I Love the El: Green Light, 7-11

I saw U2 last Thursday night at the Meadowlands. Even though it was a spontaneous occurrence, it still felt kinda routine -- U2 are a family favorite and there will be an attempt to see them on every tour. Like, I wasn't surprised I was seeing them, even though I didn't know I was seeing them until two days before the show.

The show, though, was far from routine. The last two U2 tours have been about making arenas feel like clubs by using a really cool theater-in-the-round thing to bring the audience in. On the Elevation Tour, it was the heart-shaped stage. On the Vertigo Tour, it was an enormous, white O. The 360 Tour brought the music outside, under an enormous claw/spaceship/crab.
I just thought I'd share some observations from the night.

There was some Popmart-like detachment from the audience. I don't know if it was the claw, the selections from the new album or the scale of the whole thing... the show was more about the music's interaction with the elaborate stage than with the crowd. I was kind of taken aback at first, but by the end of the show, I was pretty into it. It was a spectacle and I really liked that they changed the game up a little bit. The setlist could've used some tweeking, though. Like on the last tour, I loved the inclusion of weirder, early cuts like "An Cat Dubh" and "Out of Control." And everyone's been noting the lack of cuts from Zooropa and Achtung Baby. And not that I wanted it, but they didn't even play "Pride." I think they lost everyone at least once during the set. For example, they played this remix of "I Know I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" that had them wandering around the stage with bongos and stuff... everyone was trying to figure out what was going on, if they were even performing the song live. And of all songs to follow this little dance party with, they picked "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
I'm wondering when the tour will come where we start hearing the unheralded songs from All That You Can't Leave Behind live again, like "Wild Honey." And "Yahweh" was such an amazing closer on the last tour, I wish they could have held onto it for this tour. Instead they left us with "Moment of Surrender," a perfectly AWESOME song from the new record but it's a really momentum and mood killer and didn't have me begging for another encore. Speaking of last tour, they also had opened the first encore with a pretty unbeatable selection of songs from Achtung like "The Fly," complete with Zoo Tv graphics and all that shit. It was tons of fun to see, I wouldn'tve minded experiencing that sort of thing again.
HOWEVER: It's great to still have "Walk On" as a centerpiece of the show. And they opened the second encore with "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)." Jesus Christ. Honestly it brought me to tears, that song harbors so much pain and to have Bono swinging from a microphone in front of 80,000 people, singing that bridge...wow. It was really good to have that song back in rotation for the first time since 1993.

I can't believe we didn't get "Your Blue Room"