Shuttlecock XV: Seppos and the 42: Cobbler's Epic Fail

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bono_212 said:
It only happened once so it's silly to compare...

Vertigo Tour2006-03-01- Buenos Aires, Argentina - River Plate Stadium
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Strange rendition too as they stopped right before edge's solo. Still great that they played it at all
 
Imperor said:
This tour is The Cock at both their most magical and most frustrating.

The setlist is a mess. The opening mini-suite doesn't work at all and takes the punch out of Streets for me. It's supposed to be the most cathartic moment of the show, and I think having it anywhere but late in the set or as the opener lessens its impact substantially. I'd love it if they just opened with JT and did a second set afterwards. Punch us in the mouth with Streets and the red screen to start, right? Setlist sequencing is really my only nitpick. though. I'm not going to complain about a setlist in which I get to hear Exit and OTH.

The good, however, was very good. The photography and imagery with the JT set is immaculate for me (other than 1/8 of the screen briefly going out during MOTD in Houston), and that 11 song stretch is a concert experience I'll treasure for the rest of my life. Side Two alone made driving all over Texas this week worth it.

Long and short of it: I had a blast at both shows, Dallas was probably the better show, and if they get the setlist sequencing figured out on the second leg, this tour could be just about perfect.

Now spoilery shit if you guys are still doing this:

UV is my favorite song of all time and it becoming at setlist staple over the course of the past eight years makes me really happy. I will never get sick of it.

Getting Bad both nights obviously thrilled me as they didn't play it either of the previous times I'd seen them. It's perfect and always will be, but having it as the third song in the set last night killed my vibe. No way it should be played that early.

They closed with IWF last night instead of the new song, maybe the first time they've done that this tour? I haven't looked at many setlists, so what do I know? But I hope they took notes from it, because it seemed like a spontaneous decision and it certainly paid dividends. Everyone was losing their minds all around the stadium and there were no screen visuals for it, just the band doing their thing in the middle of the main stage with pretty rudimentary lighting. Obsessives like us going as crazy as the folks I saw looking at their phones during Red Hill but going nuts during Elevation. I feel like that was the best moment that struck a balance between pleasing all the casuals (probably the majority of the audience, let's be honest) and the Cock Force.

I mention that just because I realize we probably go to these shows for different reasons than the layman, the band has a job to do in pleasing both of us, but I definitely think they've got it in them to achieve something that's perfect for everyone. IWF made me feel that way. I'm rambling, whatever. I don't post here a lot anymore and wanted to get all my thoughts down.

Last thing: I'm not talking about The Missing Song, but I was fucking devastated.
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Love this post man :)

Didn't realise you were so attached to Ultraviolet. Could push top 10 for me, it's a phenomenal song.

And yeah, totally with you on IWF. That shit burnt down the Rose Bowl night one. I love the new song, but ending with IWF is a fucking masterstroke and such a good way to close out the show.
 
corianderstem said:
Seattle got surprise IWF as a closer, and the crowd (and me) went apeshit. But we also got the new song so yaaaaay.
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No doubt that Seattle got the best set of the tour so far.

lazarus said:
In defense of Axver, I feel like most people's kneejerk reaction when hearing Vertigo compared to ZooTV comes from the memorable visual presentation of the latter. It's certainly hard for me to focus specifically on the music itself, which Axver is doing. I don't really listen to Zoo bootlegs because for me the theatricality is so interwoven with the performances of the songs.

So I can understand him having a preference for the more recent tour, whether or not I agree with it--I can't address specific songs sounding better on one or the other without more research.
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Thanks man. Yeah, the visual aspect really doesn't make that much of a difference to me. It's nice to have some cool staging if it's there, but song selection and performance is going to determine my rankings. I suppose if Bono had been able to sing on Popmart as well as he could on ZooTV, I'd need to use the staging as a tiebreaker and rank ZooTV above Popmart on that basis, but as it stands Bono's vocal decline from 1993 to 1997 is so marked that of course ZooTV places above Popmart.

LemonMelon said:
I can't think of a ZooTV song that was performed better on Vertigo, is the thing.

Zoo Station - hell no
The Fly - no
Mysterious Ways - absolutely not; it never was this good again
One - see above
UTEOTW - one of Vertigo's better regulars, but not quite
Bad - nope
Bullet - lol
RTSS - thrilled that I got to hear it, but no
Streets - noooo
Pride - closer but nah
ISHFWILF - both pretty bland, but Bono was in better voice on ZooTV
Desire - this isn't fair
WOWY - no sir
Love Is Blindness - Vertigo take was a pale shadow of the original, but points for giving it a try

Then, filling in the gaps between these staples, you've got...HTDAAB songs. And yes, some great early stuff. Too bad it was stripped down to 2-3 songs a night by the middle of the tour. Getting An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart, Electric Co., New Year's Day and 40 all on the same night must have been awesome.
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Honestly, I love the Vertigo version of The Fly. I'll happily take either a ZooTV or Vertigo version, it makes little difference. Same for Zoo Station, Mysterious Ways, or UTEOTW. One I'm not likely to be playing anyway. Pride and ISHFWILF are a shrug; RTSS I'll concede even though both versions are good; WOWY yeah, but it's closer if you take 1993 WOWY rather than 1992; and Desire from Lovetown is so definitive that I don't bother with any subsequent version.

