Worst. Streets. Intro. Ever.
The best overall Streets intro was during the Elevation Tour, though the best single night was the tribute to Samuel Beckett on December 26, 1989.
Personally, I'm sick of the nonstop blabber about Africa and how everyone in the West is to blame for Africa's own social and cultural failures. The "Africa" intro to Streets does sound forced and stilted. Similarly, Pride now sounds tiresome. He's been dead for 37 years, yet Bono still thinks the masses will be roused by nightly exhortations to "sing for Martin Luther King". Sorry Bonoman, the sell-by date has passed on that one.
And what's Bono on about with his line about wanting to live in Nelson Mandela's Africa? Really? He wants to live under the rule of a man whose political opponents were often necklaced (tires put around peoples necks, doused with gasoline, and lit on fire)? He wants to live under the rule of a man who has never met a brutal dictator he didn't like? (Witness Mandela's ardent support for men like Mugabe, Ghadaffi, Castro, Hussein, Arafat, his support for the USSR before the fall of organized Communism, etc.). He wants to live under the rule of a man whose tired socialist/marxist economic policies have left his country in greater poverty than ever? With a massive AIDS crisis that remains ignored by Mandela's self-anointed successor, Mbeke, who blames AIDS on white people and claims HIV doesn't lead to AIDS anyway? Sorry, I'll take a pass on living in Nelson Mandela's Africa. Mandela status as a secular saint and supposed "moral" leader is one of the most exaggerated and unwarranted in history. But, if Bono really wants to live there, I'll gladly housesit for him in his Killiney mansion while he's gone!
The bottom line is: Cut the PC crap about Africa and just sing Bono! The great thing about U2 has always been that the music is good enough that one could overlook some of Bono's more nonsensical left-wing political posturing; the music transcended the politics. Lately, however, with the endless Africa shtick and the 2-minute Western-guilt-trip-intro to One, Bono's been veering dangeroulsy close to becoming intolerable. Fortunetely, I can now use my Click'N Edit Sound software to edit out the Africa crap and the new One speech before I burn my live discs!