by Thomas

The night was unbelievable. Kudos to the light designer. The lights were more impressive here than in any concert I have seen in quite some time, especially during Bad and 'Streets. Highlights included: an inspired rendition of New York, an 'artsy' song that I didn't think would translate well to live performances; a beautiful acoustic interpretation of Stay; Until the End of the World, a personal favorite, was fairly straightforward rock, and included the best guitar work of the night by Edge; I've probably heard 'Streets three million times, but the intro still sends chills down my spine; New Year's Day was not as flawless as it was during the ZooTV tour, but it's still a great song; if In a Little While was indeed the last song Joey Ramone heard, he picked a fabulous song to go out on. Now, as good as the show was, there were lowlights, although this may be being a tad picky: Desire needed some more instrumentation, or some more energy, and it would have been interesting to have seen Van Diemen's Land here instead; Bono went down an octave during the climax of Bad, making the refrain "I'm wide awake, I'm not sleeping" sound rather ironic; I Will Follow was far too slow, which Bono tried to atone for by ad-libbing some lines during the bridge, something about "how I felt the first time." As an added bonus, I witnessed one of the most sappiest moments I've ever seen on stage. During the sound check, I saw a security guy hand an Irish flag to some person in the heart which, needless to say, was the flag retrieved by Bono during Sunday Bloody Sunday, and which was then cradled and laid to rest by the piano. The song itself was fantastic, despite the singer's best efforts to distract from the raw power of the music.

So, after it was all said and done, my life was certainly not transformed by the show, but I can't remember the last time I had this much fun on a Tuesday night. See you at Slane (fingers crossed - let there be a second show, please)

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