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.

Having seen the tour in Chicago twice, Raleigh, and Atlanta, I feel compelled to make my final review a reflection on the band’s specific projection of pop star practice in the early 21^st century, on the entirely pretentious project of the stadium rock spectacle in 2009.

Having missed the Pop tour due to poverty, grad school, and being a new parent at the time, this is my first proper U2 stadium tour, and I look back at its first North American shows with gratitude because it did not succumb to 360 degrees of chaos, catastrophe, or cliché. That said, I can leave the 360 degrees of deafening critique to other critics and offer instead my 360 degrees of fan devotion.

With this tour, we got 360 degrees of culmination. While not a single inside source has uttered a single word about this being the last waltz, who could help themselves to speculate, to ask the band’s collective ego: How do you top this?

With the careful assistance of a vast and dedicated international cast of staff and crew, this tour represents not only a creative victory against a chorus of vicious cynics, it appears to be three chords strummed on the guitar of history as strokes of engineering genius, triumphs of industry professionalism, and treaties with the marketplace of media consumption.

The endless labors required to manifest the tour’s light and magic extend directly from 360 degrees of chemistry coalescing between the fierce four. Watch these eternally youthful yet middle-aged men from any angle in the coliseum and the same camaraderie congeals. Refusing to conceal their collaborative grace, U2 is as ever a sturdy four-legged altar to the enduring spirit of rock and roll. As Judas spars Jesus inside Achtung Baby’s “Until The End of The World,” Bono and Edge trade laps around the perimeters of possibility, vocal passion spilling over the brim into the waves of jarring joy wrought by Edge’s guitar.

The always charming rhythm section of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen ceaselessly cool the hot engine of Bono’s impetuousness and thrust a throbbing anchor into the deep sea of sonic groove, giving a ground to the starry skies of Edge’s sparkle and soar. Special stadium prescience gets pumped into our ears and souls from Adam’s and Larry’s presence on the new tracks like “Breathe” and “Magnificient” as well as on the always funky favorites like “Mysterious Ways” and “Elevation.” Watching them work their parts of the spectacle, I imagine that they have always been the well-watered roots beneath Bono’s boastfully blooming flowers.

So much spurious speculation and premature condemnation in the fan community has focused on one fatefully and forever controversial aspect of any show: the setlist. On this tour as on previous ones, the concert’s composition and choreography require 360 degrees of coherence. Established on technological and spiritual scaffolding no less precarious than the rigging Bono scaled with his white flag back in the day, the mere setting draws cues from an epic back catalog of live shows, combining the raw intimacy of tours like Unforgettable Fire or Elevation with the grand pomp of Popmart and Zoo TV.

With or without our online commentary on every aspect of every gig, the band clearly invests significant time arranging an inspired itinerary for something to which the fans will give their full mental, monetary, & emotional commitment. The initial idea to open the shows with a long string from No Line On The Horizon was ultimately retooled down to three tracks before dropping hits from the crowd-pleasing core.

While on Vertigo tour (supporting an album with a longer-winded title that some critics affectionately called Man), the obscure scouring of the back catalog had them dipping into ditties like “The Ocean” or “The Electric Co.” from Boy. This time out, tracks from the band’s first record have been conspicuously absent, but older fans welcomed a revival of The Unforgettable Fire’s title track along with the hymnlike lullaby of “MLK” serving as an intro to “Walk On.”

For folks in the U2 fan community, a far-flung global network that meets up primarily online at fansites and forums like this one, the occasion of a U2 tour provides a space for planned and spontaneous outbursts of our camaraderie, forever reminding us that U2 fandom offers 360 degrees of community.

Of many experiential highlights this tour: I was thrilled to meet people with whom I had corresponded previously, including the always friendly Cathal McCarron who was touring with his book Me & U2 and the fellow Interferencers I found simply because they were the only people in my section that recognized “Your Blye Room”; I enjoyed seeing the second Chicago show with my parents—who were with me at my first U2 concert in 1984 and who will both turn 70 in 2010; most definitely, the entire weekend in North Carolina acted as a watershed because the U2 Academic Conference provided all I had hope for and more.

