd; if you’re a skeptic every terrible thing you’ve ever said about U2 has just been evoked.   Either way, you have to admire a band that wears its heart and soul on its sleeve and brings out passion, because isn’t the evocation of emotion the central point of music in the first place?

Sidenote 2: For night 2, I was basically edge-on (no pun intended) to see the catwalk inside the Divider but couldn’t see the main screen. This was the first time that I really saw a limitation in not being able to see the main Divider. While they have set up a small screen (roughly the size of one of the ones used on U2360) they use it mostly for b&w band shots and some of the setpieces. During UTEOTW because they only had the Bono performance view, so while most of the audience was seeing Giant Bono holding Edge in his hand all you could see from the edge of the wall was him waving his hands like a hula dancer and poking his hands into space for no apparent reason. This was one of the few times where the show was significantly degraded by being behind the band.

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INTERMISSION

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The “intermission” runs about 4-5 minutes and consists of a montage of late 1970’s talk-show interviews and performances with punk and post-punk performers and bands. While I loved seeing the images and footage, this section didn’t really come off as strong as I think the band had hoped, and the crowd seemed disinterested on both nights. I’d expect that this section will be revamped along the way.

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SECOND SET

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11) Invisible

Somehow the band all get inside the Divider undetected and the second set begins with the video wall a solid lemon yellow as Invisible begins to play. The conceit here is that in rhythm with the music and performance tiny portions of the yellow screen go clear so that you can see little bits and pieces of the band as they play, eventually leading up to the end where the screen is completely clear and you see the band through the walls of the screen for the end of the song. A simple but entertaining idea that seems sort of like something that Kraftwerk would have done if they’d had the technology.

12) Even Better Than The Real Thing

Invisible segues into a rollicking, pounding version of EBTTRT with bright visuals on the screen and the band making their way out of the Divider and down to the round stage. They were really cooking towards the rousing end of the song.

13) Mysterious Ways

Now ensconced on the round stage and the runway on that end of the arena, it was time for a faithful if predictable version of Mysterious Ways that really sounded terrific (with a snipped of “Burning Down The House” thrown in).

Night 2 had a nice surprise where a male audience member was brought up to sing with Bono. I read in a local Vancouver newspaper that the man was a video filmmaker making a movie about confronting fear and one of his bucket-list items was to sing with U2. Whether that was him or not, there was one of those classic U2 moments on night 2 where the man and Bono were on the runway and the man spontaneously picked up Bono almost like a baby and carried him back to the round stage. Bono didn’t break and kept singing throughout in a moment that had the sold-out crowd laughing.

14/15) Night 1: Desire/The Sweetest Thing; Night 2: Angel Of Harlem/When Love Comes To Town

This looks to be the part of the show where U2 will shake up the setlist most on this tour. Visually the cameras are just doing performance shots of the band so they’ll be able to mix in most anything they feel like playing.

On Night 1 it was a straightforward version of Desire followed by a nice version of The Sweetest Thing with Bono on piano (he may not be able to play guitar anymore but apparently he can still play piano). Sweetest Thing sent a real murmur through the crowd because it’s rarely played; I believe it’s the first time that it had been played in concert since midway on the Elevation tour.

On Night 1, BB King had passed that day but I don’t remember any mention of it from the band. However, on Night 2 Bono did pay a quick elegy to Mr. King and then they launched into a blistering version of When Love Comes To Town that came off so well that it’s hard to believe that they hadn’t played it in concert since 1993.

Anyone who’s gone to a concert in the last few years knows that one of the most annoying trends in concerts is the ubiquitous presence of people holding up their cell-phones to catch snapshots and videos. (Confession: I do the same thing from time to time, as in some of the videos here in this blog). Hypocrisy, thy name is “self”.

For the second song on both nights in this slot, U2 decided that rather than curtail the cellphones they’d take advantage. On both nights they pulled an attractive young woman from the audience (some things never change at a U2 concert) and had her be a videographer using her cell phone, with the video outputs from the cellphones tied directly to the house video so that while they had the phone in video mode what they were seeing was being projected to the entire house. It’s a neat idea of reaching out to the crowd, but the bandwidth delay of the video capture to the house video meant that the video was out of sync with the music. I wouldn’t mind if they lost that part.

Here’s Sweetest Thing from Day 1 and When Love Comes To Town from Day 2:

16) Every Breaking Wave

At this point, Larry and Adam walk back down the runway to the square stage while Bono and Edge stay at the round stage with Edge at piano, and then they launch into the passionate and heartbreaking acoustic version of Every Breaking Wave that they’ve been playing since last fall during the SOI promotional TV performances.

This to me is the best thing on SOI and hearing Bono’s voice soar in person with the strength and power of his vocals reminds you that no matter what you think of Bono he’s one of the best rock vocalists ever. The crowd was singing along louder to this song than any other song of the night as a giant (if mostly off-key!) chorus backing him up. Within seconds of the piano starting on both nights, the arena was awash in cell-phone flashlights, the Century 21 version of lighters aloft. A real high point both nights.

