Good omen for setlist shake-up!?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
The NA show better have some shake-ups, if they know what's good for them. :madwife:

Subtract:
IALW - could very well go since it was on the majority of the NA leg in 2009, but they'll have to incorporate the space thing in a different way (though that could go away for all I care)
MS (I love this song, but it works so much better in an arena) I kind of doubt it'll go since it wasn't on the 2009 leg
Elevation (not gonna happen, but one can wish)
Walk On (I adore this song, but NA has already seen the WO bit on 360, then again Europe had as well before its second go-round)


Add:
Bullet the Blue Sky - it's had its time off, time to reinvigorate this one
another NLOTH track like the title track or Breathe
The Fly
Stay
AIWIY
Bad/40
Something else from the Bomb like SYCIMIOYO

Wishful thinking:
Anything Pop
Anything else Zooropa
A new single
 
Maybe since there's no new album to pimp out, they can pimp out the upcoming AB remaster and pull out some AB chestnuts.
 
Someone made a good point, they should bring back Staring at the Sun as the acoustic moment.

Also, MS can be replaced by RTSS.
 
Surely there isn't a single person here who thinks Elevation should be played live instead of The Fly?
 
Not sure why one would choose Elevation of all songs to kick out for The Fly. There can never be too many rockers at a concert for me. Miss S, Walk On, Mysterious Ways are all songs that don't need to be in the set anymore. Kill one of those first.
 
I think they need to bring back Bullet the Blue Sky in time for Glastonbury.
 
catlhere said:
Not sure why one would choose Elevation of all songs to kick out for The Fly. There can never be too many rockers at a concert for me. Miss S, Walk On, Mysterious Ways are all songs that don't need to be in the set anymore. Kill one of those first.
Click to expand...

Mysterious Ways is a rocker, and I would certainly keep it over Elevation. They have a shape to the setlist that they like, so I was suggesting taking out songs and replacing them with similar types, not saying oh we should have all rockers, which I wouldn't want anyway because you lose the dynamic difference between styles.
 
nirniva said:
I actually like Elevation live, but I'd definitely be willing to give it up if it meant hearing The Fly. :rockon:
Click to expand...

I do too, but we've seen enough of it for awhile. Of course, there's no denying the energy in the crowd during Elevation, so I can see why it endures.
 
I'm watching the Rose Bowl DVD right now and I'm remembering just how awesome the 2009 set lists were, full of NLOTH tracks, replace Stuck with Stay, and maybe IALW with Kite or Staring at the Sun and you'd have one of their best set lists. I'm really hoping for more of an arena jukebox tour next time around.

Honestly, if you're gonna pimp ATYCLB so much, at least play Kite!!!!

I really hope some of the songs they've only played a handful of times or buried too early are played again before they retire, obviously that goes for stuff from early on and Pop, but also NLOTH / Breathe / Unknown Caller, Electrical Storm, OOTS, SYCMIOYO, WITS, etc from this past decade. An arena tour with multiple nights in the same place would hopefully allow this to happen, but then hopefully we're getting new albums as well so there'd be yet another wrench into that pipe dream.

Do you think we'll get extra Zooropa material in 2013? Or some recognition of Pop on some anniversary? Probably not since we have the perfect spectacle now and they're still not doing it for fear of the crowd not being into or remembering the material.
 
powerhour24 said:
I'm watching the Rose Bowl DVD right now and I'm remembering just how awesome the 2009 set lists were
Click to expand...

I couldn't disagree more. I found the 2009 North American setlist so terrible that it was really grinding me down doing the live setlists on U2gigs. That's the only time I've not enjoyed doing that work.
 
If you take out the ATYCLB love festival, what's wrong with those sets? What did you want them to do? Bullet and Pride are nowhere to be found, and NLOTH got its full attention, other than a lack of mutability in the set I thought it was quite strong. But maybe I'm biased because I got to go gaga over Your Blue Room. I think for the person only going to one show (the vast majority of the audience) there was a lot on display, classics, brand new material, modern classics, and some obscurities. That said, the early 2009 dates did have more songs changing in and out, something I'm really hoping for this summer.
 
powerhour24 said:
If you take out the ATYCLB love festival, what's wrong with those sets? What did you want them to do? Bullet and Pride are nowhere to be found, and NLOTH got its full attention, other than a lack of mutability in the set I thought it was quite strong. But maybe I'm biased because I got to go gaga over Your Blue Room. I think for the person only going to one show (the vast majority of the audience) there was a lot on display, classics, brand new material, modern classics, and some obscurities. That said, the early 2009 dates did have more songs changing in and out, something I'm really hoping for this summer.
Click to expand...

Well, you can't just overlook the ATYCLB lovefest, because that was a HUGE chunk of the set, between a fifth and a quarter of it. As awesome as Your Blue Room was, they did a hatchet job on it and dropped it so quickly that it barely even counts - October 2009 is easily the worst period of live setlisting I've ever done. I suppose we didn't know how good we had it with NLOTH stuff in the set until August 2010, but even then, I thought Breathe was a dreadful opener, and quite frankly, the moment the last note of Crazy Tonight played, the rest of the set totally lost me.

The simple fact is, I just don't like this tour. I've tried not to be terribly vocal about it, mainly because I just don't have the inclination or energy for those sorts of debates any more, but the second leg in 2009 really drained my enthusiasm and interest. At least some of the setlist additions, the excitement of new material (regardless of my thoughts on the individual songs), and some the variety was enough to keep me interested enough to more often than not enjoy doing the live sets.