Because of (and in spite of) their ever tenacious and gregarious frontman, U2 have come to model 360 degrees of courage. In the case of Bono, the thin line between a hopeful hastening of moral imperatives and the self-aggrandizing hubris of a hasty megalomaniac is forever shifting and sometimes shifty. Between my study of the band and my longtime allegiance to the low-fi, DIY ethos of grassroots musical and political movements, I could find lots wrong with how U2 run their business and promote their causes in the context of superstardom.

But looking past the legitimate and illegitimate slagging this band receives, they still “stand up” to the rockstars within themselves and devote so much energy to spirituality and social justice and speaking out for human rights and testifying to the importance of “love and community” throughout it all. I’m not sure that men of lesser fortitude would ever have the huevos to do what these guys have done on such a grand scale.

When I was in middle school, I constructed a fantasy band in my mind that embodied the best that the arc of rock history had to offer up until that time. Like the cosmic comedy found in the film Walk Hard, such imaginings have inherent elements of the silly. For the three decades that followed my air-band antics and rockstar role-playing, U2 turned out to be the band of my dreams, becoming the best (and only sometimes the worst) that rock and roll can be. With all that could have gone wrong with the Irish foursome’s most recent globe-trotting jaunt, the first two legs of the tour have been an undisputed triumph for 360 degrees of love.

–Andrew William Smith, Editor

Photos from the Atlanta show by Patty Arriagada for Interference.com

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

U2 360 TOUR 2010

Presented by BlackBerry

NORTH AMERICAN ITINERARY

6-June        Anaheim, CA         Angel Stadium            On sale soon

12-June       Denver, CO          Invesco Field            On sale Nov. 6

16-June       Oakland, CA         Oakland-Alameda          On sale Nov. 2

County Coliseum

20-June       Seattle, WA         Qwest Field              On sale soon

23-June       Edmonton, AB        Commonwealth Stadium     On sale Nov. 2

30-June       East Lansing, MI    Spartan Stadium          On sale soon

03-July       Toronto, ON         Rogers Centre            On sale Nov. 2

06-July       Chicago, IL         Solider Field            On sale soon

09-July       Miami, FL           Land Shark Stadium       On sale soon

12-July       Philadelphia        Lincoln Financial Field  On sale soon

16-July       Montreal, QC        Venue to be announced    On sale soon

19-July       New York            New Meadowlands Stadium  On sale soon

EUROPEAN TOUR ITINERARY

10-August     Frankfurt, Germany  Commerzbank-Arena        On sale now

12-August     Hannover, Germany   AWD Arena                On sale now

15-August     Horsens, Denmark    Casa Arena               SOLD OUT

16-August     Horsens, Denmark    Casa Arena               SOLD OUT

20-August     Helsinki, Finland   Olympiastadion           SOLD OUT

21-August     Helsinki, Finland   Olympiastadion           SOLD OUT

25-August     Moscow, Russia      Luzhniki                 On sale soon

30-August     Vienna, Austria     Ernst Happel Stadium     SOLD OUT

03-September  Athens, Greece      Olympic Stadium          On sale Nov. 2

06-September  Istanbul, Turkey    Ataturk Olympic Stadium  On sale Nov. 2

15-September  Munich, Germany     Olympiastadion           On sale now

18-September  Paris, France       Stade de France          SOLD OUT

22-September  Brussels, Belgium   Stade Roi Baudouin       SOLD OUT

23-September  Brussels, Belgium   Stade Roi Baudouin       SOLD OUT

29-September  Seville, Spain      Estadio Olimpico         On sale now

De La Cartuja

02-October    Coimbra, Portugal   Estadio Cidade Coimbra   SOLD OUT

03-October    Coimbra Portugal    Estadio Cidade Coimbra   SOLD OUT

Additional dates and cities to be confirmed. Itinerary subject to change.