17) Bullet The Blue Sky

Next up was the blistering, cacophonous and biting return of Bullet The Blue Sky to the setlist. The band played with the intensity of the ZooTV tour here while the “fighter planes” were being replaced here with the “private planes” Bono referenced, substituting bankers and the ultra-rich for the American militarism and colonialism that Bono used to decry.

The spoken word portion of Bullet now ties to a story Bono tells of landing in a private plane in Davos Switzerland as part of an economic conference and seeing a 19-year old boy reminding him of himself at that age, and seeing himself through the eyes of that boy telling that he has too much money.

Bono then launched on both nights into an extended patter like a Penecostal preacher imploring unity and togetherness. Edge seemed delighted to have Bullet back in the setlist, and he gave the solo a real working over while Bono next to him assumed the position of airplane, arms outstretched like airplane wings.

To the Bono-haters, I’ll only say that I’ll allow that many of Bono’s perceived flaws and excesses are true but only if you’ll admit that at least most of the positive things people say about him as a performer and person are also true.

You know who you are.

18) Pride (with Hands That Built America intro)

The emotional wave in the crowd from Bullet was extended in the next piece as Bono sang an extended snippet of Hands That Built America along with a callback to the recent racial violence in Ferguson, MO with a “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” reference before starting a monologue about America as an idea more than a physical place. This section got polite applause from the Canadian audience but will probably resonate more later in on the US legs of the tour.

“Hands” segued into a workmanlike and serviceable version of Pride on both nights.

19) The Troubles / Beautiful Day

Here’s another place where the set differed from Day 1 to Day 2. On Day 1 at the end of Pride the stagehands set up a cocktail kit drum set for Larry at the front of stage left (audience right) complete with tilted bass drum, and with Bono still across the arena at the round stage Larry started into The Troubles on the drums with an offstage keyboard. It was a slow, patient version of The Troubles that I thought was quite powerful with interesting full-screen black and white headshots of Lykke Li while Bono sang stationary at the standup mike.

The tables had turned and now it was Bono who was small and fragile with Li the towering presence. I thought it worked really well especially at the “God knows it’s not easy…” bridge but they took it out of the show for the second show. Hopefully they’ll keep it in the show and let it breathe because it could turn out to be a real grower over the life of the tour, especially with the Edge solo at the end that is vaguely reminiscent of the Love Is Blindness solo.

In its place on Day 2, substituted a crowd-pleasing version of Beautiful Day (which shows up later on Day 1).

20) With Or Without You

Both days ended the second set with a slightly slowed-down but still-intense version of With Or Without You as mirrorballs descended from the Divider. The Day 2 version was especially powerful at the end and my attention got drawn again to Larry’s drumming; steady, powerful, and metronomic but evocative at the same time. It’s interesting to hear what a great drummer can do with a rocksteady 4/4 beat.

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ENCORE

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21) City Of Blinding Lights / Miracle Drug

The encore begins with scenes of Earth as seen by the International Space Station over a one-minute passage from astrophysicist Stephen Hawking including the phrases “…we are one” which led most of the crowd to think it was the intro to “One”, as the vertical/horizontal fluorescent-tube lightbars, which are the iconic press images of U2ie, descended into place.

Surprisingly, though next up it wasn’t “One” – in fact on Day 1 One wasn’t played at all which was the first time at an official full-length show they’d skipped One since January 1990.

Instead on Day 1 it was a ringing version of City Of Blinding Lights where the crowd joined in as always on the “Oh…you…look…so…beautiful…tonight” as the house lights swirled.

Bono pulled up a young boy out of the audience and placed him on the runway next to one of the vertical lightbars and then seemingly forgot about him for quite some time. The boy was roughly 5 years older than the boy(s) who got pulled out of the crowd for COBL on U2360, which might me a coincidence or deliberate.

On Day 2 it was a real surprise as they started the encore with a note-perfect performance of Miracle Drug along with a short Bono-speech on how we hope to see the scourge of HIV/AIDS eliminated in our lifetime. This was the first time that Miracle Drug had been played since the Vertigo tour and it sounded great. During the extended guitar break Bono worked his way down the runway down the row of lightbars in what was a very powerful vocal performance.

Here’s Day 1 City Of Blinding Lights and Day 2 Miracle Drug:

22) Beautiful Day / Bad

On Day1, COBL was followed up with a rousing version of Beautiful Day complete with an “I Remember You” snippet with Bono starting at the square stage and then working his way down the runway to the round stage.

On Day 2, with Bono already at the round stage the familiar sequencer strains of “Bad” started up at this point and a lot of the older fans lost it, as “Bad” has a special place in the hearts of long-time fans. I admit I’m one of them; my perfect U2 concert would consist of a two-hour version of Bad.   Here Bono, alone on the round stage under a single spotlight stood across the arena facing the band and it was a fantastic vocal performance from him, including a quick callout to Moment of Surrender that I’d never connected until that point.

