by Thomas

This show (Minneapolis) was beyond what a concert is supposed to be...for me it bordered on a religious experience. I will never forget, to my dying day, the sight of Bono bounding and leaping around the stage as the band charged into "Elevation." It was joy manifest. Bono has something that most people only wish they could possess, and it's plainly evident when he is on a stage before an audience. He carries that intangible spiritual power called joy, and that power was in plain manifestation at the Target Center. This concert was simply a celebration of joy.
To hear the songs of youth again, and to hear them sound just as fresh and meaningful as when I first heard them 20 years ago...this was catharsis. "I Will Follow," "Streets...," "Bad/40," "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," "New Years'Day" and all the others from the past...it was like hearing them for the first time again...just as powerful and affecting now as then. And the acoustic arrangements of "Stay" and "Desire"...these should have silenced any arguements that a U2 tune can't stand up on its own without heavy production. Of course, all the new tunes from the new album were not only powerful, but in the humble opinion of this writer, signal not so much a return to old sounds and triumphs gone by, but the beginning of new and more mature phase for the boys from Dublin.
In recent years, I stopped listening to rock-n-roll simply because, in my eyes, (and to risk sounding cliched) it had lost it's relevance. U2 came to Minneapolis and in two hours, restored my faith and confidence that rock music can still mean something besides writhing teenage bubblegum beauties and the empty, trite melodies from the latest incaration to emerge from the Orlando Boy-Band machine.
5/1/01, Target Center, Minneapolis, was truly Elevation.

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