For complete tour and ticket information, fan club memberships, merchandise

and more, visit: www.U2.com

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

http://www.youtube.com/u2

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.

On Friday night, some people might have gotten lit at an Irish Pub before getting loud at a film screening before getting literate on Saturday morning with a full day of panels and presentations on what may be one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

The first-ever U2 studies confenrence called the Hype and the Feedback is going full force on the beautiful campus of North Carolina Central University. Tonight, the conference attendees who are professors and preachers or activists and journalists will join together as fans, with many of us riding a chartered biodiesel tour bus to and from the show.

Last night, with  It Might Get Loud, we saw a film that takes liberties with archival footage and fresh interviews to compose pure rockumenary from loosely woven narratives of guitar god mythology.

Recording Al Gore’s grim declarations for an Inconvenient Truth might have sent filmmaker Davis Guggenheim searching for Dionysian celebrations inside the temples of rock history. But instead we go on intense pilgrimages to Mount Temple School, Headlee Grange, and Detroit’s southwest side.

Each axeman offered obligatory nods to various legends, to the seeds and roots and visions of their passions and appetites. Jack White bore witness to the claps and shouts of Son House. The Edge compared the cheesy crap he heard on the Top of the Pops to the way bands like The Jam, The Buzzcocks, The Clash, and The Ramones changed everything for him. With Page, we saw the influence of skiffle, a fast-grass British proto-rock that Jimmy described as a sort of breast-feeding that came before.

Edge talks about how Spinal Tap made him weep instead of cry. I wept at the stories from Detroit and Dublin. Edge shares an epic and beautiful backstory for “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”  We learn how Jack White’s took his peaceful weapon from Detroit rust to become a wild purveyor of rustic Tennessee blues. Back in Nashville, we read a review of the film in the local weekly called “It Might Get Awkard.” To put it mildly, I thought the reviewer created a false distance from the material, characterizing the flick as a “wankfest” where the icons of masculinity couldn’t quite get it up. Put mildly, we disagree. This great film is plenty masculine, but it is so much more about the magic and alchemy behind the music we adore.

This morning we heard an anecdotal, historical, personal, and speculative comments about the band from the brilliant rock critic and friend of Bono, Anthony de Curtis. We also took a video visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland where conference producer Scott Calhoun visited with writer and rock archivist Jim Henke.

With presenters here from across the planet, this will be the first U2 show for many, like Dr. Rene Rodriguez-Ramirez from the University of Puerto Rico.  Rodriguez-Ramirez spoke this morning about the “Poetics of Absence” in U2’s lyrics on the Joshua Tree, an album he discovered while learning English.

Even  though his poetic and emotional connection with the band goes back more than 20 years, tonight will be the first-ever concert for this scholar and fan. Rodriguez-Ramirez was one of a few really thoughtful lifelong fans who will be seeing their first U2 show tonight, like ethno-musicologist Ann Morrison Spinney, who only picked up her ticket from another conference attendee this afternnon or like the partners who run the Greenway Transit biodiesel bus service that is taking attenndees around all weekend and to the show tonight.

These conferences and concerts are most often about the connections we make with each other in the fan community, and it is a joy for the Interference webzine to celebrate this community with a wide view of some of the wisest voices in a place were fandom and scholarship meet.

The stage alone was more than any other contemporary rock band has produced, according to 25 year-olds I know, who really “know” about this stuff. It has been described as a 164-foot high “claw” that loomed over the stadium, to a “cathedral,” to a “spaceship” said Bono, “But it isn’t going anywhere without you!”

“Mom, how do you know the words to all these songs?” Luke asked Joy Carroll, who has been singing along with this band for its whole 33-year career. U2 roused the huge crowd with its best tunes like “Beautiful Day,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For;” with the highlight for me coming when Bono began with a solo rendition of “Amazing Grace” that moved right into “Where the Streets Have No Name.”