Bad on Vertigo was fucking great, and it's the tour that gave us Bad/40 as a closer. It's U2's best closer.

No shit about Streets and Bullet though. U2 have really fumbled Streets post-Elevation. Can't believe the last great use of Streets on a U2 tour was sixteen fucking years ago.

But Vertigo had the pre-War stuff, and that's absolutely massive for me. I will take The Electric Co. over a whole fucking lot of things. For the more recent inclusions, Miss Sarajevo was spellbinding, and a genuine shock that they played it; it's only in retrospect that it looks a bit meh in the set. The First Time was another shock. Kite was incredible. Hang whatever shit on HTDAAB you want, I'll be right there with you, but COBL and LAPOE were great live. And ONE TREE HILL. The performances in Auckland were unbelievable; it closed the second night and nothing I've seen at a U2 show can compete with that experience, the hill visible behind. So yeah I have that experience biasing me. We all thought U2 would wuss out and just snippet it, but they went really hard.

That leads me to the other thing we forget, which is how exciting it was to follow the tour. Elevation had a couple of big song revivals, but Vertigo was massive in that regard because U2 brought back a greater amount of stuff that had been neglected to a greater extent, and also debunked the whole "if a song isn't played on its debut tour it will never be played" thing that everybody took as axiomatic. The band seemed to be having real fun and tried out a lot of different stuff.
 
I'm not going to defend Ax because he's got perfectly valid views. Vertigo was my first U2 experience, and apart from One Tree Hill and Bad it was the We Promise This Isn't Begging For Cheers Tour by the time I saw it. I still haven't found my tonsils.

Given the experiences I've had since (yeah, I actually was even okay with Stingray Guitar/Beautiful Day) I'm just being a dick overall.

Frankly I would sit through All That You Can't Leave Behind and probably love it, and probably cry.

It's just so easy to whine when what you see is on your laptop and not what is being blasted into your ears by U2, actually right in front of you.
 
coolian2 said:
Frankly I would sit through All That You Can't Leave Behind and probably love it, and probably cry.

It's just so easy to whine when what you see is on your laptop and not what is being blasted into your ears by U2, actually right in front of you.
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martha said:
This is it exactly.
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Yeah. For all the complaints, seeing them for the first time in seven years just drove this home.
 
lazarus said:
Ehh. Seems rather generic outside of One Tree Hill. And whatever you think of The Bomb, only playing 3 new songs is pretty lame.
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Yeah, Bomb was two years old by this point. Looks like they were promoting the U2 singles album by this point.
 
coolian2 said:
U2 Auckland, 2006-11-25, Mt Smart Stadium, Vertigo Tour - U2 on tour

:mic drop:
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Well yeah, I even mentioned in my post that One Tree Hill ending the gig is by far the best U2 moment I've experienced myself.

But that's the only time OTH has ever closed a gig, while Bad with a 40 snippet or followed by a full 40 has been more than a once-off. And OTH closing that show was enhanced both by the emotion, and the actual hill being visible behind it. So I'd draw a fine distinction here: this is the best closing moment I've experienced, even though I would name Bad/40 as the best closer in general.

(In much the same way, I claim Bad as U2's definitive live song in general, but One Tree Hill on 26 December 1989 as their definitive individual live performance.)

lazarus said:
Ehh. Seems rather generic outside of One Tree Hill. And whatever you think of The Bomb, only playing 3 new songs is pretty lame.
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Perspective is the thing here though isn't it? Angel of Harlem and Desire were rarities on the Vertigo Tour, and these were full band performances after a couple of tours of only getting them acoustic. Walk On also hadn't been done full band until this leg. The Saints are Coming could be counted as a rarity, though I didn't care for it being in the set myself. And Miss Sarajevo was extraordinary at the same; it's hilarious how so many people's perspectives on it - including mine - have shifted.

I also loved Bono coming out for the second encore in Ritchie McCaw's All Blacks guernsey, only to take it off to reveal Brian O'Driscoll's Irish one. (Two All Blacks were controversially not punished for a spear tackle of O'Driscoll the previous year and the Irish won't let us forget it to this day.)

