Popmart poor attendance examples

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First the single flopped, then the album flopped, and then the tour wasn't selling very well, the ABC special tanked, and the first few shows of Popmart were awful and got really bad reviews. It was just a snowball effect, and the media were salivating at this "fall from grace" they were able to report on. I have listened to the first 2 Popmart shows, in Las Vegas and San Diego. WOW. They even messed up songs like "I will follow" and "Pride", that they had played like many hundreds of times at that point. Even the usually flawless Larry was fucking things up.

What's funny is that this past summer, for example, Guns'n'Roses played several half full stadiums, and nobody said a word about it. Even the great Rolling Stones have played to half full stadiums in their time, but you don't hear about that either. People were just excited to see U2 fail.

I wonder why the Jacksonville and Tampa shows weren't consolidated into one show after initial sales were so poor?
 
So they eventually got Popmart working really well, barely reduced the number of Pop songs being played by the end of the tour (unlike Vertigo and 360), even played a bunch of Pop songs on Elevation (you might say they would be inclined to play songs from their second-latest album, but then Zooropa got nothing on Popmart, NLOTH has only got a single performance of Magnificent on I+E so far). After all this, then they disassociate themselves from Pop.
 
They're trying to adhere to the popular narrative. Most people who even give a shit view Pop as a blemish on an otherwise good career (at least until SOI... the public will hate that forever). So U2 need to align themselves with what they think people want. So they disowned POP and most of Zooropa.

The thing is, U2 have since backtracked and said "it's not finished, we didn't have time, poor us, boo hoo!" BULLSHIT!!! They released the exact album they wanted to release, and were proud of it when it first came out. Then they changed their tune. It's like the kid in gym class who misses the winning shot, so he pretends his arm is injured so that people won't judge him.






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97 was prob the height of my U2 fandom, thru ATYCLB and even Bomb

Pop got me thru some tough transitional shit as a senior in high school and into college.

AB was 12 years - 13 years and just as important, but Pop always holds such a spot in my heart.


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Yea same boat. I was still pretty young through the Zoo era. Honestly my biggest memory of U2 through that time was Bono cursing on the Grammy's and then coming out 5 minutes later to introduce Frank Sinatra. I think I was 13 at the time and just starting to branch out from safer, poppier music that my parents approved of into more of the music of my time, what with all great music of the early to mid 90s. That simple curse and then his speech about Sinatra is really what opened up my eyes to U2. I was like "woah, who is this scruffy guy who just shocked my mom and Billy Joel and 5 minutes later is chilling with Sinatra?"

Pop was my first release as a fan. I remember watching the press conference and then later going to Borders to buy the CD the day it came out, listening to it on my DiscMan on the way home. I also remember my older sister yelling me she'd get me a ticket to PopMart and then giving it to someone else last minute, and that I spent that night at Shea Stadium watching the Mets play the fucking Expos instead. Still bitter.
 
The_acrobat said:
What's funny is that this past summer, for example, Guns'n'Roses played several half full stadiums, and nobody said a word about it. Even the great Rolling Stones have played to half full stadiums in their time, but you don't hear about that either. People were just excited to see U2 fail.

I wonder why the Jacksonville and Tampa shows weren't consolidated into one show after initial sales were so poor?
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One big difference is that the GnR shows that sold poorly were mainly the added 2nd show in certain markets (I attended one), not a single show in a market.
 
I saw two shows that tour, San Diego which was the 2nd show of the tour and Los Angeles a couple months later. I got great center isle floor tickets in the 9th and 11th rows respectively for both shows through Propaganda.

The San Diego show at the Jack Murphy stadium was kind of depressing. The upper tier for the entire back 2/3rds of the stadium was empty and although the band played better then the notorious opening night in Las Vegas, they were still very tentative on some songs and the set just didn't seem to flow well at all. Add to that my wife had given birth to our son less then two months prior and this was our first full night out with our boy home with a sitter, it was hard to really get into the show.

The LA show a couple months later was a *much* better affair. I think this show was close to or actually sold out at the LA Coluseum and by now, the band had a couple month's worth of shows under their belt and were playing much more confidently. They had shuffled the set around a bit and had dropped a couple Pop songs and brought back AIWIY and the crowd was *much* more into it then in San Diego. This was the show where Woody Harrelson sat behind us and when my brother and his buddy left to try and sneak up to the front, Harrelson took my brother's seat and promptly pissed my wife off by getting high while his young daughter and girlfriend/wife looked like they were having a miserable time in their seats (it was extremely loud where we were).
 