But it was the stunning and extravagant stage, set, and lights of the U2 tour that stole the show. U2 literally lit up the sky and filled the air over the nation’s Capital with a display of sight and sound unlike anything I had ever seen. And in the middle of the show, Joy and I got a light tap on the back, turned around, and lit up ourselves with big smiles as we greeted our long-time friend Willie Williams—the man responsible for the amazing grace of all that light. “I heard you were here, and they told me where you were sitting. So I had to come over and just say hi.” “This is the person responsible for all the lighting,” I told Luke, who could hardly believe this was all happening to him.

And because it was the nation’s Capital, the politicos were all on hand. How many concerts feature shout-outs to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Judiciary Chair, Patrick Leahy, (who Bono called the “John Wayne” of Washington), or one to Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick , who were all on hand. “Can you believe it,” cried Bono, “A Cardinal at a rock concert!” And we even got to come in on the One Campaign bus with the Cardinal!

“Politics” was indeed part of the concert, not the partisan politics that dominate Washington D.C. – (Bono made it a point to praise politicians on “both the left and the right” who have cared about places like Africa, he even dedicated a song to President Bush for increasing foreign aid) – but the moral politics that characterize Bono’s clarion call to conscience and action which echoed throughout the evening.

In fact, what I love about a U2 concert, headlined by the Irish tenor with the sun glasses, is how it achieves such a powerful combination of art and social justice, music and message; and all with such fun. The New York Times titled its review of the opening concert in Giants stadium as “Fun With a Mission.”

As always on nights with U2, activism for human rights and democracy was lifted up. “Walk On” was dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate under house arrest in Burma/Myanmar. “How long has she been under house arrest,” asked Luke. “20 years” I said, and watched the look of concern and indignation on the face of a pre-teenager—at a rock concert. Luke also got to see a short video of a beaming Desmond Tutu, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, talk about “the kind of people” who make a difference in this world, and invited us all to join the One Campaign.

On the way out of the concert, Luke whispered that he had just heard somebody say, “The only thing I don’t like about Bono is his political sh*t.” Luke asked me what he meant. I said there are some people who don’t like the message of Bono and U2, just the music. But it is precisely the incredibly inspiring blend and, dare I say, integration of music, message, and mission that makes U2 not only so compelling; but also so important.

It was a night of mutual affirmation with a band and an adoring audience, their community, who truly seemed to love being together again. It was an evening of joy and justice. The final comment of a first time almost teenager was, of course, “It was awesome,” but, unlike most of the moments and venues where this overused affirmation of the younger generation is invoked, this time it was accurate and appropriate. The concert was truly “awesome.”

Author of God’s Politics and Sojourners editor Jim Wallis posted this on his blog: http://blog.sojo.net/2009/10/01/music-with-a-mission-my-kids-first-rock-concert/

Concertgoers were in for a surprise on 9/21 when the band opened the second of two Foxboro, Massachusetts shows with “Magnificent” instead of the normal “Breathe”; it was both the first time a tune other than “Breathe” has opened a show on the tour, and the first time “Breathe” has not been played at all during a set.  Later in the same gig, Bono included a brief snippet of “Mofo”, the first glimpse of anything off of Pop to be heard on the tour thus far.

Bruce Springsteen got a birthday shout-out when the tour landed at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on 9/23; the band performed “She’s the One” as a tribute to the Boss before segueing into a shortened version of “Desire”.  Meanwhile, the 9/24 gig reportedly shattered the attendance record for Giants Stadium (previously held by the Pope – cue endless string of “St. Bono” jokes), and included in the audience none other than New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who – as it seems has become de rigeur for this tour – drew the ire of critics for not being “environmentally friendly” by flying a helicopter out of New York to meet Bono before the show.

Recent snippet inclusions for the North American crowds included a triple-dose of Elvis Costello for Toronto, Canada, as “Alison”, “Pump It Up”, and “Oliver’s Army” all made their way into the setlist for 9/16, while folks at the 9/24 Giants Stadium gig got a bit of The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” to help close out “Beautiful Day.”

