Under A White and Red Sky: U2 Tour Reaches New Heights In Poland

If there’s one thing that the global village has done for live music, it’s allowed fans to mobilize – and motivate – in ways that were simply not possible in prior eras.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than on U2′s 360 Degrees tour, where the audience has begun to take advantage of the band’s open stage setup in increasingly imaginative ways.

Following the white flags flashmob staged by concertgoers in Sweden last week, the audience at Slaski Stadium in Chorzow, Poland, put together this amazing spectacle for Thursday night’s show:

The surprisingly effective alchemy of the U2 army has been spurred on largely by country-based fansites, and seems to have inspired a “can you top this” game of crowd participation spreading from gig to gig.  Now, with word that Croatian fans are planning to greet the band by constructing an Irish flag made entirely of balloons, there’s no telling what manner of bizarre and beautiful stadium-scale stunts we’ll be seeing at future shows.  Somewhere, conceptual artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude must be smiling.

The moment in Chorzow added a hard-to-beat poignancy to “New Year’s Day”, a song written specifically about the country’s groundbreaking Solidarity movement founded in the early 1980′s.  It also helped add an air of exceptional spirit and intimacy to a gig that would feature an early birthday toast for The Edge, and would climax with a moving rendition of “One”, where a clearly emotional Bono peered out over the milky way of cell phone lights and proclaimed it “a night never, ever to be forgotten”.

The gig comes on the heels of an announcement from Billboard.com that the first thirteen shows of the tour have grossed more than $100 million, with $28.8 mill. alone generated by the recent shows in Dublin.  Such numbers are sure to alleviate any headaches that may have been generated by the crowds, criticisms, weather and other challenges of this first leg of the tour.

At the very least, the numbers – and the success of the show in Chorzow – prove that if U2′s message is too loud for some, the message of solidarity they’re getting back from fans is even louder.

All photos by Matthias Muehlbradt, U2gigs.com.  Setlist and video links also courtesy U2gigs.com.

Setlist – Slaski Stadium, Chorzow, Poland, 8/6/09:

1. Breathe
2. No Line On The Horizon
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Beautiful Day / Mazurek Dabrowskiego (snippet) / Blackbird (snippet)
6. Elevation
7. New Year’s Day
8. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / Stand By Me (snippet)
9. Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
10. Happy Birthday
11. Unknown Caller
12. The Unforgettable Fire
13. City Of Blinding Lights / Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (snippet)
14. Birthday (snippet) / Vertigo
15. I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight / Two Tribes (snippet)
16. Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rock The Casbah (snippet)
17. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
18. MLK
19. Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone (snippet)
20. Where The Streets Have No Name / The Whole Of The Moon (snippet)
21. One

encore(s):

22. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
23. With Or Without You
24. Moment of Surrender