by Joe RfromSTL

After 4 Elevations shows in the seats, I was pretty pumped to be on the floor tonight. We didn't get in the Bomb Shelter, but were pretty close to the tip of the ellipse. I didn't like it as much as Zoo TV or some of the Elevation shows, but it was still a very awesome show!

Blinding Lights and Vertigo were great openers and sounded great. I'm a big fan of U2 mixing songs up live and I'm sure some people love the way they are playing Elevation on this tour, but I would have rather the song been played full-on from the beginning. A song like Elevation needs to rock from start to finish.

I wasn't sure I wanted to hear An Cat Dubh/Into The Heart live. I was wrong. Very good live. And, especially in the context of this tour's theme, it takes on a whole new relevency. Also, seeing the little girl Bono brought on stage and a lot of other little kids there, I realized I'm probably not the only freak who's children go to bed to a U2 Lullaby Mix instead of nursery rhymes.

Other big highlights for me were Miracle Drug (another review said Bono was overdubbed during the last verse, that's Edge singing buddy), Sometimes, Running to Stand Still with piano (although I still like the Zoo TV rendition best), the Zoo TV-esque Encore and finally hearing 40 live!

I could have done without Yahweh, or atleast this take on it which seemed like a jumbled mess (maybe drummers shouldn't play keyboards.) I just think With or Without You or I Will Follow could be more powerful leading into 40.

I keep reading other reviews where people think something is missing from Streets (or the whole show, but Streets especially), but they can't put their finger on what it is? Here's my take. I think its that the blinding, full power lights on the crowd at the beginning of Streets that we have all grown to expect, even need, doesn't happen. The rush one gets from this lighting effect towards the beginning of Streets is almost as great as seeing your first child born. When it doesn't happen, its like blue balls.

Also a quick comment on GA line up at the United Center. The whole process (atleast at UC)lacks organization. There was some group going around writing numbers on wrists but this was nothing official and atleast where I was in the line no one gave them any creadance. Some people said the person giving the numbers out was just some line nazi anyway. It didn't look like the United Center gave the number any merit when we officially lined up either. Were there a bunch of fights or ugliness because of the lack of a better official policy? No. But a lack of violence doesn't mean you have a policy in place that "worked very well last time" Rob Staverman. It just means you probably have a lot of unheard complaints. I've read where some venues hand out official numbered wrist bands and tell people to come back at 4pm or so, where a random number is picked to be first, etc. Would this be best everywhere? I think the United Center gets a big F on GA Lineup Policy. And U2 Tour Company gets an even bigger F because they should be more involved in creating a universal policy for the tour.

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