SPOILERS U2 eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour Rehearsals/Soundcheck Thread SPOILERS

[BigMacPhisto]

What they rehearsed so far has got to be the worst representation of the album they are promoting. It’s really the worst of the new songs if that is all they end up playing.

As if any of the songs from SOE really stand out from the other ones. It's all a turgid, hook-less bore. None of these songs are hits anyway, so they could just throw out there whatever they feel like.

It was more of an eyebrow raiser last time when "Song for Someone" ended up becoming both a single and in the setlist every night.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

God, is there anything less-Pop than an acoustic SATS? They seriously might as well just bring back "In A Little While" as that would appease more people with a similar vibe.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I consider myself a casual Stones fan.

I'd recognize every song on Beggars Banquet or Exile, even if I'd be more jazzed to hear Sympathy.

Anyone who thinks the majority of people at a U2 concert wouldn't recognize every song on Achrung Baby is crazy.

 

[Axver]

I just don't understand this argument that Acrobat is going to flop with the majority of the crowd. It's an irrationality borne from this idea that it's somehow a super duper deluxe rarity because - and only hardcore fans would even care to know this - it's never been played live before.

I do not remember anybody making this claim in 2009 about Ultra Violet. The two songs are of exactly the same status: songs from the back end of Achtung Baby (one of U2's two best-sellers, and one of the best-selling albums going around) that were neither a single nor on a Best Of compilation.

I fucking hate Ultra Violet, you all know that, but I'm not going to pretend it was a concert low in either 2009-11 or in 2017. I'd love to bag it out as a dud moment like I do In a Little While, but that would be disingenuous. And Acrobat is an even more visceral, engaging song. It'll do just fine.

Songs That Have Been Rested For A Few (Or Many) Tours (4):

The Ocean

...

True Rarities Being Rehearsed (2):

Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses

Not sure why you are counting The Ocean as just a song "rested" but WGRYWH as a "true rarity". If we discount that one-off club gig in 2015, neither song has been played since the Vertigo Tour, on which The Ocean was done 28 times (never outside North America) and WGRYWH 16. And before that WGRYWH had at least been played in 1992, about 12.5 years before its resurrection on Vertigo, unlike The Ocean, which had been absent for almost 22.5 years. If The Ocean is played in Europe, it will be its first performance outside North America since December 1982; WGRYWH was done there in mid-2005; neither, I might note, has ever been played in Australia.

I'd say they're on the same level, i.e. if one is a "true rarity" then so is the other.

I agree that The Ocean will serve some linking purpose if played.

What they rehearsed so far has got to be the worst representation of the album they are promoting. It’s really the worst of the new songs if that is all they end up playing.

The Blackout, Love Is Bigger, and Lights of Home are three of the four best songs from SOE, so nah.

 

[CosmoKramer]

Summer of Love and Red Flag Day should be represented in the live show. Red Flag Day has a youthful energy to it that would be exciting to see live and Summer of Love is one of the best songs on the album (my opinion) and is VERY relevant with the current world events(not an opinion, just factual).In fact, it would be shocking to see it omitted.

 

[CosmoKramer]

Why are there 4 bowls of porridge as the thumbnail for this thread? It’s confusing me and I don’t like it.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I just don't understand this argument that Acrobat is going to flop with the majority of the crowd. It's an irrationality borne from this idea that it's somehow a super duper deluxe rarity because - and only hardcore fans would even care to know this - it's never been played live before.

I do not remember anybody making this claim in 2009 about Ultra Violet. The two songs are of exactly the same status: songs from the back end of Achtung Baby (one of U2's two best-sellers, and one of the best-selling albums going around) that were neither a single nor on a Best Of compilation.

I fucking hate Ultra Violet, you all know that, but I'm not going to pretend it was a concert low in either 2009-11 or in 2017. I'd love to bag it out as a dud moment like I do In a Little While, but that would be disingenuous. And Acrobat is an even more visceral, engaging song. It'll do just fine.

How dare you try and make sense.

 

[MFF0RD9]

yes RFD is a highlight of SOE in terms of energy, so will be a bit surprising if not at one of the 2 LA shows.

i'll be happy to hear some more obscure/not often played stuff from AB and combined with anaheim2 from 2011 will be 8/12 songs from the album if they stay in setlist. after missing the 1992 tour (long story), this will be a good portion to have seen live. but no zoo station?

i'm quite pleased cedarwood is being rehearsed

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I consider myself a casual Stones fan.

