Tuesday, August 9, 2011

10 years of a unique music anniversary with U2

Yesterday was a very special date for me, musically speaking. On August 8th of 2001, the U2 Elevation tour arrived to Barcelona. It was my first U2 concert.

With the perspective of time “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” has revealed as a pretty irregular record, despite having some of the best songs the Irish have created in the last decade, with "In A Little While", a personal favourite on top of it. But anyway, I can only remember my excitement for the album then.

I also remember how hard it was to get the tickets: U2 decided to go for "intimacy" and do arenas (Palau Sant Jordi) instead of stadiums. That, plus the fact Barcelona was the only Spanish date of the tour, made the search of tickets a real quest. Oh, that long, neverending, nerve-destroying queue months before the concert...Unforgettable.

I was so eager to the gig, that to make this post I had to seek for information about who was the support act, Stereophonics (a quite famous band in UK by then). But no band in the planet could had even compared to the shadow of the four Irishman that day. From start to finish, from "Elevation" (one of the songs I hate the most from the band) to "Walk On", I enjoyed every second of it. There were some memorable moments, like "Stuck in a Moment" followed by "In a Little While", "Bad" followed "Where the Streets" (and Bono running the burning read heart stage) , my first "Pride", where my voice got swallowed by emotion.... the celebration of The Edge's 40th anniversary (happy 50's b-day Edge by the way!!), being with my brother....



10 years have passed since then, and I have seen U2 five times overall, in stadium and in a foreign country (Helsinki, Finland) but even they were amazing concerts cannot be compared to the magic of seeing your heroes for the first time...

Sorry for the nostalgic post...  but the truth is I owe quite a bit to Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. Thanks for the fire!

Setlist 
  1. Elevation
  2. Beautiful Day
  3. Until The End Of The World
  4. New Year's Day
  5. Kite
  6. New York
  7. I Will Follow
  8. Spanish Eyes
  9. Sunday Bloody Sunday
  10. Wake Up Dead Man
  11. Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of
  12. In A Little While
  13. Happy Birthday
  14. Party Girl
  15. Desire
  16. Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
  17. Bad / Alison (snippet) / 40 (snippet)
  18. Psalm 116 (snippet) / Where The Streets Have No Name
  19. Mysterious Ways / Sexual Healing (snippet)
  20. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
  21. encore(s):
  22. Bullet The Blue Sky / Whole Lotta Love (snippet)
  23. With Or Without You
  24. One
  25. Walk On

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