U2 also paid tribute to No Line on the Horizon co-producer Daniel Lanois by including a bit of his “The Maker” to the end of “Beautiful Day” at the 9/17 Toronto gig.

The most significant recent development of all, though, has to do more with what is missing than what has been included:  longtime tour staple “Pride (In the Name of Love)” has not made a setlist since the first Chicago show.  Will it be returning anytime soon, or is this the beginning of a long absence?

Only time will tell.

Photos from Foxboro, Massachusetts, 9/20, courtesy Danielle Whalen.

You know how the perfect storm pattern works:  Band earns loyal local following.  Band releases album.  Album gets great review  in high-powered alternative music periodical.  Rest of alternative press goes apeshit, championing band as its own.  Band’s arrival is cemented by spiritual guidance from famous rock ‘n roll luminary.  Then – once dust has settled and pools of journalists’ ink spilled – band is ingrained in the scene in such a way that it feels like, well, they’ve just always been there.

For Gaslight, the key review in question would be the rave their sophomore effort, The’59 Sound, received in Pitchfork last year, while the spiritual guidance counselor would be one Bruce Springsteen, who shared a stage with the band during their performances at England’s Glastonbury and Hard Rock Calling festivals this past June.

As Arcade Fire can tell you, nothing says “anointed” quite like sharing a stage with The Boss… particularly if you’re a Jersey-based rock outfit for whom Springsteen is constantly cited as a primary influence.

Now, cameos aside, it ain’t hard to see – or more appropriately, hear – why the press has glommed on to the Bruce comparison. Catch even a whiff of frontman/songwriter Brian Fallon’s vox, and it’ll be several seconds of double-takes before you’ve finally convinced yourself you’re not listening to the man who wrote “Badlands”.

Additionally, Fallon has an uncanny knack for reproducing Springsteen’s sense of melancholy confessional in his lyrics, particularly on ‘59 Sound tracks like “Great Expectations” and “Here’s Lookin at You, Kid”.  Then there’s the matter of that huge hunk of “I’m On Fire” hanging right out there in the middle of “High Lonesome”:  “And at night I woke up with the sheets soaking wet/It’s a pretty good song/Maybe you know the rest.” Yeah, we do.

Such admittedly glaring examples of homage might lead some to peg the band as a one-trick pony, a gaggle of charlatans stealing The Boss’s identity and re-purposing it without adding anything original.  Those people are hearing the hook without catching the rest of the notes.  As any fan will claim, Gaslight’s true identity is more interesting and more mysterious than it appears, transcendent of both journalistic self-aggrandizement and pigeonholing.  They’ve certainly done plenty to earn their accolades.

For proof, one needs look no further than their headlining set at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium on Sunday, September 20^th.  About half the audience knew every word to every song that night, belting them out with conviction befitting a church hymnal, fists in the air and hearts on the sleeve. The other half was quick to pick up the choruses and participate in the clapalongs and shoutback verses with equal passion and ardor.

It’s not at all difficult to get people singing along when lyrics are as fundamentally catchy as this chorus from “Great Expectations”, dropped on the listener right after rapid-fire allusions to Bob Seger and The Ronettes:

I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my first wife/
Everybody leaves and I’d expect as much from you/
I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my whole life/
Everybody leaves, so why, why wouldn’t you?

By anyone’s standards, that is the stuff of angsty indie rock Shangri-La.

Much of the live show revolved around Fallon, whose stage presence a la Jack White acted as a sort of spiritual medium to the past, in this case a past stitched together out of rhythm and blues, soul, and classic rock.  This was in keeping with a persona carefully carved out on the band’s two LP’s.

It should be noted that Fallon’s use of anachronism is more in the vein of a postmodern bottom line than an absolute means to an end.  His lyrics are pastiche in the best possible sense; they constantly evoke the specter of the past to haunt the present tense of dark little stories about dead friends, broken relationships and gender gamesmanship, in a sense re-affirming the constant and unchanging fallibility of human emotion.

Sunday night, Fallon carried this dual-pattern identity over to his performance and between-song banter, telling stories that, if not exactly tall tales, certainly felt like them; a reference to a girl he knew back in Jersey quickly ballooned into a story about how the girl dated men to steal their cars, then killed the men, then stashed their bodies in the trunks of the cars before abandoning them across the border.  Occasionally, he’d fall into a drawl and cackle while mumbling inaudible anecdotes into the microphone, and at one point he snatched a pair of black shades from a stagehand and put them on, appearing to affect a bit of a Ray Charles shuffle as he did.

The routine made for an unabashedly eccentric persona that occasionally threw the young audience for a loop.  Once the music started, though, there was no vibe in the room other than pure cathartic glee.

While the band’s lyrical content might cite anything from Tom Petty to Charles Dickens, its actual sound is very contemporary, combining the up-tempos of punk-pop with the production polish of modern-day alternative.  Band members Alex Levine (bass) and Alex Rosamilia (guitar) have cited influences as diverse as The Clash, The Smiths and The Cure on their playing, influences that (perhaps) show up more in the energy of the live setting than they do on record.  No doubt this is a band talented enough to see the wisdom of riding the Boss influence wave, but only to a point before surfing off to other destinies.

It did not take long for Fallon and Co. to bust out their signature tune – album title track “The ’59 Sound” – but they waited until about halfway through the 90-minute set before unloading tracks from their first record, the excellent Sink Or Swim.  While those tracks are more traditionally grounded in punk than those on The ’59 Sound, they still cover vast amounts of lyrical ground, like the dripping allusions to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” that permeate “Angry Johnny and the Radio”.  And, of course, they benefit hugely from the brasher, more exuberant confines of the live environment.

While Fallon occasionally traversed the stage to coax jam sessions out of the two Alexes, both seemed content to let Fallon run the show while they competently belted out the hooks.  Levine was the more crowd-friendly of the two, venturing out to the edge of the stage often to work the audience, while Rosamilia hovered back near the amps, fixing an ambiguous shoegaze stare that indicated either sheer concentration or total disinterest.

With his beard and longish scruff hair, Rosamilia looked more like a member of Fleet Foxes than a Jersey rocker, but his guitar work spoke for itself.  Benny Horowitz shattered more than his share of drumsticks for his art, and proved himself an able spark plug behind a kit sporting images of erstwhile badasses Charles Bronson and Richard Roundtree.

The single encore included one of the band’s staple covers – a fun and fitting rendition of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” that, unfortunately, found Rosamilia’s guitar turned down a bit too low for the solo.  This was, perhaps, just frustrating enough to allow him to come to life and let loose for the show’s explosive finale; while Fallon snuck in the chorus from Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” (!), Rosamilia, in true punk fashion, proceeded to smash his guitar to tiny bits against the Fillmore stage.

Those two events happening at the same time couldn’t have summed up the band’s sense of irony more perfectly.

Heading out, I wasn’t the slightest bit sure what to call or categorize what I had just seen.  It wasn’t exactly retro, it wasn’t R&B, it wasn’t really punk, and it sure as heck wasn’t Springsteen.  Then I realized that I totally didn’t care; it was Gaslight Anthem, and for the moment, Gaslight Anthem has transcended the need for categorization. -Words and Photographs by Luke Pimentel, Editor

For more images, click the thumbnails below:

The Gaslight Anthem is on tour in the United States through the end of October.  For more information, please visit www.gaslightanthem.com or www.myspace.com/thegaslightanthem.

A gift to the people of Chicago and those who had traveled from all over the world, the current transcontinental crusade reclaims stadiums as an appropriate venue for a rock and roll show. Drowning out the dispatches of detractors banging ‘puter keyboards and blasting out blogs with their smug disses and dismissals, our chorus cascaded across a canyon of steel and cement, an uncynical kiss to the future, to the resilience of “love and community.”