I'd recognize every song on Beggars Banquet or Exile, even if I'd be more jazzed to hear Sympathy.

Anyone who thinks the majority of people at a U2 concert wouldn't recognize every song on Achrung Baby is crazy.

The casual Stones fan doesn't recognize all those songs on those albums. A lot of them have not even listened to them. People do go just for the hits. My dad saw the Stones live and The Who and Stevie Nicks. Never owned an album from any of them. When you play to 60,000 people, there's going to be tons that are there just because it's an event or because they know the hits. Next time you go to one of those shows and actually sit in the seats, throw out some relatively mild trivia to anybody near you. They seriously won't be able to name or hum album cuts from classic albums, etc.

A guy I knew from college went to see The Stones in 2005 and they busted out "Sweet Virginia"...he said absolutely nobody around him recognized the song or was even excited by it. This is THE exact same reaction that U2 gets if you're actually in the stands like I've been when they bust out these deeper album cuts (or truly obscure rarities). The bulk of those people in the cheap seats know them from their radio hits and the copy of The Best of 1980-1990 sitting in their dashboard.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I'd argue with you, but I find smashing my head against a brick wall to be more enjoyable.

Welcome back

 

[BigMacPhisto]

And for the record, I don't think anybody is arguing that Acrobat will be a low moment.

1) It is not a rarity. A great deal of the crowd will have heard it. We're just making the argument that there's way, way more people than you think that are there because of the hits or because their friends and family drag them along, etc. Most Interferencers aren't sitting in the cheap seats like I have for a great deal of shows on recent tours. I had people still getting to their seats as late as Song #4 in San Jose on the I&E Tour which included a woman dropping a hot dog on to my shoes while "Electric Co." was playing. I can guarantee you that she had never heard that song.

2) It's a very lively and energetic track unlike, say, "Your Blue Room"...it could go over very well with the crowd. But there will be thousands of people that don't recognize it or barely know it. But, for what it's worth, that big chunk of the audience was only going to instantly know like 20 or 30 songs from this band.

3) The general public just isn't as much of a music listener as either your musicphile or (insert band here) obsessive. Album sales have declined dramatically even with the increase in streaming and the like. I can't tell you how many adults I know from my parent's inner circle that would be like, "Yeah, I love Van Halen. I have The Best Of but would never actually buy an album" or see something like my dad's second wife insisting they check out Rod Stewart because "he's her fave" when I had never once seeing her listening to Rod Stewart or even an album over a ten year span, etc. These are the people that go to buy food or the bathroom when the show gets "slow"...these are the people who don't have the attention span to sit through a two hour concert in full. And they are a sizable amount of concertgoers.

 

[Axver]

Summer of Love and Red Flag Day should be represented in the live show. Red Flag Day has a youthful energy to it that would be exciting to see live and Summer of Love is one of the best songs on the album (my opinion) and is VERY relevant with the current world events(not an opinion, just factual).In fact, it would be shocking to see it omitted.

I absolutely agree that Summer of Love would be a strange omission. I would expect it to have a rather prominent setlist position.

But then this is the band that didn't play Gone when Bono was wearing a literal suit of lights, so, track record and all.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

Not sure why you are counting The Ocean as just a song "rested" but WGRYWH as a "true rarity". If we discount that one-off club gig in 2015, neither song has been played since the Vertigo Tour, on which The Ocean was done 28 times (never outside North America) and WGRYWH 16. And before that WGRYWH had at least been played in 1992, about 12.5 years before its resurrection on Vertigo, unlike The Ocean, which had been absent for almost 22.5 years. If The Ocean is played in Europe, it will be its first performance outside North America since December 1982; WGRYWH was done there in mid-2005; neither, I might note, has ever been played in Australia.

Ah, I had only recalled "Horses" appearing at a couple of nights for Vertigo. I guess it appeared enough then to be in that category and neither was a tour regular so maybe they should have their own sub-category ("Songs That Sort Of Popped Up A While Back").

That then brings the rarity count to, well, one.

 

[Axver]

I'd put all three in the rarities camp myself. You'd be an extremely lucky fan to have heard The Ocean or WGRYWH in the past 25 years.

