by Raoul Arnold

Okee... here is a review from a musicpoint of view...

It started off with New Yearsday... Edge played a different solo which promted Bono to make comments about after the song was over... I more-or-less quote: 'this is the first time ever that Edge played a different solo in New Yearsday. We've been asking Edge for years if he shouldn't change the solo for a change... his answer allways was 'the solo is perfect'.' At the same time Bono said these words Edge was waving with his hands and walked over to Bono... he wispered something in his ear and Bono turned to the audience saying 'oh, is was an accident...' The band cracked up about this.

Now on to ´Who´s gonna ride your wild horses´. Serious drumming going on here! Loud, complete bandsound... to quote the words Bono once used to decribe the sound of U2 ´all the sounds, all the colors´.

On to Miss Sarajevo. Shocked to begin with that they actually played this song. Bono sang the whole Lucianno Pavarotti part which is a tenorpart. And he got away with it!! Every note was right on the money and was sang perfectly. His father (a tenor himself) would have been really proud of his son. The audience lost themselfs right there and then too... I´ll bet they will check the structural integrety of the Arena stadium today!!!

Next shock was ´Original of the species´ which was dedicated to Herman Brood, a deceased Dutch rockstar and painter. Suddenly there was a fifth member on stage behind the piano! According to Bono is was the first time ever that the band had a fifth member on stage during a U2 gig... I´ve seen a bunch of U2 concerts and it was totally wierd to see five people on stage instead of four... I did had to punch myself a couple of times to realize this was actually happening...

And finally (for the real U2 freaks...) at the end of '40' Larry was left behind alone on stage to do his drumpart with the audience... after the final hit on the drums he played a very short drumpart of the song Radar Love from the dutch band The Golden Earring, which was played all nights in Amsterdam directly after the band left the stage... He played it very low volume so you had to be realy alert to recognize it... being a drummer like myself would have helped too :) After this Larry walked to the egde of the stage, raised his hand like he allways does, made a complete bow to the audience (something I´ve never seen him done before!) and left the stage...

It was one of the best U2 gigs I´ve ever seen and close to the bizar if you consider all the extra´s they gave us!

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