by Dan H.

OMG! I'm just back from the first Anaheim show and it kicked butt! The boys had sweat dripping down everyone's backside tonight!

While most of the songs were the same as the first tow nights in San Diego, they mixed it up and it worked GREAT as it gave a whole new feel to the night.

To start, each of them started out the show by walking around the ellipse with a spotlight and shining them into the crowd with the place in total darkness! You could only see four spotlights moving around and barely make out a silhouette of the rock star carrying it. The next thing you know, the band breaks out with Love and Peace or Else! Yes, the drum for Larry is already at the far end of the ellipse for Larry and on they go!

The set list for the night was:
Love and Peace or Else, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bullet the Blue Sky, Running to Stand Still, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, New Year's Day, Miracle Drug, Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, Beautiful Day, Pride, Where the Streets Have No Name, One, Zoo Station, The Fly, Elevation, Mysterious Ways, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo, All Because Of You, Yahweh, 40

The "Africa" thing went a lot smoother tonight too I thought. Bono did a much better job of letting the crowd know that he wanted them to continue singing along to Running to Stand Still rather than chanting Africa. (Once you see it, you'll know what I mean.)

After the boys played for just over 70 minutes Bono said "Give us a minute will ya?" and off they all went under the stage. The crowd didn't really know what to do, so everyone just kind of sat tight and waited. There was not real loud screaming or clapping demanding an encore as probably no one in the house imagined they were done already. Just a few short minutes later, out they came and they started rocking the house again. From that point on they just continued to play. Occasionally after a song they would talk to each other and play some more. It was almost like they had thrown the set list out the window and were just going with the flow!

When they started playing Mysterious Ways, Bono spotted a girl in the ellipse dressed as Lady Macphisto in huge platform shoes! He couldn't resist getting her up on the stage. They made their way around the complete ellipse and as they approached the other end she danced away. As Bono thanked her and asked her name (Tiffany) he cracked "you know this stage is built for platform shoes!" He says to Edge, "Edge, there is no graceful way out of this, why don't you start the next song". She left the stage and the show started again.

City of Blinding lights had the effects down to the MAX tonight as the confetti really looked like fire flies lighting the city as the song says.

Before they started Vertigo, Bono asked The Edge "are you with us Edge?" (cracking on him for not hitting his volume foot switch in San Diego earlier in the week) Edge replies by making his guitar TALK and say YEAH! Bono says "are you sure?" and Edge again makes a sound come from his guitar just like it is freaking saying YES and off they charge into Vertigo!

It was a magic night, and in my opinion, the BEST of the three shows of this very young world tour thus far! Myself and my son (age 9, on his second U2 tour as he saw them first during the Elevation Tour when he was 5) have been fortunate enough to see them all three shows so far. But, spring break has come to and end so we must wait for Chicago in May to see them again.
In the mean time, ROCK ON boys!

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