Last night, U2 ended an absolutely incredible tour in Moncton, New Brunswick. Here's a thread for everyone to share their final reflections.
As for me, 360 was a pretty incredible experience. I only saw two shows, both in 2009: the first Chicago show, and the Houston show. I loved both, but Houston was my favorite, because I got to see a rare performance of Your Blue Room, and a not-so-rare performance of UTEOTW, neither of which was touched at Chicago 1. But Chicago 1 was also extremely special for its performance of Bad, one of two in North America over the course of the entire tour. So, even though I only saw two shows, I feel lucky about what I did see. When the tour started, I had just finished my sophomore year in high school; now, I'm about to be a college freshman. For someone my age, this is a fairly substantial chunk of life to be following a tour, but it was a lot of fun. When I wasn't at shows, I really enjoyed everyone's company on Interference. This is a really great group of diverse people that we have on the forum, and I'm extremely thankful for it. So thank every single one of you.
Enough about me - the tour itself was pretty amazing. Last night, after the Moncton show, I threw together a little statistical pie chart showing, out of the total 2625 plays of songs on the tour, what proportion each album had. Here you go:
Of course, No Line On The Horizon wins this race, with about 21% of song plays. It was an interesting journey for NLOTH - U2 started by promoting No Line very heavily with the tour, at first doing a solid block of four No Line songs at the beginning of every show, and then playing three later. The first leg of the tour seemed to be centered around the NLOTH songs, with surprises being thrown in along the way, and a vaguely defined space theme taking shape. In the second leg, the NLOTH songs stayed around for the most part, but setlists grew more static and a space theme was more heavily emphasized, especially with Frank DeWinne's presence on Your Blue Room and later In A Little While. NLOTH's presence started at the first's leg's seven, then dropped to six and then five for one show, before rebounding back to six and then eventually seven with the re-introduction of Unknown Caller. This leg also had the large (some would say absurdly large) presence of ATYCLB that so many people complained about, essentially propelling ATYCLB into second place in the song-plays chart. U2 would play five ATYCLB songs in one night on many dates in the fall of 2009.
2010 came quite interestingly. As Interference watched the claw under construction in Salt Leg City for what would be the third leg of the tour, once again in North America, news came that Bono had broken his back. The third leg was postponed, along with U2's long-awaited first performance at the Glastonbury festival. But, by August, Bono was back and ready to perform, as evidenced by his swing on the microphone during HMTMKMKM; he obviously wanted to prove that he was back, and, as an added bonus, his voice sounded great, too. This leg featured a sharp reduction of both NLOTH songs and the space theme, now opening with Return Of The Stingray Guitar, an unreleased instrumental song from the TUF era, with its notoriously awkward segue into Beautiful Day. Along the way, U2 debuted several new songs, all of which have yet to be released: Glastonbury, North Star, Every Breaking Wave, an updated version of Mercy, Boy Falls From The Sky, and Stingray. The fourth leg, in Australia and New Zealand, was largely a continuation of the European leg (with One Tree Hill thrown in, of course), as was the fifth leg, in South Africa.
Then came the sixth and seventh legs. No Line's presence was often reduced to three songs per night, and, for better or for worse, U2 seemed to promote the ZooTV era pretty heavily. By re-introducing Even Better Than The Real Thing (as an opener!) and The Fly, and playing as much AB on some nights as they did ATYCLB in 2009, propelled AB into third place on the chart, quite easily. Zooropa also managed to get two songs per night throughout most of the North American leg. Ultraviolet, however, was very rarely played on this leg, showing up just on second nights and at the Baltimore show, with HMTMKMKM being heavily favored (sadly, in my opinion). And that led us to the end: the tour ending with a surprise performance of "40".
This tour changed a lot over the course of two years. It kept a very basic skeleton throughout, but evolved heavily throughout the years. Here's a list of surprises that came through the tour:
- An astounding stage.
- Fighting through weather: from the pouring rain of the 2010 European leg with its gazillion Rain snippets to the practical desertification of the United States this summer.
