by sacr

Excellent concert.

Zoo TV was about theatricality and conceptual framework. The 360 tour is a lot more about playing well and creating intimacy between the band and the audience. I may prefer the former, but when you see a band like U2 firing on all cylinders, with a beautiful and incredibly functional stage set, it's difficult to complain.

Bono was in great voice, hitting incredible notes and adding great snippets and improvisations to the songs. He is also finding his stride in terms of using the stage and finding out lots of clever ways of using it.

UC, UF and COBL were great, thanks to the performances and sound augmented by the spectacular lighting. COBL is somehow sounding really good in this tour, which was surprising as I've never liked the song much.

Crazy tonight was a revelation, as it is not the best song ever or even the best remix ever, yet it is a lot of fun live, and the band have a great time playing it (and on Edge's case trying out dance moves to it).

UV is wonderful, and Bono's ad-libbing over the original is really nice as it somehow fits perfectly with the original spirit of the song (it's a bit as though the ad-libs came from a lost original Hansa demo).

Moment of Surrender is one of the risky moments of the show, as it is an unusual song, and it's brave to put it as the closer. To my mind it worked really well, perhaps the emotion of the song was heightened by the fact that by then it was raining more and more yet the audience were not going anywhere. I would love it if they took even more risks and played some of the stranger songs off the new album, but as I said at the beginning, it's difficult to complain when a concert has such a great atmosphere.

They are clearly still at an early point in the tour, it will be fascinating to see how it develops. Catch them if you can, myself I'll be seeing them again at Wembley.

Organisation at Stade de France was fairly bad (queues were not managed at all, leading to an agglomeration of people at each gate), and the audience in the front pit was a bit tense and competitive about their positions. A lot of people would refuse to give you way if you wanted to get out (during the wait for the band of course, not during the show!) to access the toilets or get water, etc...

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