It was a typically outstanding vocal performance, and one of the few times where being right behind the band and able to look down the runway was the best seat in the house, with Bad serving as a journey to Heaven down the lighted runway.

I love the fact that they only play “Bad” about 10% of the time in concert, so it’s always a great surprise when it shows up.

23) Mother And Child Reunion / Where The Streets Have No Name

Probably the biggest surprise on both nights was the extended acoustic snippet of Paul Simon’s Mother And Child Reunion which served as the intro to Where The Streets Have No Name. Streets sounded as good as ever and brought the crowd to a rapturous climax. It’s no surprise that this song has endured in the setlist, it’s one of the most dependable crowd-pleasers from any rock band in rock history and just looking at the sea of raised hands is as close to a church experience that can be had in a secular setting. Both nights included a snippet of California (There Is No End…)

24) I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / One

After the crowd was happily exhausted after pogoing on Streets, for the final song they segued surprisingly into chart hits for their final song. On Day 1 it was the now-infamous version of Still Haven’t Found where Edge fell off stage and on Day 2 it was the return of One. One sounded exactly the same as always even though Bono no longer was using his beloved Gretsch Green Falcon guitar.

. 🙂

And as the band exited the arena to the final strains the house lights came up and the show was over. Until the next time.

I’ve seen U2 now close to 50 times total over their career. It’s too soon to think right now where the U2ie shows rank in their overall portfolio, but it’s amazing to see a band 35 years into their career that are still at the height of their careers and still pushing themselves lyrically, musically, visually and in performance. As long as the crowd can tell that it’s not BS to the band, they’ll continue to be worth supporting and I at least for one… will follow.

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NOTES FOR U2ie CONCERT GOERS

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Just a couple of quick notes for U2ie concert-goers…

GA Section

Starting with Elevation, many of the youngest and most ardent (often not the same) U2 fans have realized that the GA tickets are the way to go. Not only are they cheaper but they bring you closer to the band, even if at the expense of not seeing the full visual experience. The true-blood fans are willing to trade immediacy for the visuals.

One thing I noticed this show was that the GA queue seemed to swell earlier in the day than usual, or so it seemed to me. It seems like people have thought based on the last few tours that you have to queue up early to get the best places on the floor.

For U2ie, I think this is less important than on the previous tours, where there was a push to either get inside the “Heart” or to be on the outside first row of the catwalk. The band spend enough time on the runway, inside the Divider and on the round stage that unless you’re looking to get Bono-sweat on you pretty much anywhere in the GA section is going to be a good choice.

In other words, the queue during the day seems to be longer, and earlier in arriving, but less important in the long run than on previous tours.

RED Section

I was in the RED section for Day 1 (first time in the RED zone for me), and my advice to concert-goers is to get RED tickets because you believe in ONE and RED, and not because you’re looking for a “Golden-Circle” experience. The area on the floor for the RED tickets is outside of the GA area extending down to the stage on the far ends, and I didn’t notice the benefits that I’d heard of previously in terms of concessions and merchandise.

Since there are only 100 seats in each of the North and South zones, there is one advantage of having a little more space to stretch out and dance if you’re not obsessed with getting as close to the action as possible.

In terms of one of the carrots that they throw out for RED Zone (the backstage tour) what they do is draw raffle-style tickets out of a bucket where two are labeled “backstage tour”. So, only two out of two-hundred people get the backstage tour, there’s no meet-and-greet and your plus-one doesn’t get to come. Plus you lose your spot in line to get your place on the floor.

I believe in RED as a concept and a product, but I can’t really endorse the extra cost of the ticket other than as a donation to RED, which is a worthy cause.

“North Side” and “South Side”

For both the GA and RED Zone, you get confined to either one side of the Divider or the other. I suppose that it will be different for every arena but at Rogers Arena in Vancouver RED Zone 1 and “North Side” were on Adam’s side, while RED Zone 2 and “South Side” were Edge side.

If you’re particularly interested in being on either Edge’s side or Adams’s side, I’d suggest you sort that out before entering the arena, because they have separate entry lines for north/south side, and it’s hard once you’re in the arena to move between the sides without a bit of ingenuity.

End Zone

As I mentioned above, given that so much of the visuals are driven by the Divider even though they make the effort to have a smaller screen for the folks directly behind the band, you’re definitely not getting the full experience of people down the sides (or even near the round stage). I’d suggest paying a little more and avoiding the spot directly behind the band.

The Merch

People always want to know about the Merch. This time with no opening act all of the merch is U2-related, but it’s pretty subdued this time around (see pic below). There are the usual assortment of T-shirts (running approx. 40-45 $), hats, tote bags and programs, but the big item this go-around seemed to be the hoodies, which came in two styles and ran 90$. I didn’t see some of the other items this time like skull caps and jackets, but the quality seemed pretty good (by concert-gear standards).

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SET LISTS

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Day 1 set list courtesy of setlist.fm

http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/u2/2015/rogers-arena-vancouver-bc-canada-bc879ba.html

Day 2 set list courtesy of atu2.com