by PlayTheBlues

I can't quite pinpoint the exact moment that this concert became the Greatest Musical Event I've Ever Attended. It would be easy to say that the moment was when The Edge struck up the first few riffs on Bad and I felt the music right through my spine. I could also say it was when things went from great to perfect during the slow, intense transition from Bad (which had a little '40' thrown in--I didn't think it was possible that a version of Bad could be any better than the ones I'd already heard, but I learned last night that indeed it could) to Streets. No more needs to be said about Streets, except that if there has ever been a better production of a live song, I'm not familiar with it. It might have been the full force of Bullet The Blue Sky or the crowd-unifying rendition of One. It could have been when Bono told us all in Gone that he'll be up with the sun, and he's not coming down--and we knew it was true. Does this guy ever come down? Seems hard to imagine.

It might have been one of the lighter moments of the show, too. Like when Bono made all of us disgruntled New Yorkers who got shut out of the Garden shows feel better by telling us that those performances were merely a warm-up for Jersey (and by the way, the bus thing WAS indeed a fiasco, but by the time I was up this morning, I had pretty much forgotten it). Or when Bono slipped up and blanked on the words to Stay. Maybe it was when Bono made all of us realize that he knew his place in the world of music by thanking "Father Bruce" for use of the hall.

Heck, it might have been the moment the band appeared on the stage to an Elevation remix. It was at that time that I took the first of many painful elbows to the head and yet I got the feeling it was going to be a special night down there in the hot and cramped GA section.

Either way, all I know is that for those two hours last night I wasn't thinking that I wished the set list was more diverse. I wasn't wishing for a Party Girl like they got in Boston or an 11 O'clock Tick Tock like they got at MSG. I wasn't thinking that I'd paid too much for my ticket. Like Bono said to open the show, I was just going to let the music take me wherever it chose to go. And it certainly took me to places and heights I've never been to before.

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