by Brent Ericson

The Cotton Bowl was the scene for U2 and Rage Against the Machine, and a nice site for a concert it was. For a stadium, the Cotton Bowl is almost quaint. Anyway, on to the review...

Rage Against the Machine began playing to a sparse, apathetic crowd, but their energy soon pumped everybody up. The boys tore it up. I personally loved seeing all of the middle-aged white guys seethe as Rage trampled all of their precious conceptions of "good music" and America, for that matter, in the dirt. A particularly strong version of "A Bullet in the Head" and "Bulls on Parade." A great, majestic opening group.

Howie B came out next and was tremendous. I would encourage everyone to try and stick around to listen and dance to his set. The bomb!

"Pop Music" soon came on signaling a dramatic appearance by U2 entering through the Dallas crowd....very cool. Quick impressions: The "Mofo" to "I Will Follow" beginning was a nice opening. "Miami" and "Bullet the Blue Sky" were fantastic. The band really incorporated their stage, interesting arrangements and Bono's theatricality to good effect here. Most of the new album was performed to good effect. I must say that "If You Wear That Velvet Dress" and "If God Will Send His Angels" were very, very weak, unfortunately. Bono, for the life of him (or me), could not find a melody in these two songs. On a more positive note, "Discoteque" and"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" were amazing. Bono added the rap from the re-mix single at the end of "Discoteque" and the Edge was giving up the funk! The band closed with a middling version of "One" and the lights went up and we went back out into the dark.

Overall, the show was fine. A few criticisms: The setlist was really dismal, I must say. Very uninteresting selection of old songs. Not playing anything off of "Zooropa" is frankly inexcuseable. U2 is taking their "Pop" ideas too seriously and underestimating the intelligence of their audience. I also thought that adding "Stand By Me" was rather lazy on U2's part and boring to listen to. Another criticism is that the pacing and length of the show was substandard. For example, if U2 must play "Pride" it shouldn't be randomly thrown in as the fourth song on the set. Not very well thought out. I don't intrinsically dislike stadium shows, but I think U2 is becoming inhibited by them. There was almost no spontaneity. On the positive side, the staging and lemon mirror ball were great. Also, the band played pretty well, considering their break from touring. I would give a marginal thumbs-up to PopMart and I expect great improvements over the couse of the tour.

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