October 25, 2009: U2 on YouTube Live

Pasadena, CA
Rose Bowl

What a spectacle. Ultimately that's what I walked away with after last night's U2 show at the Rose Bowl attended by me, my cousin Eileen, her son Zach, and 95,997 of our closest friends! An amazingly over the top spectacle.

When U2 announced their tour at the beginning of the year, I shot off a note to the usual suspects to see who might be interested in going to a Bay Area gig and a few other out-of-area folks including my cousin who lives down in So Cal who promptly asked if I wanted to come down south and go to the show with her. I said sure, why not, I can do both shows. Well, good thing I decided to go for it as there was no Nor Cal date on the 2009 schedule (fortunately, one was just announced for 2010!)

So, six months or so pass from when the tickets were purchased and Saturday morning I hop in the car for the 400-mile (or so) drive down 101 to visit Eileen and see the show. I was making great time until I crossed the LA city limits. I hate LA and the traffic does nothing to endear the place to me. The last 50 or so miles took me over 90 minutes -- grrrr. But I arrived eventually and spent Saturday night visiting with family.

When I arrived Eileen told me she had been receiving frequent emails about the traffic and parking and the need to arrive early and so on and so on. She'd splurged on the premium parking and a good 4 hours before show time we hopped in the car to make the drive up to Pasadena. The drive was surprisingly easy and traffic free and we were wondering if we'd been suckers to buy the hype from the emails, but as we approached the Rose Bowl, we found that by following the directions given with the parking pass we had managed to avoid a HUGE line of cars heading in. Great! We were able to park very close to the stadium and the multitude of entry gates where we found people who'd obviously been there for hours having tailgate parties. The gates were due to open about 5, so we had about 45 minutes to kill and figure out where to go in. There were so many lines that it they all wound up merging into a huge clot which made navigating tough. Especially since we had her 11-year old son in tow.

While we were wandering around, we could hear a bit of the sound check for U2, which was fun, though I was surprised it was still going on that close to the gates opening. I suspect it was because of the YouTube webcast -- not just a sound check but a technical check. We checked out the little fair that was going on in the parking area, but it too was mobbed, so we decided to just go get in line for entry.

That was probably a good idea, even if it took about 45 minutes of waiting. I'm quite sure I've never been to a concert as big as this one -- the only time I can think of being in a crowd that big was when I went to the Super Bowl! (And I think this crowd was bigger!) By getting in shortly after the gates opened, we were able to grab some food and find our seats with little hassle. Thank goodness, since our seats were 69 rows up!

Now 69 rows up sounds like awful nosebleed seats (especially when there are only 77 rows to start with) but we were at the end of the stadium closest to the stage so they really weren't all that bad. The stage was incredible! Absolutely massive, with the now-familiar circular/elliptical stage with a catwalk that allowed some very lucky folks with General Admission tickets to be front and center. But it was also very open and there were very few obstructed views -- just the few places near the legs of the "space ship." And while the only way we could see any band members clearly was by looking at the huge video screens, being further away from the stage gave an AWESOME perspective on the whole thing. It was pretty amazing.

The opening act was The Black Eyed Peas who the best I can say is I've heard of them, I think I know a song or two, but not really much more than that. They took the stage about 7:15 and opened with one of the songs I know, "Let's Get It Started in Here." Okay, nice opener. They were very energetic and enthusiastic, but really not my thing and with so much processing on all the vocals it was hard to know if they were really singing live. I'll assume they were, but almost everything was processed and altered. The crowd was generally responsive, but it wasn't until their encore that the crowd really got rocking. Slash joined them on stage and they did a great cover of "Sweet Child of Mine." The crowd went nuts when Slash walked out and even more so when he played those first few unforgettable notes. Fergie took the role of Axl in this mix and sounded quite good on it (one of the few unprocessed vocals of the night.)

Thus amped up, the crowd eagerly awaited the arrival of U2. Shortly before the band took the stage someone started talking to the crowd and welcoming us to the show. I said to my cousin "I'll bet that's Rocko," and tried to spot who was talking down on the stage just as the person said "I'm Rocko Reedy and I'm the stage manager..." Ah... the Journey/U2 connection continues. So, anyway, Rocko welcomes us to the show and tells us it will be shown on YouTube and that LA was picked because of how well everyone sings along and he wants us to sing along as loud as we can so the world can hear. Ok, not a problem....

A few minutes later "Space Oddity" by David Bowie is blaring through the stadium and everyone is on their feet cheering -- it's obviously the walk out music. Lights go down, and from our vantage point, Eileen and I can see the band walking out towards the stage. Larry takes the stage first and starts up on the drums. The rest of the band appears and they kick in to one of the new tunes from No Line on the Horizon which, though I own, I haven't listened to much so I don't recognize the tune or know the words. No worry, that's to be reasonably expected. It's followed by another new tune, and then one from one of the previous two albums. As you can probably tell by now, no set list. If you really want to know the set list and/or just see the show I saw it's available on YouTube (I may watch it later myself just to see what the world saw!)*

*The video is no longer available on U2's YouTube channel. Most likely because it is now available for purchase. I have the DVD and can't recall if they cut anything from the original show.

All in all the set list was very heavy on 21st century material versus older more familiar stuff, and when they played one of the new songs I actually know the words to, "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight" they totally changed the arrangement so I was completely confused. Also, I really could have done without "Unknown Caller" (seriously, Bono, were you making a tech support call for your computer when you wrote that crap?) I really liked their previous two albums, but No Line on the Horizon hasn't caught my ear. There are a few tunes I like, but all in all, not their best work in my opinion. Eileen was even more disenchanted with the set list than I was. With the heavy emphasis on newer material the whole "sing along loudly" direction was kind of peculiar. Not that the crowd didn't sing along on a lot of tunes, but the loudest sing alongs were on the older stuff (and the couple covers.)

That said, however, they did sound great and the production value of the show was beyond belief. I seriously can not describe what everything looked like, so I'll be uploading pictures soon and you can see for yourself (or as noted above, go to YouTube.)

The show ended around 11:15 and very few people had left early, so there were 96,000 people heading for the parking lots! YIKES! Not wanting to lose Zach in the crowd, we decided to stay in our seats for a bit and let the crowd thin out before heading to the car. We were in the car about 11:45 and out of the parking lot about 12:45. Ugh. However, it could have been much much worse -- there were HUGE lines of people waiting for shuttles to take them to the remote parking areas. God only knows what time those people got home as the lines were still huge when we pulled out of the lot and then they would have to do the same parking lot exit traffic mess we had!

We finally got home around 1:15 and just crashed. Poor Eileen had to get up early to get the kids off to school (hopefully Zach didn't fall asleep in class today!) and I was up about 8 so I could hit the road early and make the 6 hour drive home.

As always, a far too short visit with my cousin, but we're doing much better at seeing each other more often (third time in two years!) All in all a great weekend. Back to reality tomorrow and only one concert left on my 2009 schedule!