@Muad'zin
Thanks to your reply, which made your statement much clearer to me. So the main "problem" really seems for me, you don't like the current tour album that much - its songs bulding the frame of the gig. That way you prefer ACHTUNG BABY and POP - with me still thinking, that the 1997's shows were too solid for (though I like POP very much, too) and the "Mexico City" show being played half a year after Europe (!) is not to compare with our gigs at all - regarding setlist and songs' quality. this regards the whole 4th leg, by the way, which was great.
On the other hand, you hit the problem "Which songs adapt a mass audience in stadiums?", that U2 have answered so far with cutting out the more "obscure songs from our past" (Bono 2001), that have been performed relatively often in the US - and were highlights of the shows (An Cat Dubh, Into The Heart, The Ocean, the more regular Stories For Boys snippet, even the rocking Gloria, '40', even the anthem Bad - and also the still beautiful Original Of the Species). Maybe they think them more "indoors-suiting". On the other hand, more "Greatest Hits" and sing-alongs came in - and that's what the average concert attendant will aprreciate without thinking much about it. This goes also for the (have to be played) classics in the category like New Year's Day, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride, Where The Streets Have No Name Or One. Ideas to throw these tunes (maybe often heard, but they ARE very strong, too!) out are absurd and don't hit the logic of U2's built up, reltively static setlists for the time they've been performing.
For us here devoting so much time it's different - but also individually from each other: Everybody has his (her) dream-tunes, you'd like to request, when you could. And to satisfy those and of course themselves, U2 gives us a lot for our money (The Cry, The Electric Co., the other non-singles Bullet The Blue Sky, the beautiful piano-driven Running To Stand Still, a complete ZOO TV-flash including Zoo Station - and a set list always in progress from town to town with slight changes of songs/snippets ....) - plus the new tracks, that do appreciate very much.
@Blue Room
Good view. Now, some wishes might be "out of the stratosphere" - but let those guys dream a bit. And: Who would have thought, that U2 would play eight (!) songs from BOY (including the snippets), five from the OCTOBER/WAR period and the massive bunch of six tracks from ACHTUNG BABY - so far?
The thruth is - everything we've had on the European leg so far - except Wild Horses - has been so incessantly predictable and boring that it is almost funny. The Brussel setlist was kind of a worst case scenario. They couldn't have come up with a more boring and expected setlist than that - and it continued in the next concerts. Pop and Zooropa songs? 
We didn't get them!
wink
