Nick H. wrote:
So how was it? I heard good things from people who went...
A little impatient are we? Well it's a bit of a story, and I'll probably forget most of it but here it goes:
It was quite an ordeal just to get to the concert. There simply isn't great logistics for getting 65,000 people into a small suburb of Boston. It took us 2.5 hrs to drive 25 miles. We completely missed the opening band, and were worried for a little bit that we might miss the opening of U2. They had a long pause for everybody still stuck in traffic, so we didn't miss anything. I wasn't too disappointed about missing Snow Patrol, but if it had been one of the Muse shows I would have been pissed.
Anyways so after finding our seats, we had about 15 minutes before the show started. I snapped some shots with my crappy cell camera, left my digital in the car.
I also took a few higher rez photos with a friends cam. I'll get them posted after a bit. Visually it was the most stunning stage I've ever seen in my life. The lights, video, effects, everything. Words really can't describe.
They started the concert off with
Breathe, and
No Line on the Horizon. (Full set list
here)Not my most favourite songs, so I snapped a couple of more shots, and adjusted my ear plugs. It was just slightly on the loud side for me, but way to quiet with my -15's in, so I left them out, and my ears adjusted pretty quickly. Pretty much the perfect volume. By the time they were into
Get On Your Boots, the mix was pretty well perfect. My only slight complaint, was that the bass could have kicked a little bit more. I'm going to chalk that up to the fact that it was an outdoor stadium, and we were right behind a delay line, which would have been slightly more top heavy. I'm guessing if we were a little closer, in front of the delay line it would have been perfect. Just could have used a little more thump where we were, certainly not a deal breaker.
Magnificent was... well, magnificent, great intro, and then they went into
Mysterious Ways, also not one of my favourite songs. They had a slower, funkier groove than the standard version which was cool though.
Then
Beautiful Day,
Elevation, and
Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For were all awesome. Great intro and outro on
Beautiful Day, Bono did some great 1/4 tonal stuff. Must have been an influence from making some of the last record in Morocco.
Somewhere around this point the giant video screen separated and stretched downward to be twice as tall. It look to be only about 15-20 above the stage. Very cool. When it stretched there were gaps created between all the sections, which gave all the moving video a stutter effect. The only downside to this was something went wrong, and two sections of the screen went down on our side, so we had maybe 5% of the screen go blank for the rest of the show, right in the middle of the screen.
Very nice acoustic version of
Stuck in A Moment. Just Bono and the Edge on a SJ-200 and singing backup. Really gorgeous. Once the Edge strapped his electric back on though, something went slightly off somewhere, and his guitar jumped at least 6 dB, and stayed that way until the end of the concert! It was very distracting, and at times it even drowned out Bono's voice some. Some songs it was worse than others, but it was too hot for the rest of the night. This also pushed the overall volume up out of my comfort zone, so the plugs went it. The guitar actually sounded quite a bit better with the plugs in, as they deadened the real high piercing guitar tones up around 8k.
They did a "remix" of
I'll Go Crazy If I don't Go Crazy Tonight which I really didn't like. Totally ruined a great song, but it did give Larry a chance to come out into the circle and play a djembe for a bit. All the other songs were great, and some of the visuals and the messages were quite moving, Sunday Bloody Sunday, being played over images from the Muslim world for example. I know, it totally could have the wrong connotation, and been offensive, but it really wasn't. Also had a very moving tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi during
Walk On, and
One.
Then
Streets was on, which is always fantastic. The whole end of the concert was great, very nice lighting, and the Edge's guitar was slightly more manageable.
Getting home was slightly less of a nightmare, due to taking back roads instead of the highway.
Overall U2's portion of the concert was a 9/10 for me. Great visuals, mostly great sound, good energy. Although it would have been nice if they played a few more songs that I would have chosen, but what are you going to do? They played
Stay the next night which really pissed me off! One of my fav's
The biggest disappointment for me was the crowd. I don't know if it's because it was mostly Americans, the fact that the traffic was so bad, or because it was an outdoor stadium. Either way though, they sucked. It didn't feel like they were into it at all, There were people leaving for there cars during a slight break after
Sunday Bloody Sunday. I would guess that at least 5000 people left before the encore, which stunned me. Perhaps this felt worse for me because I saw them on their last tour, and it was a totally different event. The music and visuals were very comparable, but the feeling at the Air Canada Center 5 years ago was nothing compared to Boston this weekend. This was just a good rock show, in Toronto, it was almost a religious experience. The two aren't even comparable in my mind, and I was fairly disappointed because that's what I was going in expecting. I was especially shocked because it was Boston, and there's such a large Irish community there.
Because of this, and with all the parking and driving woes, I would rate the entire event a 7/10, as opposed to their previous show which would have easily been a 12/10. I don't think I'll go to another one of their concerts unless I can get general admission, and get close to the stage. Being that far away with the poor atmosphere, and with such a high cost, I'd just get the DVD next time. If you've never experienced it before, it's still worth it though. The people I went with thought it was awesome.