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djerdap

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My Chicago DVD review

Very long. Contains some really big spoilers, so...

Got the 1DVD-version today (first I was kinda disappointed I could not get the deluxe edition, but according to U2tour.de and some other sources, the extras are not worth the extra money).

Well, my reaction is mostly very positive, as it is one of the best concert films I have ever seen. Couple of things that differentiates the Vertigo Chicago DVD from the other U2 concert films are these:

1. The concert is long 135 minutes. Not bad. For U2 standards amazing (Slane & Boston were about 105 minutes, for example).
2. Adam Clayton! The Jazz Man becoming the Showman. He is more mobile than The Edge on this one. Counted three circles on the ellipse.
3. This could bother some people - the show is extremely political. Basically the whole middle part from Love and Peace to One is full of Bono's remarks about Coexist and Africa (long speeches, the declaration of Human Rights). You can see on this video that Bono is really putting 100% in these noble causes, so I don't mind at all that it is taking quite a bit time on the DVD.
4. Bono's guitar - it can be heard very clearly in the mix. Running To Stand Still, One, The Fly. Most of it I find very good (Running, The Fly opening), but sometimes it can be irritating (during Edge's solo on The Fly, most of One).
5. The band makes mistakes. And they are not edited. The interesting thing is that they took more footage from the May 9th show than we thought they would. For example, during Elevation, Bono coughs into the mic after drinking some water, stating: "I have a frog in my throat" and missing the first line in the bridge. It's strange to me that they didn't just put the May 10th Elevation here. Edge fucks up here and there as well.

The one thing I love about the show is that it ROCKS. A lot. I can honestly say that this version of The Fly is my favorite song from any U2 concert film, both visually and musically. Essential rock and roll in these amazing 5 minutes - the band really rocks HARD. Watching Adam and Bono playing guitars back to back and all jumping and showing high rock attitude in the ending is delightful. Other highlights: The Electric Co. (Edge being a mean motherfucker; Bono is hilarious - I'll come to that later), Vertigo (with the Stories For Boys snippet), Love and Peace or Else (the best live song in years), Sunday Bloody Sunday (great version - I sincerely think the Vertigo versions are the best ones since 1987 at least), Zoo Station (love the direction on this track - visually probably the best song on the DVD) and Mysterious Ways (Edge's guitar sounds fantastic).

City of Blinding Lights is an amazing opener. Easily the best since Zoo Station. An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart is also very good and does not kill the flow at all. Although it is very interesting to see and hear the audience during the Boy songs - completely numb. New Year's Day is a great version - Bono's voice is very good at this stage and seeing Adam and Edge interact on the ellipse is really cool. Running To Stand Still is beautiful as always.
One of the unexpected pleasant surprises was Original of the Species, which sounds fantastic on this DVD. One of the highlights for sure. The 40 ending could not be more appropriate.

Other favorite moments:
1. Hilarious - during Electric Co., Bono gets behind Larry and slams one of his cymbals with his microphone. Larry, surprised and annoyed, shows Bono a "look".
2. Adam and Edge cooperating on An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart and shaking hands after they nailed it.
3. Adam and Bono at the tip of the ellipse on Where the Streets Have No Name. Simply epic.
4. The entire ZooTV encore is simply breathtaking.

Now for the nitpicks:

1. Bono's age is starting to show. He does seem really tired in some moments.
2. As a fan of the Vertigo Bullet versions, I'm disappointed by this lackluster version of the song.
3. Some very weird edits where music is not compatible with the footage (especially during Elevation - the whoo-hoo's are lip-synched, BTW).
4. Bono's voice really varies during the show. Sometimes it is weak, but sometimes (on Sometimes) it really shows how much his voice has progressed from Popmart and Elevation.
5. Larry's drums could be more turned up and more acoustic in the mix (don't know how to explain it - sometimes they seem a bit out of place for me).
6. The dedication of Running To Stand Still to the US troops. A song about Dublin heroin addicts... dedicated to the US military. :eyebrow:

Anyway, there is room to enhance for the upcoming Milano DVD, but all in all, a very good DVD. There are North American Vertigo shows that would seem (performance and audience-wise) even better for a DVD shoot, but I'm definitely not disappointed. Worth the waiting for.
 