(I've missed out on a bunch of really great rarities by the barest of margins, and not-quite-rarity AIWIY seems to be deliberately avoiding me, but I count myself as fortunate enough to have not only heard both of these two songs, but to have been there the night WGRYWH was resurrected.)

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I'd argue with you, but I find smashing my head against a brick wall to be more enjoyable.

No worries. Over the years it's become clear that you're never open to new information or an opposing viewpoint.

Headache: No you're wrong!

Somebody Else: Well, from my experience or this data set, it shows that...

Headache: Does not compute!



Remember the time when you pretended to be on the "sensible Left" for months and then later admitted that Bloomberg is your cup of tea as far as politics goes? Yeah, I'm sure dozens of us on this forum just loved being condescended to for months on progressive politics from a guy that's never even considered himself to be much of a liberal.

But I've got no real axe to grind or to argue with you per se. All I'm saying is that I've actually sat in the upper tiers for this band. The people around me didn't know "Stay" or "Fast Cars" or the SOI songs (which is kind of ironic given how it was released), etc.

 

[Axver]

Oh fuck this "I've been in the cheap seats and nobody knew Big Popular Song X" nonsense.

I was in the cheap seats at Boston I, May 2005. During Running to Stand Still, the random dude next to me, with whom I had not interacted until this moment, turned to me and we bellowed the "still running" bit to each other despite the fact Bono wasn't singing it yet, we were just following the melody. Every single person in my shithole thousand-miles-away section stood for the entire damn gig and sang out 40 at the end.

So two can play this silly anecdote game.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

No worries. Over the years it's become clear that you're never open to new information or an opposing viewpoint.

Headache: No you're wrong!

Somebody Else: Well, from my experience or this data set, it shows that...

Headache: Does not compute!



Remember the time when you pretended to be on the "sensible Left" for months and then later admitted that Bloomberg is your cup of tea as far as politics goes? Yeah, I'm sure dozens of us on this forum just loved being condescended to for months on progressive politics from a guy that's never even considered himself to be much of a liberal.

But I've got no real axe to grind or to argue with you per se. All I'm saying is that I've actually sat in the upper tiers for this band. The people around me didn't know "Stay" or "Fast Cars" or the SOI songs (which is kind of ironic given how it was released), etc.

over the years I've discovered that it's not worth the breath to argue with wackadoodles.

But hey, keep fucking that chicken.

I've never tried to portray myself as anything other than what I am - a one time republican who's drifted to the left with time. But if you feel better about yourself to believe otherwise, by all means.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

Sure. But it depends on where you're seated, where the concert is and even the given night.

There was a massive amount of difference in interest on night one and night two of the SOI shows in San Jose. Not even close. Everybody was seated and ready to go and a lot more excited on Night One. Night Two had people walking in literally seven songs into the show that had clearly just bought tickets off StubHub and all. Since the first night goes on sale first, it would make sense that it would be quicker to attract the diehards right away, yada yada (although all of the upper seats end up on resale sites anyway, so does it even matter?)

So yes, it completely varies. But most people in the crowd do not know the songs that well outside of the hits compilations. And I know this because these same people will light up and start dancing when "Mysterious Ways" gets busted out or they'll sing along to the "City of Blinding Lights" chorus. They sure as hell have never done that at the many shows where I've seen Miss Sarajevo. Nor was there much excitement for "The Ocean" or "Gloria" blah blah blah.

Something else I've witnessed? You can often hear the reaction from the GA audience when a rarer number is busted out and the rest of the crowd in the seats does basically nothing. Like, "The Electric Co." will get busted out for the first time on a tour, the GA crowd will quickly yell in adulation and nobody in the seats is doing anything.

And this all has little to do with U2. It's the same way at pretty much any concert you attend. Most people don't know the songs very well and in the case of bands with rather large catalogs, they don't know a good chunk of the material.

tldr; Most people are not avid music listeners and most people don't listen to albums. If I were to divide all the people I met into the categories of "avid music listeners who listen to complete albums" and "the rest" then practically everybody would end up in the latter category. We are absolutely in the minority here.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I've never tried to portray myself as anything other than what I am - a one time republican who's drifted to the left with time. But if you feel better about yourself to believe otherwise, by all means.

Then you should have just prefaced your posts. "I'm not really on the left at all and don't have the same moral values as any of you and hate paying higher taxes and I think ____"

Instead of doing things like calling Bernie the c-word and running off. Such intellect!

