Uno! Dos! Tres! Catorce! Hello, Hello, U2!

♬I can’t believe the news today…oh I can’t close my eyes and make it go away! ♬

Yes, that’s U2 posing on the steps of the University, with the insane student-fans (yours truly included) behind them, all mugging for the camera.  As I’m writing this I still can’t believe that I got to see U2, in my school, for FREE! 

In one fell swoop, Bono and Company anointed us as the coolest college in America, possibly in the world.

Morning came early in the Bronx…some people didn’t bother sleeping anymore.  Who needs SLEEP when U2 is around??? 

As for Roomie and myself, we left the apartment at around 5 am in the morning, and the lines were already pretty long.  I won’t bother regaling you about the misadventures of being lost in the crush of humanity…let’s just say that I’m almost too old for these things.  ALMOST.

  

But the music took center stage, and it was a pretty amazing show.  Love how Bono wooed the crowd, revising the lyrics of Beautiful Day to sing “♬F______ University right in front of you♬.” The people went wild! The band performed 4 songs from their new album No Line on the Horizon: “Get Your Boots On,” “Breathe,” “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” and “Magnificent”(which I thought was the best of the bunch). They obliged with 2 crowd-pleasers, “Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo.”  Only 6 songs, but it was so worth it to finally hear the biggest band in the world, live.

 

Rolling Stone magazine calls No Line on the Horizon U2’s “best…since 1991’s Achtung Baby.  My loyal readers (my father, mother, and occasionally, Franny, hehehe) all know how Spot and I feel about Achtung Baby – my favorite U2 song, Mysterious Ways, is on it.  (On the cassette, it was actually a B-side, God knows why).   While I do like a lot of their songs (Beautiful Day is a good workout song, and the Numb video is hilarious), I haven’t loved any WHOLE U2 album since Achtung Baby.

The night before the concert, I had a meeting with my dissertation director, and after doing away with the minutiae of survival analysis regressions, we made small talk about U2 and the upcoming concert.  I mentioned that I preferred the older albums (see above), and my mentor (who is, possibly, the coolest professor in the department) mentioned that I might like the new album, because it was a throwback to the classic U2 sound.  He was right – iTunes observes and that it “attempts to recapture that spacy, mysterious atmosphere of The Unforgettable Fire, and then take it further” while Rolling Stone notes that  it “is closer to the transitional risks — the Irish-gothic spell of 1984's The Unforgettable Fire, the techno-rock jet lag of 1993's Zooropa.”

Did I already mention that my mentor is the coolest professor in the department, ever? 

That is why I am sitting here waiting for iTunes to finish downloading No Line on the Horizon.

 

I was a bit disappointed that the band didn’t sing any of the older songs--I was really hoping to hear the opening riff of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” or hear The Edge sing “Numb” live.  I would have settled for going oh-oh-oh-oh-oh in the name of love.  Most of the kids watching were probably in diapers when “One” was released as a single in 1992, and while they probably know the classic U2 songs, they don’t relate to them as much as the iPod-era tracks. 

But who cares, right?  Because U2 was not playing at Columbia, it was not playing at Georgetown, and it was not playing at Notre Dame.

Photographic credits to Roomie, except the first two ones from RollingStone.com., and the cover art for Achtung Baby.