[NWOntario]

NO JOSHUA TREE. Makes total sense, also makes me sorta glad I'm sitting this one out: as much as I'd love hearing Acrobat/WGRYWH/SatS/the new stuff, seeing U2 without hearing "Streets" just doesn't sit well with me. It'd be like seeing Springsteen without hearing "Born to Run."

[potsie]

Holy shit, they did it! The first ever live performance of Acrobat, introduced by Mr. Macphisto. Bono's voice is a little rough during the first chorus, but he seems to get stronger and more confident as the song progresses. The band sounds great and the Edge absolutely nails the solo.

Did he ever! Edge was fantastic. I'm sure Bono will improve his end if they continue to include it in the setlist and he becomes more comfortable with the song.

[direwolf74]

Last night in San Jose they played Red Flag Day and Gloria for the first time on this tour. Due to the nature of their shows, the setlists don't change much obviously. But it's always cool to see a couple of surprises thrown in.

Red Flag Day is such a great f'n song. Reminds me of the October/War era. The Edge even breaks out his old Gibson Explorer for this one:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzt2JBT4c6c">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzt2JBT4c6c</a><!-- m -->

[direwolf74]

For anyone that didn't get a chance to hear the SiriusXM broadcast of U2's Apollo Theater show the other night, here ya go. You're welcome.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://mega.nz/#!NstFALQD!GcjiVBvQCBAMn1LmVWR0fz7EbXYh0Gt9lKZe4z3M4OM">https://mega.nz/#!NstFALQD!GcjiVBvQCBAM ... KZe4z3M4OM</a><!-- m -->

Setlist:

I Will Follow
The Electric Co.
Out Of Control
All Because Of You
Vertigo
Elevation
Beautiful Day
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Get Out Of Your Own Way
American Soul
Angel Of Harlem
Desire
When Love Comes To Town
Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
Every Breaking Wave
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way

[NWOntario]

For anyone that didn't get a chance to hear the SiriusXM broadcast of U2's Apollo Theater show the other night, here ya go. You're welcome.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://mega.nz/#!NstFALQD!GcjiVBvQCBAMn1LmVWR0fz7EbXYh0Gt9lKZe4z3M4OM">https://mega.nz/#!NstFALQD!GcjiVBvQCBAM ... KZe4z3M4OM</a><!-- m -->

Setlist:

I Will Follow
The Electric Co.
Out Of Control
All Because Of You
Vertigo
Elevation
Beautiful Day
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Get Out Of Your Own Way
American Soul
Angel Of Harlem
Desire
When Love Comes To Town
Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
Every Breaking Wave
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way

That's a killer setlist. How'd they sound??

[direwolf74]

For anyone that didn't get a chance to hear the SiriusXM broadcast of U2's Apollo Theater show the other night, here ya go. You're welcome.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://mega.nz/#!NstFALQD!GcjiVBvQCBAMn1LmVWR0fz7EbXYh0Gt9lKZe4z3M4OM">https://mega.nz/#!NstFALQD!GcjiVBvQCBAM ... KZe4z3M4OM</a><!-- m -->

Setlist:

I Will Follow
The Electric Co.
Out Of Control
All Because Of You
Vertigo
Elevation
Beautiful Day
Pride (In The Name Of Love)
Get Out Of Your Own Way
American Soul
Angel Of Harlem
Desire
When Love Comes To Town
Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
Every Breaking Wave
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way

That's a killer setlist. How'd they sound??

They sound great, especially when they bring out the full horn section for Angel of Harlem and Love Comes to Town.

Not sure if you missed the download link I posted above? Recorded straight from the broadcast, so it's A+ quality. Enjoy!

[senrab]

I saw both shows in DC last month. I thought it was a beautiful production but the way the show is designed doesn’t leave much room for much variation at all. Only one song was rotated out. I was happy to see Gloria after a long time. The return of MacPhisto and finally getting to see Acrobat live blew my mind, that song was perfect. The intro to the show used imagery and loud sounds of MRI scans which was really heavy - and many die hard fans were wondering if this was a hint at Bono’s “brush with mortality” at the end of 2016 which he has refused to elaborate on. I also loved the arrangement of Pride this time around - Edge and Adam “popped up” by surprise at the sides of the arena on their own mini stages while Bono shouted “This is America” as video of the 1960s civil rights marchers came up on the screen.

