by Daniel Loren

The Band I Always Loved But Never Saw Live

Last night, one of the few bands who has bridged the generation gap played at the United Center calling Chicago one of their homes. They blew the crowd away opening with elevation, beautiful day, and end of the world. Elevation has been their opening act throughout their entire tour, but it was still amazing to hear. As far as albums go, All That You Can’t Leave Behind is an amazing CD, they played at least 5 tracks, with four of them being my favorite and the fifth taking on a new meaning. The 5 they played were elevation, beautiful day( so good), stuck in a moment(lived on this song last semester), Peace on Earth(related to me with everything going on in Israel this last year) and New York. I never really liked New York because I thought the song was just ridiculous, “Jews and Hispanics…New York New York….” Bono pretty much made up versus to the song as he went along-”even Chicago loves New York” as the crowd went wild. I was standing in the stadium thinking I knew he was going to play this song and really did not want to hear about NY right then. When he started making up the words, he really got the crowd more involved on a greater level than the superficial level I thought he was originally trying to reach.

He also played everyone’s favorites, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Where the Streets Have No Name, Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Pride (In The Name of Love), and One. I knew he was going to pull some cheesy motif when he pulled an American flag out of the audience while singing Sunday Bloody Sunday…kind of lame, but can you blame him. Some of the songs I was surprised he played were Out of Control and Staring At the Sun. Out of Control was one of their first songs, so it was a pleasant surprise. I haven’t checked the other play lists, but he had so much energy while singing that song, I’d be surprised if they played it recently. And Staring at the Sun was one of their only mainstream songs from the album POP. I always liked POP and didn’t think it got the respect it deserved, but that’s just me.

If you have the opportunity to go to a U2 concert on the third leg of their tour, take it. They give an amazing show and play what you want to hear.
--Daniel

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