I remember my first U2 show was May 31st 1997 at Giants Stadium. Not having MTV, my only experience seeing U2 live was the polished and perfectly choreographed ZooTV Live in Sydney, and Rattle N' Hum. I enjoyed the hell out of that first show but it was like a douse of cold water seeing all the blips and mistakes. I saw all 3 at Giants stadium, then flew down to see the Nov. 14th Miami show and it was like night and day. Sound was incredible, visuals were tight.
 
brooklynmike said:
I remember my first U2 show was May 31st 1997 at Giants Stadium. Not having MTV, my only experience seeing U2 live was the polished and perfectly choreographed ZooTV Live in Sydney, and Rattle N' Hum. I enjoyed the hell out of that first show but it was like a douse of cold water seeing all the blips and mistakes. I saw all 3 at Giants stadium, then flew down to see the Nov. 14th Miami show and it was like night and day. Sound was incredible, visuals were tight.
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Wow, I must have been really fucked up because I went to that 5/31/97 show and thought it was awesome! That show was crazy. I had bought 10 tickets when they went on sale. Then a few people backed out at the last minute and I had to sell 5 tickets. I wound up selling 3 to some really nice people and we had a blast. I had to eat the other 2, but that at least gave us a little more room.

Before the show, one of my friends drank too much and passed out. We managed to give him some food and water and revive him a bit. He was able to make it up to our seats in the upper level. But, I had to babysit him the whole time. Despite that, I enjoyed the show. I didn't drink too much before the show, but I smoked a decent amount. After the show, while we were stuck in traffic leaving the show, we had to pull over because another friend had to puke. Thankfully, he made it out just in time. He was in the middle seat in the back.

I didn't like some of Bono's outfits, but I was one of those freaks who loved Pop and enjoyed the PopMart tour. My shirt from that tour is one of my favorites. Sure the early part of the tour had some clunkers. Not enough rehearsal and all that shit. But, as the tour progressed, they went back to kicking ass.

Crazy to think it has been nearly 20 years.
 
Most U2 tours take time to develop some steam. Once the machine is up and running the show will be good, but first nights, you'd have to pay me to attend. Usually by the middle of the first leg they finally get their act in order and what you'll get then will be SO much better in comparison, but in the case of Popmart I'd say it took them most of the 1st leg to reach that point, around the time of the Chicago gigs when the setlist finally settled into something that was good. In hindsight starting out with a fully fledged stadium tour was not the smartest idea. Neither was it on 360 but at least that gamble paid off. By becoming a greatest hits tour. And speaking of a tour theme, at least with Popmart there was a strong connection between the album and the tour, I'm still at a loss what the connection was between the 360 tour and the NLOTH album.

I quite like Pop. The stylistic shift with Achtung Baby took me a lot more to get used too, after that Zooropa managed to prepare me better for what was to come. All the talk of it becoming a dance album had me greatly worried, but when the album came I was pleasantly surprised to be still listening to a rock album. And I love both Discotheque the single and the video. Best U2 video ever if you ask me as they were making fun of themselves. And I'll take funny Village People Bono any time over preachy serious 'Number Two' Bono that he has become.
 
Nothing wrong with 360 until they took out NLOTH songs and made the tour Zoo TV 2.0 in 2011.
 
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Yeah, the only leg of 360 with setlists worth a damn is that final leg in 2011.
 
U2girl said:
Nothing wrong with 360 until they took out NLOTH songs and made the tour Zoo TV 2.0 in 2011.
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Unpopular opinion. The shows from South America onward were the best shows of that tour. I probably saw the worst show of the last leg, but it was still better than the first half of the tour.
 
Auckland, November 2010 was largely greatest hits. They played Moment of Surrender, perhaps another one off NLOTH. But no Breathe, no Unknown Caller. I was a bit gutted.
Having said that, other than Edge having no wah on Mysterious Ways (I was just a few feet from him and he was apoplectic) it was a stunning show. Bono's vocals were incredible. The band were relaxed and tight. Amazing.