For the second night, my seat was directly at the other end of the arena (5 rows behind the e-stage) so my view was dead center. During I Will Follow, I just took it all in and stared at them, knowing that this is probably the last time I would be seeing them live for a long time. 4 guys in their late 50s playing a song they wrote when they were kids and still nailing it. Edge was jumping around like crazy playing that Explorer.

It did feel weird without the JT songs, but I saw that show 3x last year and U2’s huge catalog made up for that anyway. The casual fans around me were surprised at the end - “is that it?” This was definitely not a show for casual fans or fans who loved them in the 80s. I think I only counted 5 or 6 songs from the 80s, everything else was Achtung Baby onward and 8 (!) Songs from their new album.

It will be interesting to see how they adjust this show for Europe. The Get Out of Your Own Way - American Soul narrative but doesn’t seem like it would work in Europe. I’m surprised they kept it in for the shows in Montreal.

All in all, I preferred the IE tour 3 years ago to this one. IE was more freewheeling with last minute surprises, deep cuts, and tons of interaction with the audience. EI felt extremely scripted from beginning to end.

[potsie]

I saw both shows in DC last month. I thought it was a beautiful production but the way the show is designed doesn’t leave much room for much variation at all. Only one song was rotated out. I was happy to see Gloria after a long time. The return of MacPhisto and finally getting to see Acrobat live blew my mind, that song was perfect. The intro to the show used imagery and loud sounds of MRI scans which was really heavy - and many die hard fans were wondering if this was a hint at Bono’s “brush with mortality” at the end of 2016 which he has refused to elaborate on. I also loved the arrangement of Pride this time around - Edge and Adam “popped up” by surprise at the sides of the arena on their own mini stages while Bono shouted “This is America” as video of the 1960s civil rights marchers came up on the screen.

For the second night, my seat was directly at the other end of the arena (5 rows behind the e-stage) so my view was dead center. During I Will Follow, I just took it all in and stared at them, knowing that this is probably the last time I would be seeing them live for a long time. 4 guys in their late 50s playing a song they wrote when they were kids and still nailing it. Edge was jumping around like crazy playing that Explorer.

It did feel weird without the JT songs, but I saw that show 3x last year and U2’s huge catalog made up for that anyway. The casual fans around me were surprised at the end - “is that it?” This was definitely not a show for casual fans or fans who loved them in the 80s. I think I only counted 5 or 6 songs from the 80s, everything else was Achtung Baby onward and 8 (!) Songs from their new album.

It will be interesting to see how they adjust this show for Europe. The Get Out of Your Own Way - American Soul narrative but doesn’t seem like it would work in Europe. I’m surprised they kept it in for the shows in Montreal.

All in all, I preferred the IE tour 3 years ago to this one. IE was more freewheeling with last minute surprises, deep cuts, and tons of interaction with the audience. EI felt extremely scripted from beginning to end.

:thumb: Great review! Thanks for sharing. I'm surprised that they are able to find room for 8 new songs in the setlist but I guess if you clear all the JT material out, it leaves a fair amount of space. I'm even more surprised that they are closing with two new songs with "Love is Bigger" and "13" following "One" in the encore. I find that a strange way to end the show.

[senrab]

I saw both shows in DC last month. I thought it was a beautiful production but the way the show is designed doesn’t leave much room for much variation at all. Only one song was rotated out. I was happy to see Gloria after a long time. The return of MacPhisto and finally getting to see Acrobat live blew my mind, that song was perfect. The intro to the show used imagery and loud sounds of MRI scans which was really heavy - and many die hard fans were wondering if this was a hint at Bono’s “brush with mortality” at the end of 2016 which he has refused to elaborate on. I also loved the arrangement of Pride this time around - Edge and Adam “popped up” by surprise at the sides of the arena on their own mini stages while Bono shouted “This is America” as video of the 1960s civil rights marchers came up on the screen.

For the second night, my seat was directly at the other end of the arena (5 rows behind the e-stage) so my view was dead center. During I Will Follow, I just took it all in and stared at them, knowing that this is probably the last time I would be seeing them live for a long time. 4 guys in their late 50s playing a song they wrote when they were kids and still nailing it. Edge was jumping around like crazy playing that Explorer.

