by Mike

The concert itself seemed almost incidental after our close brush with the band outside the United Center just 3 1/2 hours before they took the stage. Here are just two of the many photos I managed to get. Could someone please explain this? How is it that you can go to a major league baseball game and stand at the field level before the game, and put your child up on your shoulders and seek an autograph from one of these baseball players and not only will they not give you the autograph, but they won’t even make eye conatact with you or acknowledge that you or your child even exist? And then you go to see arguably the greatest rock band on the planet, and prior to the show they get out of their Town Cars and Pathfinders and mingle with their devoted fans, shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for photos, all the while being very cordial and gracious? The five hour drive from St. Louis was worth it for this alone. I didn’t even need to see the concert at that point. But, hey, since I had a ticket I went in anyway. Now, I’m not going to go on and on about the songs, or the setlist and how it differed from the show I saw in Phoenix two weeks earlier. Let me just say this: when they take the stage to that deafening roar of the crowd and launch into Elevation, it is an experience that defies critical review. Music such as this, performed such as this, is not an intellectual matter, it is an emotional, spiritual thing. If you have tickets for an upcoming show, be prepared. Be prepared to be “elevated,” taken to a higher place, higher than the sun, for two hours (or longer--it’s now been two days and I still haven’t come down).

Outside the United Center, 3 hours before the show, Bono and Larry mingle with their fans as two ordinary, accessible, humble Irishmen. But when they take the stage, you have to believe, this is not the music of mere mortals....

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