As for "what did I want them to do?", well, it's pretty safe to say what I want them to do and what they're actually going to do will almost never coincide.
 
A good setlist shake up would be if they added The Electric Co again early in the set.
It was just:drool: on the Vertigo Tour and the highlight for me of that tour.

Cheers ,

Mauwer
 
To add to the discussion, I too disliked the 2009 setlists over the 2010-2011 ones. There's far too much ATYCLB(which still is a problem), and the encore was completely stale while it now has a rotation between Batman and UV. Plus, we get NYD/IWF rotation now, and I love those.
 
Well Axver I'd agree that it got pretty stagnant by October, but again this is a tour designed to reach the masses with each show in quite disparate locations, no offense but it isn't designed to excite those of us that wait and watch set lists online hoping for surprises. Arenas next time around, let's hope.

I gotta ask though, how could the end of the set not interest you? Was it simply because it never changed? Because for me they did quite well, SBS and One hadn't been so energetic in ages, Streets never fails, UV was better than ever, MOS grew stronger throughout the tour (though I still would have ended it with 40 or something else attached).

No offense to IWF or NYD (which was played in NA in 2009), but one of the reasons I dig U2 is that despite the fact that they could tour annually with no new material, they only appear when they have something new to showcase, which is why NLOTH heavy sets to me are stronger than those that have been trying to push it to the periphery. I would like more rotation of course, more older gems, but I wouldn't sacrifice new material, and I recognize the limitations of the kind of tour they're doing.
 
powerhour24 said:
Well Axver I'd agree that it got pretty stagnant by October, but again this is a tour designed to reach the masses with each show in quite disparate locations, no offense but it isn't designed to excite those of us that wait and watch set lists online hoping for surprises. Arenas next time around, let's hope.
Click to expand...

I think I acknowledged this with the last sentence of my last post. That said, I think the masses could have been reached in a much better way, especially as I feel like thus setlist was not the appropriate one for the stage.

I gotta ask though, how could the end of the set not interest you? Was it simply because it never changed? Because for me they did quite well, SBS and One hadn't been so energetic in ages, Streets never fails, UV was better than ever, MOS grew stronger throughout the tour (though I still would have ended it with 40 or something else attached).
Click to expand...

Shall I go through this song by song? I don't mean to spark any debate over the individual songs and I know a lot of the forum feels differently about them. This is just how it felt to me and I don't mean to dispute or change anybody else's opinion on the matter:

SBS: I should've perhaps said "after the last notes of SBS", since yes, this is the best it has been in literally decades. I enjoyed it this time around, something I did not expect. That said, I probably wouldn't even notice if it wasn't played.
MLK: Glorified intro, doesn't count as a song, so let's move on.
Walk On: The masks just made this cringeworthy. I don't know, this song is a bit of a nostalgia trip back to 2000 for me, but apart from thinking "man I should enjoy this for my 2000 self who would've gone apeshit", I had a hard time mustering any reaction beyond "oh yeah that was OK".
One: Oh just please go away.
Streets: I can't explain this. I just do not feel Streets this tour, and I cannot pinpoint the reason why. Sure, it may not be the perfection it was in 1989, but even Vertigo recordings get me going. I'll pretty much bounce in my seat if a Vertigo Streets comes on my headphones, but even AT a 360 concert, I didn't feel the urge to jump. It could be cut from the set and I would not miss it, that's how much I don't feel it this tour.
Ultra Violet: I think we all know quite well how much I dislike this song!
With Or Without You: The current live performances of this song could almost convince you that U2 should've quit years ago. (I still lost my shit when I FINALLY heard Shine Like Stars at Dublin III though.)
Moment Of Surrender: By this point, I just didn't care any more. It's an alright song, but hardly anything that can restore my enthusiasm after the tedium of the rest of the encore.

So there you go, that's how I felt.
 
I almost wrote at the start of my last post "this is NOT bait for you, KUEFC", but thought that such a statement itself would've been bait.

Now I wish I had.

For your information, I actually listened to a U2 album the other day for the first time in a long time and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it (the album in question being Boy).
 
I really didnt mean it like that mate, i dont get into that sort of debate anymore, everyone has different tastes and thats that.

All i meant was you seemed fed up.
 
I was pretty strongly burnt out at points in 2009 and 2010, that would be quite fair of you to say. I think I've now re-connected with the U2 I like ... the problem really is that the U2 I like and the U2 on 360 couldn't be more different. That says a lot about the depth of the band's catalogue. I think it's quite possible to be a serious fan of one side of the band and be left totally cold by the current tour.

I should say at this point that I still enjoy my role on U2gigs. It can be a bit tiring at times and I have no idea how the maintainers of other fansites seem so eternally optimistic, but running it is great fun and I'm not about to give that up. It's one of the most fulfilling things I do.

And I'm listening to One Tree Hill from 1989-12-26 now. This is still the most perfect thing I've ever heard.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Headache in a Suitcase
  • Sticky
U2 in Vegas - Tips for booking hotels, flights and other Vegasy type things.
20 21 22
Replies
642
Views
33K
Headache in a Suitcase
Headache in a Suitcase
A
The Little stranger chapter 15
Replies
0
Views
552
annj
A
A
The little Stranger chapter 11
Replies
0
Views
748
annj
A
A
The Little stranger chapter 16
Replies
0
Views
992
annj
A
A
The little stranger Chapter 6
Replies
0
Views
553
annj
A

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom