#527 U2 in SLC

U2 was in town on Tuesday to play at Rice-Eccles Stadium. I should have written last night, but I had to watch American Idol - BTW, that was Bono and The Edge playing toward the end there! - and I was so tired from Tuesday night that I pretty much went right to bed after Idol.

Here's what I thought about the U2 show: IT WAS FANTASTIC!!

Tuesday was MT's 50th birthday, so we went out to dinner before the concert. The opening act was The Fray, which would have been fine to see, but we didn't actually get to see them. We got up to the stadium right as they came on the stage. I know that because we could totally hear them in our car as we were searching for parking. The lot that I thought I might be able to park in was filled with U2's semi-trucks; I read that it takes 115 trucks to transport the pieces of the massive stage. We did eventually find a parking place on a road about a mile or so from the stadium. We heard The Fray as we walked down the hill to the stadium. (You know what that means, right? A mile uphill after the show to get back to the car.)

Fortunately, the weather was terrific. The sky cleared and was bright blue, the temperature was mild. It was beautiful! On the radio on my way home from work, I heard a guy on the radio say, "Well, maybe Bono is God. The weather sure cleared up for his show!"

For those of you wondering, T did decide to come. More about him in a minute.

The stage I mentioned earlier? It is massive. It looked kind of like a bug or a crustacean or a space ship. There was an enormous video screen hanging down from the center of the bug, and before the show, the time from various cities around the world was shown along with interesting and/or disturbing factoids like Amount of Money Spent on Video Games today: $44,536,427 with an ongoing count so the numbers kept changing. Some numbers changed fast like Number of Cigarettes Smoked Today: 9,789,432,081 and some changed slowly like Number of Suicides today: 34,576. There was also factoids about the Number of Years Until Oil Depletion, Number of Births Today, Number of Emails Sent Today, Number of People on the Internet Right Now, Number of U2 Crew Births During This Tour and Number of Google Searches Today. It was an interesting way to spend 45 minutes.

The band came out around 8:50. The sun hadn't set yet, so there was still some light in the stadium. The giant screen showed the image of the band walking out of the building where the Utah football teams comes out. They waved to the 40,000 or so people that were yelling and stamping their feet and clapping and whistling. They came up on the stage - Larry took his place at the drum kit and started banging away. We were clapping and yelling. Adam strapped on his bass and began to play. The Edge was next. He played the opening riff for "Even Better Than the Real Thing" and we went nuts. But when Bono stepped in front of the mic, forget about it. It was madness. I lost my mind just a little. Me and about 40,000 others! They're just so wonderful!

The second song was "I Will Follow" and the third was "Get On Your Boots." And the songs just kept coming. Some of my favorites of the night that I wasn't expecting to like so much: "Magnificent", "Stay", and "I Know I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight." That last one, the one with the longest title ever, I don't love it on the CD, but I loved how they played it in concert. Larry strapped on a bongo-type drum and walked around the giant stage, tap-tap-tapping away. It had more of a Latin rhythm to it that I really loved. To top it off, they included a snippet of one of their most underrated songs (in my opinion) "Discotheque". They just did a snippet, but it worked for me!

Of course, the tried-and-true-bring-down-the-house-U2-music was incredible. The opening riff for "Pride" just makes you remember why you fell in love with this band. I enjoy the first part of the song "Vertigo" when Bono counts in Spanish like this, "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" He did the first three numbers then everyone screamed "Catorce!" Awesome!! That's one of the coolest things about a U2 show - audience participation. I felt like the participation effect was watered down for me, because I was at the back of the stadium, facing the stage, so I couldn't really hear the crowd singing along. I could see people bouncing around and waving their arms, but I didn't get the full effect of the sing-along. (Last time I saw them I was actually behind the stage so I got blasted by the sound of the crowd singing along. That was cool!)

One of my favorite songs was in the encore, "Where the Streets Have No Name." That's another opening riff that just gives me goosebumps. It actually nearly moves me to tears. (I know! I'm a big baby.) It's true though. I'm putting this out there now, and I've said it before. Please play "Where the Streets Have No Name" at my memorial service, from the beginning, all the way through to the last note. I love that song.

Another favorite part was when Bono sang "Happy Birthday" to MT, um, I mean Bob Dylan. I was teasing MT earlier in the evening that I'd emailed Bono to see if he would sing the birthday song, but I didn't know if he'd be able to squeeze it in. Imagine our surprise when he did sing it! When he got to the part where you say the birthday person's name, of course, Bono said "Bob", but I told MT that was just Bono's pet name for him. We giggled. It was a fun minute.

So how did T like it? Well, I'm not exactly sure. I think he liked some of it, then I think that he got pretty tired. He mentioned as we were walking back up the hill to the car that he didn't think he was a concert guy and that he didn't think he'd ever go to another concert. I'm just making note of this statement now so that in the future when he tells me that he and his buddies want to go see someone in concert, I'll remember the comment he made after the U2 show. Still, today when he got home from school he asked if he could borrow my iPod so he could listen to some U2 songs. Maybe there's hope?

What did I miss?

Back to it...U2 played about 24 songs, with some little snippets that I'm not even counting. The show lasted over two hours. It was bliss. It was worth every bit of tired that I suffered through on Wednesday. I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was absolutely the best concert value I've ever had. The tickets were only $30 each. No, I wasn't anywhere close to the stage, but I was in the building and with the gigantic magical video screen, I could see them perfectly well. The sound was excellent and the music, well, it was a joyful noise!