Shuttlecock VIII: Did We Just Die?

[bono_212]

It would only be $90 + parking and gas if we could find more obstructed view seats

 

[lazarus]

I will never see them again with anything other than a GA ticket.

No way. I've had GAs for every show I've seen from Elevation onward and I'm not going back to that other world.

 

[LemonMelon]

I wish I had been there tonight, even in a crappy seat. That's all I can say.

 

[bono_212]

I will never see them again with anything other than a GA ticket.

No way. I've had GAs for every show I've seen from Elevation onward and I'm not going back to that other world.

I was very vocal with Travis about how much I never ever ever wanted to see them from seats EVER.

But that being said, I had a lot of fun tonight.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Bullet the Blue Sky seems pretty impressive, pretty raw for them, in its present incarnation. But I can't really understand most of what Bono is ranting towards the end, which is a shame, cause I get the sense that for a change I might want to know what he's ranting. It seems to be aimed at himself.

 

[bono_212]

I thought all of it was the snippet of 19 until I looked up the lyrics to the song just now. I see most of it is all Bono? .

 

[Kieran McConville]

From some random thread at @U2, I don't know how reliable it is. He does seem to be addressing his younger self in some fashion:


"So this boy comes up to me
His face red like a rose on a thorn bush
A young man with a young mans blush
Young boy looked a lot like me

And hes pulling the dollar bills outta my hand
Patting me down
Patting me down
He says, You have more than you need.
You got one hundred.
You got two hundred.
Three hundred.
And I can see those private planes.
I can see those private planes.
And you're in one of those private planes, aren't ya?
Hes right.
And I'm off a flight from Davos, Switzerland
I'm in the lobby of the Belvedere Hotel
Where a jazz man breathes into a saxophone
While everybody stares at their cell phone
And in my ear the young boy groans
Outside its America
Outside is America

As I step outside
The snow is falling like a curtain of silence
I'm on the other side of the barricade now
I'm on the other side of the barricade to myself
Age 19
N-n-n-n-nineteen
On the other side of the barricade to myself
Age 19
And I try to tell the young man
That ideas deserve a plan
And to build a better world
Gonna take every woman and man
Its gonna take you, and me
The reds and the greens
The nows and the evers and the yet to bes
The where you goin'?
The where you been?
The living and the dead and the unseen
The somebodies, the nobodies
The who's who, the gentile and the Jew
The gays and the straights
The sevens and the eights
The nines and the tens
The dollars and the yen
I feel like a fraud
But I know that I'm not
I try to do my very best with everything that Ive got
Which is not a lot
I'm telling ya [???]
Which is not a lot
Trying to step, get caught
And trying to not get caught
With my pants down
And my hands up
And my hands up
Any second now things are going to erupt
So I run
I run
Into the arms
Of America

Don't shoot
I'm an American.

 

[djerdap]

I'm a huge fan of that song and it's great to see it back. Bono's performance is pretty good. But I prefer the later arrangements as opposed to the JT/Lovetown arrangement by a huge margin.

There's a Vertigo version from the 1st Amsterdam show in 2005 that actually combines the two in a way. Pretty cool.

 

[bono_212]

Fuuuuuuucccckkkkk

 

[LemonMelon]

I love those lyrics. I don't love his new lyrics, even SOI for the most part, but those lyrics kick ass.

 

[lazarus]

It's so good. He's on another level during that new section.

 

[lazarus]

I see that California was snippeted during two different songs and I failed to notice either time.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I love how he really breaks into a run near the end. It's not just an act... well I mean, obviously it is an act, it would be rehearsed and coreographed as much as they ever do with these things, but it feels genuine.

 

[LemonMelon]

Putting in the effort to recontextualize the oldies makes a world of difference. Bullet was so forced on Vertigo, but with a new political context, it's pure heat.

Similarly, I think I Will Follow is relevant for the first time since Popmart thanks to its new context in the SOI storyline. And I'll tell you, the little speech he did on Saturday in the middle of the instrumental break was incredibly powerful.

"And so, who wants to live? A little song about a teenage boy's suicide note...he wanted to follow his mother into the grave. Well, he doesn't anymore."

It's those little moments of seeing the old favorites in a new light that bring them renewed power. WOWY, One, Beautiful Day, none of those have that right now.

 

[bono_212]

I hate where Beautiful Day is in the setlist. It makes no sense, contextually. I think they're trying to say everything's all good, yay, but it feels hollow and forced.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Awesome that this one recording of the Roxy show on youbutt seems to be a girl screaming, with a band playing somewhere in the background.

 

[bono_man2002]

That's probably Sil's stream.

 

[trainmaniac]

On U2torrents there's an awesome Roxy bootleg.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I'll keep that in mind.

