9:32 a.m. - 2005-10-24
U2, a review.
Well, the entry you've all been waiting for...or at least a few of you.
THE U2 CONCERT REVIEW, J-Do Style
Well, first of all, let's just say it was amazing, of course. There is no comparison. No parallel.
J-Di picked me up and we headed to Southside for a quick bite and drink before the show. We then rode into downtown, blasting the newest CD and screaming about how Bono was IN Pittsburgh at that very moment.
The opening band was Damien Marley and he was very good. It was reggae/rock and quite catchy and dance-tastic. Damien has dred locks down past his booty and was very cool-looking. Urban-chic rasta, if you will. Toward the end, he brought out more of the Marley brothers...boy, Bob was a busy man back in the day. They covered a couple classics, but did mostly original stuff.
I introduced myself to the people sitting next to us; a large multi generational family, and it turned out the man who was the patriarch is buusiness partners with the man who was kind enough to get me and J-Di tickets for the show. The man was probably 55+ and was the biggest U2 fan I've ever personally met besides myself. He's been seeing their shows for 15 years or so and wanted to bring his whole family. Aside from "evangelizing" me a little bit, which, for a person who already definitively loves Jesus, is always amusing...aside from that, he was a great person to be next to for the concert. He danced more often and more enthusiastically than I did. Our seats were great. The way the show is set up, physically, is that there is a ramp/stage that archs out into the crowd. Probably about 200 or so people are actually inside the loop thing, and then others are crowded up to it on the floor level. The sides of the loop that run somewhat parallel to the seats of the arena are only about 10 feet away from the first row of seats. We were 4th row, so at times I'd guess we were only about 25 feet from Bono, Edge, Adam and even Larry who took a walk out to a drum kit that was briefly out there at one point.
The lights dimmed, Edge came out and started playing. The opening bars of City of Blinding Lights were incredible. Lights flashing, metallic confetti glittering and swirling everywhere, Bono magically appearing at the end of the eliptical shaped stage that extended out into the crowd. I started bawling. Jumping up and down and crying. Shamelessly.
There were the usual concert annoyances like some smelly drunk guy who kept screaming in J-Di's ear and bumping into her (it was interfering with my very expensive experience so I had to regulate which was, to my surprise, totally effective...upon my treating him like one of my junior high students, he basically left and never came back...we were in the Igloo Club section...you can't just go sit somewhere else...who knows where he went.) There were also some hoochy mamas who were driving me a little crazy with their ridiculous outfits and screaming. However, I had to hand it to them...they knew every word. Even to the more obscure, older songs, like I Will Follow and Party Girl.
There were some incredible moments, like when Bono had everyone take out their cell phones and the whole place, dark otherwise, glowed beautifully with blue and green twinkles. Bono was quite conversational, commenting on Pittsburgh's yellow bridges and complimenting us on the improvements in our hometown. "City's lookin' good," he said. He pulled a young guy up who had somehow communicated that he wanted to play "Party Girl." He pulled him up out of the crowd, got him a guitar and the guy played perfectly. It was really amazing, just to think about how that must be the most exciting moment of that guy's life. Can you imagine just strumming away, all four members of U2 totally focused on you, letting you fucking LEAD them. Ok, sorry. I just got really excited again. Is it ok if I quit my job and my whole life in general and just follow them around like a baby golden retriever?
In some ways a rock concert is a rock concert, but U2, for me at least, is always a spiritual experience. Whether it's live or coming out of a juke box. Where the Streets Have No Name, unexpectedly coming on a radio somewhere can move me to tears. U2 is so big and so popular, it happens fairly often, and so I can't really just let myself go everytime I'm in a bar and someone plays Sunday Bloody Sunday. But it's there. A flood of emotion is just sort of always available...some crazy combination of a reaction against injustice, the pleading, longing hope that someday it might somehow get better, the joy at seeing people who have money and power really give a shit about this stuff, a man who dresses like a rock star and drinks Guinness for breakfast spends his free time demanding that decision makers pay attention to an emergency in Africa that is somehow so easily ignored. My emotions are also from the feeling of helplessness, that I can never do enough...never scratch the surface...that the opportunity to really do something, really change something might not ever present itself...that I might not ever really truly make a difference. And also, from the feeling that somehow, maybe, I just might.