Throughout both shows, Bono shared the sentiments of Snow Patrol lead singer Gary Lightbody in his Chicago Bears tee-shirts, showering the hometown crowd with specific local references to the elements, to the lake, to various street names, and the public elevated train system also known as the CTA. On Saturday, Bono bragged about being the wind in the windy city (no one can argue that brother Hewson is long-winded), and on Sunday, he even said he wanted to kiss Chicago’s collective ass. Despite his usual self-aggrandizing and grandstanding that makes him the rockstar equivalent of the mega-preacher he once mocked, Bono still has both the balls and biblical background to mean it and make it work for all of us.

With “Beautiful Day” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” early in the set, the choir director set the tone where the secular, sacred, and spectacular might converge. Unafraid of his own churchy sentiments, Bono gleefully greeted and guided his congregation, often leaving the mic to look at us, to let us take the chorus, the sound of our own combined voices giving everyone the chills. Whether it’s outstretched arms or bended knees, Bono’s never shied away from spiritual symbols and messianic moments, and at the shores of Lake Michigan, he fed more than 60,000 with loaves of loose electricity and cosmic fish of a millennial fever.

While some fans decry keeping “Elevation” in the set, tracks like that and “Vertigo” rocket fans on a non-stop flight with an engine that sounds like Edge, Adam, and Larry on the loud clouds of funk-punk gymnastics. What angels and demons other than the sound of God’s voice inside your guitar would possess a 50-year-old millionaire and soundscaping zen guru to pogo around the stage like a righteously naïve adolescent on the Vans Warped tour? Of course, it’s exactly that still boyish commitment to studying craft that makes Edge Evans so important to not just this band but to the history of rock and roll.

From climbing the rigging at the Us Festival in 1983 to diving into the arms of a girl and a worldwide television audience at Live Aid in 1985, frontman Bono as medicine man has always grabbed for ginormous gestures. And the other three have mostly condoned and cooperated, although sometimes reluctantly, in a career filled with an evangelical dedication to intimacy and inspiration and an artistic fascination with musical trends and cultural tremors. From building a tricked out and tripped out spaceship of a stage to sharing a carefully choreographed selection of hits and hymns, sleepers and surprises, this tour—because of and in spite of its inherent arrogance—marks a culminating crescendo in a distinguished career.

When the “born to sing for you” business of “Magnificent” entered the ears beneath the graying locks of Generation Xers in attendance, this mostly middle-aged and mostly modestly-dressed mass realized that we are the “you”that Bono’s wrapped his operatic poems around for almost 30 years, and once again, we are mentally transported back to our suburban bedrooms where we first ripped the cellophane off our vinyl copies of Boy, October, and War.

The tracks from the new and risky record all blended beautifully into an auspiciously ambitious setlist, one that changed significantly between Saturday and Sunday. Some of Horizon’s subtler, more ambient tracks like “Unknown Caller” and “Moment of Surrender” really shine live thanks to Edge’s ability to create a healing tonic through the Tai Chi moves of modern electronics.

Neither over the top like Zoo TV nor stripped down like Elevation and Vertigo, the current tour attempts to make stadium rock relevant again (with perhaps only Madonna or the Rolling Stones as peers), while striking a balance between U2-specific strands of cheese and sleaze. For those who long for yesteryears of either earnest religiosity or of culture jamming frivolity, we get tastes of both and then some.

We get the tribal remix of “Crazy”–replete with MC  Bono testifyin’ on behalf of our communal sanity within a world of commonplace insanity and  Larry Mullen paradin’ the promenade and poppin’ the djembe. We get truly rare tracks thrown in for the hardcore fans: in Europe, they got “Electrical Storm”; in Chicago, we got “Your Blue Room.” The second night in Chicago also included rarely-played-this-tour-tracks like “Until The End of the World” and “Stay.” Without losing the coherent unity of the core songs, this tour has included sufficient shifts to please the out-of-town, long-time traveling fans and setlist-statistic crunchers alike.

