The Great U2 Road Trip of '05 Part 2

My seats for Friday night's show were at the back, stage-left corner of the arena, with the "wall o' luxury boxes" on my right. After seeing this place, I'm very disappointed in the Charlotte arena.

Anyway, I was on the left-hand end of my row, to my right were 2 young ladies, drinking sodas, one black, one white. To their right were a bunch of drunken a**holes. If I stood up once to let those jerks out, I stood up ten times.

Opening act was Gavin Rossdale of Bush fame's new band, Institute. Very generic heavy rock, the sparse crowd (most were still drinking in the concourse, or, as I discovered the next night, in the food/beer court adjoining the arena) clapped politely between yawns. Then they broke into "Everything Zen" and the crowd became energized. After another generic song or two, they played "Machine Head", again an enthusiastic response from the crowd. No "Glycerine", or I could have said I had heard all my favorite Bush songs live.

They went off, folks gradually started filling in, then around 9:00 the lights went down, the background music got louder, then stopped, and U2 was on with their now-standard opener "City of Blinding Lights". WOW! Very loud, yet very clear sound, and very impressive lights, particularly the curtain of lights that came down behind the stage. Here is the set list, as recorded by U2setlists.com, not me, I'm not that anal anymore.

City Of Blinding Lights, Vertigo / Rockaway Beach (snippet) / Rock 'N' Roll Nigger (snippet), Elevation, Beautiful Day / Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (snippet) / Blackbird (snippet), I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / In A Little While (snippet), Mysterious Ways, Original Of The Species, Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own / The Black Hills of Dakota (snippet), Love And Peace Or Else, Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rock The Casbah (snippet), Bullet The Blue Sky / When Johnny Comes Marching Home (snippet) / The Hands That Built America (snippet), Miss Sarajevo, Pride (In The Name Of Love), Where The Streets Have No Name, One / Ol' Man River (snippet)
encores: Until The End Of The World, The Fly, With Or Without You, Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of, Yahweh, All Because Of You, 40

I had a big s***-eating grin for many of these, Beautiful Day, the cool new ending they have for Mysterious Ways on this tour (when the song ended, Bono said "we've got a lot of soul for white people". Indeed.), Where The Streets Have No Name, Until the End of the World.

Let me just say right here that these guys have perfected the whole concept of arena rock, even the songs that I'm not that wild about from the new album (Original of the Species, Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own) became fist-pumpin' guitar anthems. And of course All Because of You was just kick-butt rock'n'roll.

Back to my spiritual theme, the black woman next to me was in full praise-and-worship mode, I was right there with her, one of the most moving concert experiences of my life.

Bono gave shout-outs to REM, mentioned something about Live 8, said that Rick Wright of Pink Floyd was in da house.

40 ended the show, with each member leaving the stage until only Larry was left, with the entire crowd singing "how long, to sing this song" while he pounded out the beat. A nice touch, over-the-top frontmen can get old, (remember we had Gavin "Mr. GQ" and Bono too) nice to recognize the guy slogging in the trenches.

(to be continued)