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Then you should have just prefaced your posts. "I'm not really on the left at all and don't have the same values as any of you and I think ____"

Instead of that time you just called Bernie the c-word and ran off. Such intellect!

Perhaps you should take your political debates to FYM... or are you still banned from there?

 

[Iggy Fizz]

I just don't understand this argument that Acrobat is going to flop with the majority of the crowd. It's an irrationality borne from this idea that it's somehow a super duper deluxe rarity because - and only hardcore fans would even care to know this - it's never been played live before.

I do not remember anybody making this claim in 2009 about Ultra Violet. The two songs are of exactly the same status: songs from the back end of Achtung Baby (one of U2's two best-sellers, and one of the best-selling albums going around) that were neither a single nor on a Best Of compilation.

UV and Acrobat are of the 'same status'? they are completely different tunes in so many ways. I happen to like them both but I disagree with you on how Acrobat will be received. Will be shocked if it sticks around for the majority of the tour, or even more than a few shows.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

Perhaps you should take your political debates to FYM... or are you still banned from there?

I'm glad I don't have to see any political posts from the guy who was completely wrong about everything in 2016. You're as removed from the casual concert-going audience as you are with the general public's populist streak. I mean, do I have to bring up the time you argued that Bernie's tax plan would leave you "hurting" even though you make over $200,000 a year? LMAO.

But it is kind of weird that you were running around calling people the c-word and I merely stated opinions and got banned from there. Good riddance.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Lol

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I was in the cheap seats at Boston I, May 2005. During Running to Stand Still, the random dude next to me, with whom I had not interacted until this moment, turned to me and we bellowed the "still running" bit to each other despite the fact Bono wasn't singing it yet, we were just following the melody. Every single person in my shithole thousand-miles-away section stood for the entire damn gig and sang out 40 at the end.

For what it's worth, RTSS went over big at the Vertigo shows. The audience was really digging it. Frankly, most of the set choices on Vertigo were winners and it helped that the album conveniently fit what an arena rock audience wanted to hear.

As for "40", they should just end every single show with that number. Nothing else that they have tried reels in the audience as much and provides closure to the evening. Anything else is a letdown.

 

[Axver]

UV and Acrobat are of the 'same status'? they are completely different tunes in so many ways. I happen to like them both but I disagree with you on how Acrobat will be received. Will be shocked if it sticks around for the majority of the tour, or even more than a few shows.

Of course they're of the same status in terms of likelihood of the audience to recognise the song. They're literally back-to-back and enjoy the same release/sales status - i.e. on a popular album, but not a single nor on a compilation.

Nothing to do with composition.

 

[Axver]

As for "40", they should just end every single show with that number. Nothing else that they have tried reels in the audience as much and provides closure to the evening. Anything else is a letdown.

Bad rang.

Admittedly, a snippet of 40 came down the line at the end.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Of course they're of the same status in terms of likelihood of the audience to recognise the song. They're literally back-to-back and enjoy the same release/sales status - i.e. on a popular album, but not a single nor on a compilation.

Nothing to do with composition.

Right.

If you know Ultra Violet, you know Acrobat.

Neither were singles, both were among the final 3 tracks on Achtung Baby, and they're literally next to each other on the album.

Ax aside, Ultra Violet gets a big reaction.

Yet somehow in the infinate wisdowm of some, Acrobat will be unknwon to most?

Please.

 

[BigMacPhisto]

I think Ultra Violet is a much catchier number though and could have been a single. The audience can dig it even if they don't really know it.

Acrobat has potential though. But it's all about speed. If it lacks the ferocity of the album version, it could just end up feeling kind of "bleh"...

Truthfully, I don't think they can end up with "bleh" for "Acrobat"...because if you fuck it up, the song is literally going to be ruined and a total catastrophe. It's not going to be easy to pull off live, but if they do manage it, it could be a stunner.

 

[Iggy Fizz]

Right.

If you know Ultra Violet, you know Acrobat.

Neither were singles, both were among the final 3 tracks on Achtung Baby, and they're literally next to each other on the album.

Ax aside, Ultra Violet gets a big reaction.

Yet somehow in the infinate wisdowm of some, Acrobat will be unknwon to most?

Please.

the good news is that we're pretty close to finding out.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

the good news is that we're pretty close to finding out.

Indeed