by Atif Ahbab

'The night we almost wrecked the show'

The first night in Montreal was, in one word, LOUD! I wasn't on the floor and we had not-so-great seats but having seen them in a stadium before, its great to be so close to the band. The acoustics at the Molson Centre were less than perfect but I love how throughout the day and outside the arena, the entire area is gripped with U2 fever. Bono and the boys were in top form but unfortunately he had a tough time trying to sing. What am I talking about? The crowd was unbelievably loud.

I can't really blame people since in more than one occasion I found myself screaming along to the songs. But at one point I realized that we could hardly hear the man sing. The crowd sang along to every song, literally! It does sound great in certain parts of a given song to have 20,000 voices in unison singing along but not when its throughout the entire show. Anyways, at one point I started to feel that Bono wasn't singing properly since you could hardly hear him over the noise of the crowd. Soon enough, Bono confirmed what I was thinking. No, he didn't say 'Shut up, please.' Instead, towards the end, he says that there's an instrument that sort of measures how much noise the audience is making on a given night and without a doubt, this was the loudest crowd in the tour so far. To which, yes, you guessed it, the whole place erupted!

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the concert largely because of the energy of the crowd but lets just say that this won't turn out to be a live video or album for official release because Bono had more than just The Edge backing him up on vocals. I hope we're a bit more careful as to what the guys on stage are trying to do on the second night here.

Anyways, the fun stuff. A very pleasant surprise when Bono sang parts of 'Shes a Mystery to Me' which he penned for Roy Orbison. 'Bad' was awesome. At one point he introduces Larry as Baby Spice, Adam as Posh Spice and asks The Edge whether he's Sporty or Scary. I don't know if he's done this at a concert before but at the end of one of the songs (I think it was Fly) Bono, in true showmanship, goes and sticks himself against one of the screens at the back of the stage and you end up seeing this really funky pose of him against a bright blue background. Looked very cool indeed. At one point he takes a camera from a fan in the front and snaps away some pictures. I think he even took a pair of sunglasses from a girl and puts them on.

They sang 'Out of Control' from Boy as they did on the 2nd show in Toronto but judging by the crowd's response, many probably had never heard it before. I think that if you keep on churning out the wrong kind of music as they've been doing in the last 3 albums (with a few exceptions like Stay, etc), you'll keep getting the wrong kind of crowd. The band says they're striving to make the best album ever but at the rate they're going, it doesn't seem like they'll find what they're looking for. However, having said that, the crowd did react a lot better to the older stuff compared to the newer and on the whole, it was a remarkable experience.

I think the setlist was as follows:
Elevation, Beautiful Day, Until the End of the World, Discotheque/Staring at the Sun, Mysterious Ways, Stuck In a Moment, Kite, Gone, New York, Out of Control, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Sweetest Thing, Desire, Stay, Bad/Norwegian Wood, Where the Streets Have No Name, Pride
Encore: Bullet the Blue Sky, With or Without You, The Fly, One/She's a Mystery To Me, Walk On

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