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We got rorted on that leg. For ages I'd been hoping Australia and New Zealand wouldn't be at the very end of a tour, because that had always been when the new/interesting stuff had vanished and we'd just get greatest hits (see Auckland II on Vertigo, which had only three HTDAAB songs and stuff like The Electric Co. was long gone). Finally we end up in the middle of the tour, which usually means good setlists, and it's the one tour where the interesting stuff shows up at the end.
 
LemonMelon said:
Chicago 2011 was one of the best shows I've ever seen, from any band.
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Axver said:
Yeah, the only leg of 360 with setlists worth a damn is that final leg in 2011.
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They killed it in 2011.

The contrast from 2009 was just unbelievable.

I liked the set list better as I didn't really care for a lot of NLOTH live, but I think the bigger difference was in performance.

Just following the tour throughout, it seemed like something was way off in 2009. Bono's injury almost helped, I thought.

I remember watching the live feed of Bono running around that ellipse in Turin in August 2010 and thinking " I've got my band back."

2010 was great.

2011 was much, much better. Saw 2 shows- Montreal 1 and Philadelphia- and both were among the best shows I've ever seen by anyone. Everything- performance, set list, noticeable increase in energy of band and crowd- was just out of this world.

My brother was living in Salt Lake in 2011 and we had a friend who was traveling with U2 doing security at the time. He's a fan but nowhere near as devoted as me. He called me at 3 AM my time to say how unbelievably good the show was. He was completely blown away and he, like me, has seen hundreds of bands live.

For shows I've attended- only the 1st night in Boston on I&E beat 2011.
 
Axver said:
We got rorted on that leg. For ages I'd been hoping Australia and New Zealand wouldn't be at the very end of a tour, because that had always been when the new/interesting stuff had vanished and we'd just get greatest hits (see Auckland II on Vertigo, which had only three HTDAAB songs and stuff like The Electric Co. was long gone). Finally we end up in the middle of the tour, which usually means good setlists, and it's the one tour where the interesting stuff shows up at the end.
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I just looked at those Australian setlists from 360, and wow, those are pretty bad. In the unfortunate era where they had pretty much abandoned road testing new songs (which at least kept things interesting from a setlist variety standard), and when IALW was a nightly staple. At least Sydney and Perth got the very unexpected return of "Love Rescue Me", even though I doubt many fans had that on their bucket list.

I feel that the 360 tour had it's real identity crisis during the Australian / South African shows, where the setlist was mainly just a collection of mostly "nice" songs. The NLOTH promo was long gone, and it had become obvious that they weren't going to release SOA, so the road testing stopped. The tour basically took on a new life that began during the South American shows, and was a different beast altogether by the final North American leg. Yes, it was a greatest hits tour + Boots, but the show was finally WORKING. They finally figured out that "Moment of Surrender" isn't the best note to end a concert on, adding in songs like "Out of Control", "All I want is you", "40", "Bad", and even "One Tree Hill" on one occasion to close things out. I saw the 2nd to last show of that tour, in Pittsburgh, and they had pretty much attained perfection at that point.
 
Australia and NZ got shafted out of 'Zooropa'. If you read Willie's diaries from 2011 he mentions how the song was starting to be considered near the end of the 2010 European shows.
 
guess the band read all the juicy morsels of hope he was throwing the fans and told him to knock it off! :angry:
 
U2girl said:
Nothing wrong with 360 until they took out NLOTH songs and made the tour Zoo TV 2.0 in 2011.
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They already did that in 2010 when they axed NLOTH, Breathe and Unknown Caller. The only NLOTH song they further dropped in 2011 was Magnificent. Halfway during the final leg. Unfortunately because they had also rearranged the song into a more uptempo version which finally appealed to me. Personally I think the 2011 shows had the best setlists, if only for adding Zooropa! :drool:

The point remains though, Zoo TV was thematically linked to the Achtung Baby album, Popmart was thematically linked to the Pop album, I still don't know how 360 was thematically linked to the NLOTH album. It's an entity on its own, separate from any album and thematically it all seems linked to the Claw. Like they had no idea for a tour theme, saw the design for the Claw and thought 'Space, the Final Frontier!'.
 
I think part of the problem thematically was that NLOTH was an album much better suited to arenas, while U2 were at a point in their career where they could rock up just about anywhere and put on a stadium show.

So we ended up with a mish-mash that was undoubtedly the band's worst tour ever, from a setlist perspective.
 
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