Up Against The Wall: U2’s Berlin Set Sparks Criticism
November 9, 2009
Given U2’s connection to Berlin with the Achtung Baby album, given U2’s history having “been around” when the Wall fell, given the historical moment that just transpired and U2’s desire to transport fans to a better place via music, it makes complete sense that the band would be invited to mark the anniversary with a free concert. All that said, most of the reports, like the one that follows, focused on allegations concerning the temporary fence that kept some fans from seeing the show.
360 Degrees of Love: Reflections On The First North American Leg of U2’s World Tour
October 31, 2009
The mathematical idea of 360 degrees descends from ancient Babylon and has contemporary correlation in everything from video game systems to snowboarding. Increasingly in common usage, the “360 degree” concept represents a comprehensive and enlightened take on whatever is at hand, as in “360 degrees of knowledge.”
Few bands have had the volumes of cash or cache of vision to attempt something as ambitious as a massive stadium rock show, and in the months that U2’s 360 tour has been jetting and trucking its way around Europe and North America, critics and fans have attempted to analyze every aspect of the endeavor: musically and morally, environmentally and economically.
U2 360 Tour Continues into 2010, North American Dates Announced
October 26, 2009
As predicted by various speculators, U2 announced its 2010 United States tour dates today, hot on the heels of its live global webcast on YouTube. Having seen this show live on four different dates in three different venues, I can testify that, despite whatever detractors might say, the webcast worked on multiple levels to extend the communal stadium experience worldwide to create an instantaneous global connection and cohesion.
For many fans who have already seen the tour, yesterday’s webcast and today’s announcement only further excited and enticed, prompting us to begin making summer travel arrangements to coincide with the next legs of the tour. –Andrew William Smith, Editor
As Seen on U2ube: Rosebowl Webcast This Sunday!
October 22, 2009
More than 96,000 fans will see U2 perform their penultimate gig of 2009 on Sunday – a lot more. The group’s decision to webcast their show at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California for free and in full via the video-sharing website YouTube was announced, of course in a video blog. It means that the site’s millions of users in selected countries – including the USA, the UK, Ireland (of course), Canada, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and beyond – will all be able to follow the band’s “360º Tour”.
Few fans are likely to complain that they now have the opportunity to watch a U2 gig for free. It’s worth bearing in mind, however, that this giveaway is also a giant advert: it’s partly taking place because the band wants to sell more tickets to next year’s live shows and more copies of their latest album, No Line on the Horizon. –Matt Warman
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/6409470/Log-On-Watch-This-U2-Live.html
Moonlight, Traffic, & Tears in North Carolina
October 6, 2009
For the first time, U2 played a show in Raleigh, North Carolina. By emoting a “Y’all” early in the show, Bono made sure we knew that he knew he was in the south. Many times during this transcendent show held in North Carolina State’s Carter Finley Stadium, Bono provided props to the particulars of people and place
With a friend who had not seen the band since 1987, we never saw our upper tier seats, but instead found ourselves in the endzone, behind the soundstage, behind the handicapped seating, in front of the NC State Football headquarters. This space, wide and open to the sky, provided a perfect dancefloor and became the poor man’s GA. Occasionally, intoxicated nicotine fienders would find themselves moving with us to the beat.
On one of the tour’s few Saturday shows, on an early October full-moon night, with the stop and go traffic snarls now behind for most of us, the band and crowd instantly connected with the revised and funky setlist. Especially this particular Saturday, “Mysterious Ways” seemed magically matched for the levity of a tour so wired for celestial purposes. Invoking the touching, healing, kneeling nature of the feminine and the divine, Bono’s starry voice soared with all the grooves the other guys gave us.
With the line “the traffic is stuck, we’re not moving anywhere,” Bono was able to make note of the standstill so many suffered through—and sadly, this kept some fans away. Rather than the “Blackbird” snippet so often found in “Beautiful Day,” Bono honored the bright night with some sweet slices from Paul McCartney’s “C Moon,” where the celestial icon is inclusively “she,” “me,” and “we.” The full moon and all its many meanings watched over the show. Such lunar literacy in love appropriately mirrored the discussions at the U2 conference in Durham this weekend where we relished emphasizing the connections between the social, spiritual, and sexual in all of U2’s work.
Being at the conference all day certainly contributed to my anticipation and appreciation of the night. The tangible sense of unity fostered by enlightened fan conversation bled easily into our communal ride to the show on a charted eco-bus. (Our driver’s ability to find an alternate route meant that we did not miss all of Muse.) Bono mentioned the conference from the stage, calling us a “confab,” and the folks over at U2.com offered this shoutout: “Special mention to the delegates from the U2 Academic Conference which is taking place in town this weekend – and particularly to Agnes Nyamayarwo, Ugandan anti-AIDS activist and long-time collaborator with Bono, who is celebrating her birthday.”
Other fansites have noted the strong preference for All That You Can’t Leave Behind in Saturday’s set. Back in 2001, this album was my homecoming to U2, and Saturday marked another homecoming for me with this music, religious in its intensity and its internal iconography, deepening the emotionally soulful comfort this band brings. A setlist surprise, “In A Little While” surpassed my previous experiences of the song thanks to the lyrics: about the night taking a deep breath, because that is what our night did; about coming crawling home, because that is what I have been doing on my spiritual journey, in painful but freeing and authentic ways.
After learning more about “Sunday Bloody Sunday” from Edge’s stories in It Might Get Loud, the song seems to have grown for me again as cracking and charged hymn for peace. Tonight, the expected “Rock the Casbah” snippet crumbled as Bono noticed a fan with a sign requesting “People Get Ready.” First, Bono sang the song that had been a U2 standard cover on the Joshua Tree tour; then, as U2tours.com describes, it gets even better: “Bono takes a fan’s ‘People Get Ready’ sign, starts to sing the song while the band continues playing SBS, then throws his mic into the crowd so the fan can sing more of People Get Ready. The fan nails it and tosses the mic back to Bono.”
I’ve seen a lot of U2 shows between 1984 and 2009, and I cannot count a single one as anything short of excellent. Even great bands have bad nights, but more and more, I’ve learned that the success of a show depends as much on us as on U2. Within a given experience, who you are with and where you sit (or stand and sing), and what you bring of yourself to the night. Among many other things, I also brought a lot singing, dancing, and crying that need to be done.
Based on the delicate nature of what I’d already given to the participants at the conference with my paper the “Meme of Surrender,” emotional vulnerability opened me to visibly express visions. Early in the day, my mom asked me on the phone if this would be the best show ever. When we live in the moment, whether stuck in a moment we can’t get out of or open to a moment of surrender in personal struggles and spiritual matters or just letting the moment let us in the sound, every night can be your best U2 experience ever, as this past Saturday certainly was for me.
Recent Comments