by Solo

Hmmm. Bloated. Canned. Lifeless. Self Conscious. Not sure where to start. I keep giving U2 shows another chance to blow my mind like that first one way back on the Joshua Tree tour. Took a long hiatus before seeing them on the elevation tour in San Jose (not bad) and the Vertigo tour in Las Vegas (not good). I thought this stadium show would be the one. Not so. In fact, it was more like the requiem for both my U2 concertgoing and probably much of my U2 listening. I'll start with the set list. As U2 continues to put out albums, their great body of work gets diluted a bit more every time, and as they play more from the new albums the set just plain has no flow. One minute I'm dancing my ass off and the next I'm having to suffer through Unknown Caller. And then there is the crowd. The band came out with Breate, a song I love, and I could not contain myself. I was in the inner circle. Unfortunatley, everyone around me was as stiff as a board. In fact two guys behind me almost got into a brawl about who had more of a right to be standing in a cetain spot. Bad vibes. So we bailed from the bullshit of the inner circle, which, by the way, is totally overrated, and went to the back of the floor where we could shake it with plenty of room, and back there we danced amongst zombies standing board still while holding up cell phones or cameras in order to document the spactacle of which they were a very passive part. And a spectacle it was. The set was gorgeous (I'll give them that), the night was gorgeous, and it was so much better being outside rather than in a basketball arena. But the godddamn too cool for school LA crowd was a TOTAL dud. Lame set. Lame crowd. So I am quitting U2. Way too much time and money for way too little reward. I actually feel like a complete idiot, falling yet again for the hope of a transcendent show, for the possibility of 100,000 people coming together with electric energy, only to be terribly disappointed by the bloated lameness of it all. But hey, I'm kind of slow when it comes to things like this. I should have stopped at the age of 15 after having seen them on the Joshua Tree tour. What an amazing show. But maybe a show in Sao Paolo or Buenos Aires would be the place to go to get that really great collective energy. Somewhere outside of the USA. But I will never know. I have brought my A game to every one of these shows. I love all their music. I love to dance. I love to sing and shout and have fun. But when it comes to U2 shows, the soul is totally gone. This show is kind of like a really really expensive day at an adult amusement park ($9 Bud Lights!) with one ride that never really delivers the goods. P.S. The Black Eyed Peas totally suck.

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