by Sean-Mo

The Incredible: seeing Gloria for the first time out of almost 40 shows. Finally! The fact that 4 of the songs played make up half of Under a Blood Red Sky is amazing in itself. 40 and New Year's Day would've been great too, but they played those this tour as well along with I Will Follow. Great energy from the boys, especially at the beginning and the last couple of songs. Probably the longest show I've seen them play at almost 2.5 hours.

The Not So Incredible: neglecting both Crumbs and Species to play the downbeat Yahweh. Yahweh is great and the graphics that have been added since Leg 1 are amazing. However, it keeps them on the main stage now and the song may actually be better in the middle of the set a la Chicago last month. The first encore started with The First Time for the 4th out of 5 MSG shows. Although I actually appreciate the song now, playing it that much at the same venue is absurd. Thank God for night 3 with the Zoo TV encore. Just don't understand why they couldn't do the Pop encore as they did in Toronto and Chicago. These shows are so predictable from Beautiful Day through One so it's important to at least have noticeably different encores from night to night in the same town. All they had to do is one Pop or even a second night of Zoo TV to achieve that. Speaking of predictability, I know Bono wants to show off his new-found vocal chops, but Miss Sarajevo does not need to be played every night. This song should be more of a treat. What about bringing Running to Stand Still back for a few shows.....this song resonates much more with the North American audience anyway. Vertigo twice.....everybody has beaten that dead horse. Think they kinda set themselves up for it after they lost the crowd with Yahweh, but Walk On/40 as they originally had planned would've been totally fine and welcomed. Last thing, we all know NYC IS the city of blinding lights, but do they have to open up with it every night for 5 straight shows here? How about All Because of You early on or start it with Vertigo as they've done. Seems that despite their markedly higher energy in NYC, they always seem to play it safe here. Think back to '01 when they never played All I Want is You instead of Bad at 5 different shows at MSG. Meanwhile every other market that had just two or more shows they would usually play AIWIY one night.

Hopefully nobody takes these as complaints as this is just a review of a great concert (just not at the level of the first 3 shows here and not at the level you would expect on the 5th night. However, there are two more shows in November pre-Turkey Day that will undoubtedly make us all, including nitpickers like me, give thanks to U2).

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