- Rehearsals in Barcelona featuring, among more normal songs, TUF, Drowning Man, In A Little While, and Ultraviolet.
- A U2.com video indicating rehearsals of Electrical Storm later.
- More rehearsal reports indicating If God Will Send His Angels, Crazy Tonight and EBTTRT remixes, and an acoustic version of Mysterious Ways (thank God that never happened)
- A first night show with TUF, In A Little While, and Ultraviolet.
- A second night show featuring Electrical Storm
- The occasional introduction of favorites like Bad and UTEOTW through the first leg
- Rumors of rehearsals of Your Blue Room late in the first leg.
- A performance of Your Blue Room in Chicago.
- A new segue between One and Streets.
- Streaming and filming of the Rose Bowl show.
- HMTMKMKM and all of the new songs in Europe last year.
- Love Rescue Me in Australia last year.
- One Tree Hill in New Zealand last year.
- Mothers Of The Disappeared in South America (are this and the last really surprises?)
- Even Better Than The Real Thing displacing Beautiful Day as the opener in South America.
- Zooropa being played for the first time since 1993 in São Paulo, and sticking around.
- The Fly being rehearsed and eventually showing up in Anaheim.
- A bunch of little treats through the seventh leg, such as the occasional Bad and OTH.
- A very Zoo-heavy Glastonbury performance.
- And ending the tour with OOC and "40".
I'm sure I missed some - feel free to add.
So it really was an incredible. Thanks again to everyone here. Thanks also to everyone who kept us informed, from the good ol' folks at U2EastLink (remember them?) to Axver, Matthias, and Matkin at U2Gigs for, as usual, doing an incredible job keeping us informed throughout the way. Thanks to everyone who streamed and tweeted about and bootlegged and video taped shows for us along the way. And, of course, thanks to U2 and their crew for putting on an amazing tour that I'm sure none of us will ever forget.
I can't wait for the next tour. Now it's time for us to all furiously watch Where The Album Has No Name for nonexistent reports of a new album until then.
As for me, 360 was a pretty incredible experience. I only saw two shows, both in 2009: the first Chicago show, and the Houston show. I loved both, but Houston was my favorite, because I got to see a rare performance of Your Blue Room, and a not-so-rare performance of UTEOTW, neither of which was touched at Chicago 1. But Chicago 1 was also extremely special for its performance of Bad, one of two in North America over the course of the entire tour. So, even though I only saw two shows, I feel lucky about what I did see. When the tour started, I had just finished my sophomore year in high school; now, I'm about to be a college freshman. For someone my age, this is a fairly substantial chunk of life to be following a tour, but it was a lot of fun. When I wasn't at shows, I really enjoyed everyone's company on Interference. This is a really great group of diverse people that we have on the forum, and I'm extremely thankful for it. So thank every single one of you.
Enough about me - the tour itself was pretty amazing. Last night, after the Moncton show, I threw together a little statistical pie chart showing, out of the total 2625 plays of songs on the tour, what proportion each album had. Here you go:
Of course, No Line On The Horizon wins this race, with about 21% of song plays. It was an interesting journey for NLOTH - U2 started by promoting No Line very heavily with the tour, at first doing a solid block of four No Line songs at the beginning of every show, and then playing three later. The first leg of the tour seemed to be centered around the NLOTH songs, with surprises being thrown in along the way, and a vaguely defined space theme taking shape. In the second leg, the NLOTH songs stayed around for the most part, but setlists grew more static and a space theme was more heavily emphasized, especially with Frank DeWinne's presence on Your Blue Room and later In A Little While. NLOTH's presence started at the first's leg's seven, then dropped to six and then five for one show, before rebounding back to six and then eventually seven with the re-introduction of Unknown Caller. This leg also had the large (some would say absurdly large) presence of ATYCLB that so many people complained about, essentially propelling ATYCLB into second place in the song-plays chart. U2 would play five ATYCLB songs in one night on many dates in the fall of 2009.