It's by no means the best setlist, and in fact I've always said that the Australian/Kiwi shows had some of the weakest sets of the tour - the two American legs were the best (putting aside the third leg shows that copped the acoustic encore), and if the shows hadn't been postponed we would've got Fast Cars as the party song in Sydney and Melbourne rather than Party Girl. But I think the set has its merits outside of One Tree Hill, even if it looks more plain now.

coolian2 said:
That's pretty much what it was. If the tour hadn't taken the six month delay there would have been far more Bomb.
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It's funny how they chucked out the Bomb stuff. Brisbane and the first night in Sydney had five HTDAAB songs, a decent showing. Then Yahweh was dumped, mercifully. And then out went LAPOE. "Hi guys, sorry for not touring here on our previous album. We're going to ditch the most recent stuff to make up for it."
 
I just wanted to say that the ZooTV version of Running To Stand Still is the definitive version to these ears. I always felt that way, but I just listened to several versions - Rattle And Hum, Live From Paris 1987, and ZooTV Sydney - just to compare and contrast again. It's still ZooTV.

I mean, it's a gorgeous, classic song, and pretty much any live version is a good version, but the ZooTV version, with that absolutely ethereal guitar in place of the keyboard, Bono's higher, soaring vocal, and the hallelujahs at the end, is simply on another level, another plain, completely unique from the way it was performed on any other tour - and I think they have been wise in not trying to go there again, either on the Vertigo tour or now, and instead replicating the JT Tour keyboard arrangement with the "still running" coda. The band could probably pull it off, but I'm really not sure Bono can give that vocal performance anymore. It would only draw unfavorable comparisons to the past.

Oh, I haven't even mentioned the segue into Streets yet. Spine-tingling. Chilling. Jaw-dropping. Every single time.

What a fucking performance though. Really, that whole Dirty Day-Bullet-RTSS-Streets run from ZooTV is pretty much perfect, and one of the most legendary moments in storied career. It's just magical, as is the whole of ZooTV Sydney.

Anyway...yeah, ZooTV RTSS > all other live versions of RTSS.
 
I'm on record many, many, many times here talking about that exact performance. Those 10 minutes of RTSS>Streets is the pinnacle of human achievement in my eyes.
 
Axver said:
Perspective is the thing here though isn't it? Angel of Harlem and Desire were rarities on the Vertigo Tour

It's by no means the best setlist, and in fact I've always said that the Australian/Kiwi shows had some of the weakest sets of the tour - the two American legs were the best (putting aside the third leg shows that copped the acoustic encore), and if the shows hadn't been postponed we would've got Fast Cars as the party song in Sydney and Melbourne rather than Party Girl. But I think the set has its merits outside of One Tree Hill, even if it looks more plain now.
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If I jumped on a plane now and saw the rest of the JT Tour, I'd still have more One Tree Hill than Rattle and Hum as a whole.

Also to be honest, my first U2 shows. "Right boys, I've seen the Chicago DVD, mainline me the shit I want"
 
Axver said:
It's funny how they chucked out the Bomb stuff. Brisbane and the first night in Sydney had five HTDAAB songs, a decent showing. Then Yahweh was dumped, mercifully. And then out went LAPOE. "Hi guys, sorry for not touring here on our previous album. We're going to ditch the most recent stuff to make up for it."
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Well given they ditched Love and Peace in Auckland for Bad, that was me going "I don't give a fuck if you want to be relevant or not, I don't even care if you try, because IF YOU TWIST AND TURN AWAY
 
The Bad -> Streets Boston Elevation version completely took my breath away when I first watched it. And this DvD was my first ever U2 live experience at the time. I think it will always be a personal pinnacle when it comes to the official DVDs. I've had many a disagreement with some of my mates over whether Slane or Boston is superior.

It probably just edges out RTTS > Streets on Zoo TV from a personal point of view, but there's no denying how brilliant that performance was. It genuinely sends chills.
 
It should surprise no one that U2Girl often bashes the last leg of that tour for being a sellout move or something. Yeah, OK.

The middle legs of 360 were pretty bad. Hell, the tour started off a lot better than that. I know not everyone liked NLOTH as much as I did, but a setlist with NLOTH and Unknown Caller on it, along with Unforgettable Fire and the occasional Electrical Storm would be far preferable to that mess they brought back to Europe. Look at this shit:

U2 Helsinki, 2010-08-20, Olympic Stadium, 360° Tour - U2 on tour

North Star
Glastonbury
In A Little While
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All in a row!
 
That Helsinki gig had the watered down version of NLOTH as well.

What kind of an alternate timeline are we living in when David Duchovny of all people is touring Australia early 2018 and U2 are not (yet)
I Want To Believe
 
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