 

[djerdap]

Putting in the effort to recontextualize the oldies makes a world of difference. Bullet was so forced on Vertigo, but with a new political context, it's pure heat.

Similarly, I think I Will Follow is relevant for the first time since Popmart thanks to its new context in the SOI storyline. And I'll tell you, the little speech he did on Saturday in the middle of the instrumental break was incredibly powerful.

"And so, who wants to live? A little song about a teenage boy's suicide note...he wanted to follow his mother into the grave. Well, he doesn't anymore."

They had recontextualized the oldies all the time in the good old days. This is a big reason all of their tours up to 360 were very good (Elevation, Vertigo) to great (ZooTV, Popmart).

360 didn't really have this factor, which is one of many reasons why I didn't like that tour. Or the attempts fell remarkably flat (trying to combine Iran's Green Revolution with SBS for one). If I have seen a 2011 show though, I might have thought of the tour differently.

This new tour has this aspect back for the reasons you mentioned, and this is why it's so frustrating not to have Mofo in the set with I Will Follow and the other one, just as it's a missed opportunity not to have Please (or Love is Blindness, but that's just wishful thinking) in the Troubles part of the show.

I agree with Ax that The Troubles might serve as a good ending coda to the first part of the show.

 

[cobl04]

Missed opportunities really hurt, yeah. There's always good stuff of course (and heck I'll take IWF at every gig, it always sounds good) but it's a bummer the little amount of things that would have to change to make it truly incredible.

I'm stoked about Bullet. Still haven't really listened to any audio this tour but good to see the reports. It sucked on Vertigo and seems to have benefited from a good rest. It needs anger and to strike fear into people with its menace.

 

[Kieran McConville]

New U2 song 'Raised By Tom Wolfe' To Debut Soon

 

[djerdap]

As good as opportunity as any to say that I don't think Bullet on Vertigo was nearly as bad as its rep is here. There were some really good versions, and I loved Edge's new guitar part in the ending.

Bono did miss the mark though on his snippetry. Now I think it's the other way around - Bono is obviously doing great, and although Edge being faithful to the album version is not a bad thing in any way, I sure miss the ZooTV-Elevation guitar parts.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I'll say one good thing about the piano-and-vocals version of EBW going on lately; it still makes me feel dirty, but at least the chorus is plaintive rather than cheaply triumphal (with those little bells).

 

[martha]

I think that should be fine. So long as the mobile ticket has barcode, otherwise they sometimes SMS them to you also.

It's got some kind of QR code-looking thing.

Thanks.


Sent from my iPad using U2 Interference

 

[No spoken words]

I will never see them again with anything other than a GA ticket.

No way. I've had GAs for every show I've seen from Elevation onward and I'm not going back to that other world.

I was very vocal with Travis about how much I never ever ever wanted to see them from seats EVER.

But that being said, I had a lot of fun tonight.

I'm the opposite.

I mean, with the 8 NYC shows and my having only secured tickets to two of them, if GA falls into my lap for a show of course I'll take it but in general GA just does not do it for me. Of course, if you're going to see a tour multiple times then it is neat to see it from different perspectives. I've had some very mixed GA experiences, from amazing to this just fucking sucks. We'll see.

If I do get GA, lord knows I'll be walking in last minute, though. I just view GA the same way I view flying on Southwest airlines in that it's just my nature to genuinely want to know where my seat is, one less thing to think about/plan for.

As always, though, it's just good to be in the house.

 

[cobl04]

Did I ever tell you all about the time I took United's offer to pay $100 to get upgraded to a first-class domestic flight? I didn't realise that it was exactly the same as flying economy on an international flight. I ordered about about 10 scotch and cokes from Austin to Cleveland just to try and make it worth it.

 

[martha]

As always, though, it's just good to be in the house.

Yes. I'd rather see a great show from a crappy seat than not see it at all.

I have the added bonus of having my entire left foot go numb if I stand in one place without moving for an extended period of time, like a concert-length period of time. It hurts like hell. Another reason to like seats.

I'd love to have a GA, but I'd walk around during the show.

 

[elevated_u2_fan]

I wonder how much more I would like The Miracle if it didn't have the Joey Ramone association?

 

[joyfulgirl]

Full band electric AIWIY sounded pretty fucking great, guys, and would have had me buying a douchey seat from my phone in the parking lot afterwards, too. I have heard that song live a lot but not sure how many of those times was that version.

A setlist like Saturday's, followed by a setlist that includes both AIWIY and 40 - two songs that every fan on this board considers special - makes me wonder if the band just doesn't even know which songs are great because otherwise they'd have thrown something special to the Saturday night crowd. Maybe their songs are their babies and they love them all equally, just like my mom used to say about her girls.

Yes, I'd like a GA for NYC, please. I generally hate GA, but for this tour, I haven't heard anything bad from anybody about it and I'd love to give it a try.