2010 came quite interestingly. As Interference watched the claw under construction in Salt Leg City for what would be the third leg of the tour, once again in North America, news came that Bono had broken his back. The third leg was postponed, along with U2's long-awaited first performance at the Glastonbury festival. But, by August, Bono was back and ready to perform, as evidenced by his swing on the microphone during HMTMKMKM; he obviously wanted to prove that he was back, and, as an added bonus, his voice sounded great, too. This leg featured a sharp reduction of both NLOTH songs and the space theme, now opening with Return Of The Stingray Guitar, an unreleased instrumental song from the TUF era, with its notoriously awkward segue into Beautiful Day. Along the way, U2 debuted several new songs, all of which have yet to be released: Glastonbury, North Star, Every Breaking Wave, an updated version of Mercy, Boy Falls From The Sky, and Stingray. The fourth leg, in Australia and New Zealand, was largely a continuation of the European leg (with One Tree Hill thrown in, of course), as was the fifth leg, in South Africa.
Then came the sixth and seventh legs. No Line's presence was often reduced to three songs per night, and, for better or for worse, U2 seemed to promote the ZooTV era pretty heavily. By re-introducing Even Better Than The Real Thing (as an opener!) and The Fly, and playing as much AB on some nights as they did ATYCLB in 2009, propelled AB into third place on the chart, quite easily. Zooropa also managed to get two songs per night throughout most of the North American leg. Ultraviolet, however, was very rarely played on this leg, showing up just on second nights and at the Baltimore show, with HMTMKMKM being heavily favored (sadly, in my opinion). And that led us to the end: the tour ending with a surprise performance of "40".
This tour changed a lot over the course of two years. It kept a very basic skeleton throughout, but evolved heavily throughout the years. Here's a list of surprises that came through the tour:
- An astounding stage.
- Fighting through weather: from the pouring rain of the 2010 European leg with its gazillion Rain snippets to the practical desertification of the United States this summer.
- Rehearsals in Barcelona featuring, among more normal songs, TUF, Drowning Man, In A Little While, and Ultraviolet.
- A U2.com video indicating rehearsals of Electrical Storm later.
- More rehearsal reports indicating If God Will Send His Angels, Crazy Tonight and EBTTRT remixes, and an acoustic version of Mysterious Ways (thank God that never happened)
- A first night show with TUF, In A Little While, and Ultraviolet.
- A second night show featuring Electrical Storm
- The occasional introduction of favorites like Bad and UTEOTW through the first leg
- Rumors of rehearsals of Your Blue Room late in the first leg.
- A performance of Your Blue Room in Chicago.
- A new segue between One and Streets.
- Streaming and filming of the Rose Bowl show.
- HMTMKMKM and all of the new songs in Europe last year.
- Love Rescue Me in Australia last year.
- One Tree Hill in New Zealand last year.
- Mothers Of The Disappeared in South America (are this and the last really surprises?)
- Even Better Than The Real Thing displacing Beautiful Day as the opener in South America.
- Zooropa being played for the first time since 1993 in São Paulo, and sticking around.
- The Fly being rehearsed and eventually showing up in Anaheim.
- A bunch of little treats through the seventh leg, such as the occasional Bad and OTH.
- A very Zoo-heavy Glastonbury performance.
- And ending the tour with OOC and "40".
I'm sure I missed some - feel free to add.
So it really was an incredible. Thanks again to everyone here. Thanks also to everyone who kept us informed, from the good ol' folks at U2EastLink (remember them?) to Axver, Matthias, and Matkin at U2Gigs for, as usual, doing an incredible job keeping us informed throughout the way. Thanks to everyone who streamed and tweeted about and bootlegged and video taped shows for us along the way. And, of course, thanks to U2 and their crew for putting on an amazing tour that I'm sure none of us will ever forget.
I can't wait for the next tour. Now it's time for us to all furiously watch Where The Album Has No Name for nonexistent reports of a new album until then.