It did feel weird without the JT songs, but I saw that show 3x last year and U2’s huge catalog made up for that anyway. The casual fans around me were surprised at the end - “is that it?” This was definitely not a show for casual fans or fans who loved them in the 80s. I think I only counted 5 or 6 songs from the 80s, everything else was Achtung Baby onward and 8 (!) Songs from their new album.

It will be interesting to see how they adjust this show for Europe. The Get Out of Your Own Way - American Soul narrative but doesn’t seem like it would work in Europe. I’m surprised they kept it in for the shows in Montreal.

All in all, I preferred the IE tour 3 years ago to this one. IE was more freewheeling with last minute surprises, deep cuts, and tons of interaction with the audience. EI felt extremely scripted from beginning to end.

:thumb: Great review! Thanks for sharing. I'm surprised that they are able to find room for 8 new songs in the setlist but I guess if you clear all the JT material out, it leaves a fair amount of space. I'm even more surprised that they are closing with two new songs with "Love is Bigger" and "13" following "One" in the encore. I find that a strange way to end the show.

No problem. I loved Love is Bigger the first time I heard it, and I love it even more live because you hear way more of Edge's guitar. I don't know if you have seen video of what happens next, but for 13 Bono walks down the catwalk to the e-stage where there is a "dollhouse" version of his childhood home on Cedarwood Road. During the "darkness gathers around the light" line, he opens up the house to take out the lightbulb that was used during the IE tour, holds it, swings it around, and finishes the song while walking off the stage into the tunnel. The rest of the band walks off into the darkness, and they don't come back again for applause. That's what caught people so off guard.

Adam also said in a recent interview that the band are perfectly comfortable leaving the JT songs out. He said City of Blinding Lights now feels like their Where the Streets Have No Name, and You're the Best Thing About Me could be their With or Without You. This is where they're at, like it or not. A very bold move to completely remove your most successful album to date so late into your career as a touring band.

Here's a [not so great] photo I took at the end of the show.

35792907_10101782092674225_7466465151315607552_o.jpg Size: 216.32 KB  Downloads: 51

[potsie]

No problem. I loved Love is Bigger the first time I heard it, and I love it even more live because you hear way more of Edge's guitar. I don't know if you have seen video of what happens next, but for 13 Bono walks down the catwalk to the e-stage where there is a "dollhouse" version of his childhood home on Cedarwood Road. During the "darkness gathers around the light" line, he opens up the house to take out the lightbulb that was used during the IE tour, holds it, swings it around, and finishes the song while walking off the stage into the tunnel. The rest of the band walks off into the darkness, and they don't come back again for applause. That's what caught people so off guard.

Adam also said in a recent interview that the band are perfectly comfortable leaving the JT songs out. He said City of Blinding Lights now feels like their Where the Streets Have No Name, and You're the Best Thing About Me could be their With or Without You. This is where they're at, like it or not. A very bold move to completely remove your most successful album to date so late into your career as a touring band.

City of Blinding Lights is always one of my favourite U2 concert moments. In a live setting, that song sends chills down my spine, almost as much as anything on JT does.

I like where they are right now as a band. That they are playing most of 'Experience' speaks to their confidence in the new songs and their self-perception as a relevant band with something to say that is still worth hearing. Despite the brief look back with the JT Tour, they refuse to calcify and become a greatest hits act. They are very much forward looking, much like the Hip were.

On a side note, I recently listened to the deluxe version of 'Experience' on Spotify and was reminded of how much I love the falsetto hook of 'Ordinary Love'. The lyrics ("Your heart is on my sleeve Did you put there with a magic marker) are barely worthy of a Coldplay song, let alone U2, but I love Bono's singing on it.

[senrab]

That’s always been my favorite lyric from Ordinary Love!

I think the closest they came to having a “hits” tour was the final leg of the 360 Tour in North America in 2011. They were over 2 years removed from the album it was supposed to support (No Line On the Horizon), and the audience wasn’t into it. This leg was also supposed to wrap up in 2010 but Bono had a spinal injury and the entire leg had to be pushed back one year. I think that leg only had 3 songs from NLOTH, the rest were old workhorses and thoughtfully reworked standbys (like opening the show with a brand new arrangement of Even Better Than the Real Thing, bringing back Zooropa, etc.)