From the back catalog, we still get singles like “One” or “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” but we also get the regular inclusion of tracks like “Unforgettable Fire” and “Ultraviolet (Light My Way),” tracks where the layers of sound get overlaid by the overall presentation, by polychromatically pleasing tweaks of color from the  creative palette of show designers Catherine Owens and Willie Williams. In the encore as Bono lit our way, his laser lit jacket designed by the technician of fashion Moritz Waldemeyer sent rays of red into the crowd and out to the sky At the same time, he cradled a strange,circular mic, perchance the steering wheel of the spaceclaw. Some of my concert companions found these touches too gimmicky; me, who sadly missed Popmart and didn’t appreciate Zoo TV for what it was when I saw it, I loved them.

While he certainly framed himself as more of liberal, radical Christian peacenik back in the day, Bono’s middle-age, millions of dollars, and meetings with people like Bush, Blair, and Bill Frist have turned the shaded crusader into a bit of a political moderate. Outside of U2’s fan community, Bono’s activism is mocked from left and right as the penultimate rich white man’s pandering hypocrisy. Inside the fan community, Bono’s activism gets mocked for its earnest employment of grand gestures that often slow the show with speeches, videos, and altar calls to the One campaign.

Despite these critiques from all sides, a U2 concert would be utterly incomplete without its peace, unity, freedom, and social justice message, and the 360 tour keeps the tradition alive. Outside the shows, fans could visit booths for One and Amnesty International and the Burma campaign. At the Burma table, fans could get the paper mask of Aung Sang Suu Kyi that they could wear or hold up during “Walk On.” The tour program promotes these and other organizations such as Greenpeace, perhaps the latter being more important than ever as a counterweight to the purportedly wasteful nature of this massive caravan.

During the concert, potent videos re-frame “Sunday Bloody Sunday” as a song supporting democracy in Iran. “City of Blinding Lights” is an important politico-spiritual part of the show, not only because Bono dedicated it to Obama in Chicago or because he brought a boy out of the crowd on the second night, but because of the way he emphasizes the closing line: “Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily.” This sense of generous universalism could outrage some who are more pious or partisan about politics and spirituality, but humble and open others to a unity that supersedes difference. I must admit I find myself in the latter category.

In further amplifying this theme, before the song “One,” we witness a moving sermon by Bishop Desmond Tutu whose cosmic Christianity suggests that we are all “the same beautiful people,” concluding “we are the same person.” As idealistic as it is heavy, this notion unites the thousands and throws this show into the transcendent realms whether we like it or not. It’s hard not to feel inspired, to simultaneously feel the wind from the lake on your face and feel moved in your heart when the right reverend says that “God will put a mighty wind at our back.”

For me, the most transcendent moment came Saturday night with the inclusion of “Bad,” still, after all these years, my favorite U2 song to hear live. On all my Vertigo shows, I missed hearing this piece and almost fainted when the familiar opening strains began to echo into Soldier Field. According to those near the stage, the song was not on the setlist, and Bono called for this one like a quarterback uttering an audible. I can’t help thinking that my praying hard for this all day might have had something to do with such a lovely twist for this fandom’s fate.

Despite what others have suggested, I find “Moment of Surrender” the perfect coda to this concert. Sung by Bono in a reverent soul-gospel mode while Edge expertly works both the keyboard and guitar, this song is one of the defining moments on the excellent No Line On The Horizon and expands a spiritually pivotal theme that U2 have addressed in one fashion or another since the early 1980s.

Even at over two hours, this is a show that I dreaded seeing end on both Saturday and Sunday. While emotionally and physically exhausted and completely satisfied by the experience, its ending still came too soon. With two shows left on this autumn’s  U2 itinerary, I imagine I’ll begin pining for the rumored summer 2010 shows as soon as this leg is over.

–Andrew William Smith, Editor

Photos from fans on the Interference forums by INSTCUWSUMVC, trevgreg, suzanneb