by Niels Noor

First of all, a lot of things were definitely great about this show. The setlist was superb with some songs I had never heard live before. I wanna thank the boys for playing Out of Control, which was defintely one of the highlights together with City Of Blinding Lights, Pride, Where The Streets, All Because of You and the second Vertigo. Bono's voice sounded great and the lightshow was fantastic. I had no problems with the sound but maybe that was because we were right in the middle right before the stage. I've heard a lot of negative stories about the sound in the Amsterdam ArenA and I can imagine it's bad in the back of the arena, but where we were it was good. The message of the stories about the London bombings, the G8 and Africa came over alright, but I had hoped on a bigger and more enthusiastic reaction by the crowd.

That was one of the negative aspect for me. The crowd, especially the seaters, didn't seem all that enthusiastic. It kinda felt like they were asleep and woke up only when U2 started playing Pride, only a couple of songs before the end of the main set. Luckiley then, after that they stayed awake straight to the very end of the second Vertigo. I wouldn't say they were silent, but I'm sure the vibe at the Gelredome during the Elevation tour four years ago was much bigger.

Another thing that kinda irritated me was all the preaching and praying. I know Bono and the guys are religious but a lot of people in the Netherlands are not. I believe Bono once said that at live shows, everyone who wanted to see the religious message could see it, and everyone who didn't wanna see it wouldn't see it. Tonight, I definitely saw it, however, I don't really wanna see it. Mentioning God a couple of times is okay, but turning songs into prayers, talking about taking us to church, looking up at heaven whilst telling God also to bless the ones who don't kneel, the whole Father Abraham stuff...it was all just a bit too much for me. Sorry...

All in all I had a great day and evening which I really enjoyed.

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