The JT Tour was sort of forward looking in a weird way because none of the songs on the album were accompanied by archival footage or photos of the band from 1987 on the massive panoramic video screen. They all felt as current as when they were released, especially side 2 even though none of those songs were played very much after the 80s. Every song had brand new, relevant footage by Anton Corbijn along with brilliant re-arrangements of songs like Red Hill Mining Town and Exit. Bono’s frequent line before I Still Haven’t Found went something like “here we still are, here you still are, nothing’s changed, everything’s changed!”

I do like this new trend of full album concerts. The only ones I’ve seen so far were FC in 2015 and the Joshua Tree 2017.

[direwolf74]

Thanks for the review, Senrab! Glad you enjoyed the show. Unfortunately I didn't get to see them on this tour, so I have to live vicariously through others. I actually haven't seen them live since the '05 Vertigo tour.

Thankfully I have plenty of great sounding bootlegs (and DVDs) from the last few tours to satisfy my live U2 fix. I really hope this isn't their last kick at the can, as I feel like I need to see them at least one more time while I'm still alive. After the last couple of tours and the Innocence/Experience album cycles, I have a feeling they're gonna go dormant again for the next 4 or 5 years before we see another album from them. I hope it's not that long, but this is U2 we're talking about. Those fuckers take waaaaay too long between records.

Speaking of which, have any of you guys heard the "U Talkin' U2 to Me" podcast with comedians Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott? It's pretty great, and also very funny. Both guys are massive U2 fans and their in-depth analysis of the albums and various tours is pretty obsessive and entertaining. In between the music talk, they also crack a lot of jokes and veer off into short comedy bits. They have dozens of episodes so far, each one covering a specific album from Boy all the way up to Experience, including the latest tour. The band themselves are actually fans of their podcast and have now appeared on the show twice.

Anyway, their latest episode is an interview with the boys in NY during their run of shows at Madison Square Garden. Check it out here:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://www.earwolf.com/episode/u-talkin-u2-to-me-experience-innocence-tour-pt-2-with-u2/">https://www.earwolf.com/episode/u-talki ... 2-with-u2/</a><!-- m -->


If you like what they do with U2, they have another similar podcast about R.E.M., which they're currently in the middle of.

[Moof_Milker]

Speaking of which, have any of you guys heard the "U Talkin' U2 to Me" podcast with comedians Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott? It's pretty great, and also very funny.

How does it feel to be in REM? It feels good!

I second this podcast. It's hilarious...and when they do eventually get to talking about the music, they always have insightful things to say. Makes me wish these two were Hip fans so they could do a R U Talkin' Hip 2 Me? podcast. Wait, is this another episode of R U Talkin' Hip 2 Me?

[direwolf74]

Speaking of which, have any of you guys heard the "U Talkin' U2 to Me" podcast with comedians Scott Aukerman and Adam Scott? It's pretty great, and also very funny.

How does it feel to be in REM? It feels good!

I second this podcast. It's hilarious...and when they do eventually get to talking about the music, they always have insightful things to say. Makes me wish these two were Hip fans so they could do a R U Talkin' Hip 2 Me? podcast. Wait, is this another episode of R U Talkin' Hip 2 Me?

My favorites are I Love Films and You're Bein' Fuckin' Rude

[SRK]

I saw both the I+E and E+I tours in Montreal in 2015 and last month, and I have to echo what senrab said about the ending of the show...I wasn't too enthralled with the idea of the show being so 'new song' heavy, but I went because they said the two tours were supposed to be a combined story, and I wanted to see how it ended. The first tour as a show was way better, I thought (mainly because I liked the setlist better...out of control! even better! angel of harlem! Bad!) but the experience show was pretty damn amazing in its own right. The ending, where Bono opens the roof of the model cedarwood road home, and the lightbulb comes out, I have to admit I got completely choked up and and that took me completely by surprise. A perfect ending.

The only part I didn't really enjoy was the American soul part. Partly because a) the song sucks and b) we're not even in America. Also, love is bigger etc isn't that great and doesn't really feel like it warrants being an encore song. (Also, they botched the sound on a few songs during the night, possibly because the edge was moving around so much? His guitar was almost entirely inaudible during 'until the end of the world'. (Possibly because Bono was looking for the sound of drum and bass?.....I'll show myself out.)