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The U2 concert was great! I know it was two days ago, but Monday it was late when we got home and yesterday was very busy, so I’m posting today. They did a fantastic job of mixing old and new music – and this time ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ was on the set list (it is very cool to hear 20,000 people singing along!).
They played all of my favorites from ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’, to ‘I Will Follow’, ‘New Years’ Day’ and ‘Mysterious Ways’. They also played, of course, ‘Elevation,’ ‘Beautiful Day,’ ‘Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,’ ‘In A Little While’ (to Joey Ramone), and maybe a couple of others I didn’t pick up on from the new album. The only songs I would’ve liked to hear (as if they could play everything) would be ‘Sweetest Thing’ or ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’ from Achtung Baby! which is among my favorite of their albums. From Achtung Baby!, they played an incredible arrangement of ‘The Fly’ (which I always call Secret). I didn’t even realize that’s what it was, until I realized I was singing the right words – but the music was different!
They did, of course get political – now there’s a shock! First before ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ they had an anti-gun video piece (Charleton Heston started it off and the video paused for a second before showing a young girl finding a gun.) While I disagree with their purely emotional statement against guns (not to mention their non-citizen mixing in US politics), it is good to see a group that is so in the public eye stand up for a set of values and beliefs – and not cause scandals that undermine their message.
The other of the stands they played up is something that I think I can support, although I haven’t done any research on it and certainly want to be clear that this is not a total endorsement. It is what was formerly the Jubilee 2000 campaign and is now Drop the Debt. Drop the Debt is a campaign to cancel the debt of Third World countries to give them a chance to compete on the world economic stage and to allow them to care for their people before the interest payments on debts they will never be able to pay off. I’ll get back to you on this one.
Anyway, overall it was a fun show and I had a great time!