by jhayes

We all were crowded in an open field waiting for hours for the sun to go down and for the show to start. It was GA and I was about 15 feet from the satellite stage.

Stereo MCs were a pretty cool live opening act considering most of their music comes from turntables instead of live instruments.

Since the zooropa album had already come out, we were all wondering what to expect, and hoping it would be different from the zoo tv tour (i had seen 4 zoo tv shows in the states) but it was mostly the same. But right after new years day, they paused starting playing a video on the big screen and playing some voice that said, "you can't keep giving people the same old thing again, and again. People want something new" they repeated that over and over. And then they launched into Numb. I think it's a pretty lame song, but at least it was new. (my recollection is that they played numb before Stay, but it's been 8 years!!!)

Then they started to play Stay, and everyone went nuts and started clapping along. bono was playing guitar and he started laughing. he sang, "Green light, seven eleven... stop clapping, or i'll fuck up the song" instead of "you stop in for a pack of cigarettes"... it was really funny and he sang the line as if it was part of the song!

The rest of the concert was exactly like the ZOO TV.. they did tease us a bit just before the encore began. they played a recording of the instrumental part of Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car, and we thought they were going to do more zooropa songs, but they didn't.

i'm glad i went to the show even though it wasn't amazingly spectucular and it was kind of a pain. I'm from Los Angeles and was traveling through europe when i met some dutch guys in denmark. i found out that u2 was going to be playing in holland in a week or so and thought i'd try to have them get me tickets. we tried to call over the phone from denmark, but it didn't work.. trusting them, i handed over $50 US to some guy i had just met and asked him to see if he could get me tickets once he got back to holland. i called him a few days later and he said he had!!! He told me he would meet me at The Hague train station with the tickets. i took an overnight train from berlin (where i had gone after denmark) and sure enough there he was. with my zooropa ticket AND with my change in guilders!!! i couldn't believe it. faith sometimes pays off!

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