Concert highlights for this humble reviewer? Having watched it at least once a week since i purchased it in 1994, and having just bought the DVD release last week, for me it's still 'Until The End Of The World', a song which just swamps the senses. Interestingly, 'Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World' which was played between 'Numb' and 'Angel Of Harlem' was omitted from the official release, most likely due to the fact that the girl Bono sprayed champagne over was under-age. It's interesting to note however that by far the loudest cheer of the night was for when Bono began his usual channel-surfing and happened upon some footage of Richie Richardson being dismissed by Mark Waugh in a recent Australia vs West Indies cricket match! The show is balanced absolutely magnificently, opening with a barrage of 'new' songs (although Achtung Baby had been released for 25 months by that stage) before switching to the acoustic set and finishing the main set with the absolute classic double punch of 'Where The Streeets Have No Name' and 'Pride'. From the opening video sequence the crowd was unbelievably responsive- probably bettered only by the crowd in their recent release 'Live At Slane Castle'. By the time the tour reached here it was November 1993 (the band had even used a break between the North American and European stadium legs to record the Grammy-winning LP 'Zooropa') it was been tweaked and perfected to be the most perfect of perfect gigs ever recorded. the days of a big speaker stack and an out-of-sync screen in stadiums were gone. It was only a matter of time (well, a few months) before the show was let loose on the stadiums across North America and Europe, and everything about the stage show was magnified to the extreme- 36 massive screens, 11 Trabant cars, basically their own traveling satellite TV station. ![]() U2 had deliberately not played any shows in America since 1987, but with their 're-invented' sound and look they were suddenly the only major draw-card anyone cared about in 1992- box office records were smashed. ![]() ![]() After humble beginnings in an arena in Lakeland Florida in early 1992, the show evolved and grew into a monster that evolved and matched the continual popularity of their seminal masterpiece, Achtung Baby. Paul McCartney, Madonna and Michael Jackson all brought their massive stadium shows over, but by far the most exciting and magnificent tour to come was U2 and their Zoo TV tour- which to this day is still a benchmark for all tours to be judged on, including their own subsequent Popmart, Elevation and Vertigo tours. "Beautiful Day" and "Vertigo" allowed the band to trade politics for pleasure, but the night closed with U2's anthem-to-end-all-anthems: "One."Īs the word "one" flashed on the screen in many different languages, U2 were able to bring home their central message of togetherness and understanding.Īs the word "one" transformed into many different languages and a Wael Ghonim quote splashed across the humongous screen: "The power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power.Stadium concerts in Australia were a rarity until the early nineties when the Aussie dollar plummeted and suddenly it was financially viable for big international acts to ship all their steel and speakers over the Pacific. On screen, a Syrian teen said, through subtitles, "I would love to go to America because it's a very beautiful country … It's the land of dreams." They began their encore with a stirring rendition of "Miss Sarajevo," a tribute to civilians in the Bosnian War of 1995, but repurposed for the current civil war in Syria. "This city, this country have given us Irish safety and sanctuary for hundreds of years," Bono said. ![]() U2 stands in front of the largest high-resolution LED video screen ever used in a touring show during their MetLife Stadium concert, which expectedly had a social message.
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