Re: My Chicago DVD review

djerdap said:
3. Some very weird edits where music is not compatible with the footage (especially during Elevation - the whoo-hoo's are lip-synched, BTW).

Its good they kept Hamish, and/or couldnt just film one night :wink:
 
Re: Re: My Chicago DVD review

bono_man2002 said:


Its good they kept Hamish, and/or couldnt just film one night :wink:
I noticed two parts where the sound wasn't synchronising, especially during Elevation a couple of times and during Zoo Station there is one Bono-scream you hear and his microphone is far away from his mouth at that moment :|

I find this very unprofessional, I saw al these mistakes after watching it two times, how can anyone else of the producing team didn't notice this?!
 
Re: Re: Re: My Chicago DVD review

OpperGoeroe said:

I noticed two parts where the sound wasn't synchronising, especially during Elevation a couple of times and during Zoo Station there is one Bono-scream you hear and his microphone is far away from his mouth at that moment :|

I find this very unprofessional, I saw al these mistakes after watching it two times, how can anyone else of the producing team didn't notice this?!

Its pretty unacceptable for somone who is "very good"(at least the band think he's good)
I guess he's not the only one to blame though.....

Only two parts where the sound wasn't synchronising, thats an improvement from Boston and Slane.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: My Chicago DVD review

bono_man2002 said:


Its pretty unacceptable for somone who is "very good"(at least the band think he's good)
I guess he's not the only one to blame though.....

Only two parts where the sound wasn't synchronising, thats an improvement from Boston and Slane.
It's still two times too much, and Elevation is - partly by the synchronising mistake - the weakest track of all in my opinion, both musically and visually. Also weird is the very little amount of seconds between Vertigo and Elevation, not really realistic too (guitar change etc.)

My personal highlight so far is An Cath Dub - Into the Heart, those songs really started growing on me, very emotional and good performances. I never found this songs to be more interesting than other songs, but now things changed :)
 
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it's good to know that at least a part of the 9th show made it onto the DVD
 
funny the way people right away assume bono is lip syncing rather than a poor edit of said track, i guess its come to the point were people will always just blame the band no matter what
 
Re: My Chicago DVD review

djerdap said:
2. Adam Clayton! The Jazz Man becoming the Showman. He is more mobile than The Edge on this one. Counted three circles on the ellipse.

1. Hilarious - during Electric Co., Bono gets behind Larry and slams one of his cymbals with his microphone. Larry, surprised and annoyed, shows Bono a "look".
:hyper: :hyper:



djerdap said:
3. Some very weird edits where music is not compatible with the footage (especially during Elevation - the whoo-hoo's are lip-synched, BTW).

5. Larry's drums could be more turned up and more acoustic in the mix (don't know how to explain it - sometimes they seem a bit out of place for me).
:banghead: :rant:
 
Re: Re: My Chicago DVD review

TheBrazilianFly said:
as i said why all of a sudden assume bono is lip synching? have people watched the slane dvd were bono does that trick with the mic? one min he is singing the next he is facing larry?

but oh no wait bono of today has to be faking it :|
 
Yeah, I didn't get that lip-synching comment. Bono's been doing the Elevation "woohoo" part live this tour. Does it just appear lip-synched due to poor editing?
 
Axver said:
Yeah, I didn't get that lip-synching comment. Bono's been doing the Elevation "woohoo" part live this tour. Does it just appear lip-synched due to poor editing?
am with you here, for some reason people right away assume bono is lip synching, when really it could just be poor editing of the dvd
 
Axver said:
Yeah, I didn't get that lip-synching comment. Bono's been doing the Elevation "woohoo" part live this tour. Does it just appear lip-synched due to poor editing?

Well It sounds like he's singing along to a backing track...sort of....

on the GMA audio/video it it really didnt look/sound live....
 
bono_man2002 said:


Well It sounds like he's singing along to a backing track...sort of....

on the GMA audio/video it it really didnt look/sound live....
but he isnt... the many many bootlegs of the shows prove that, but right away people assume he is lip sihcning, as i just said listen to all the bootlegs they sound totally diffferent,
 
bono_man2002 said:


Well It sounds like he's singing along to a backing track...sort of....

on the GMA audio/video it it really didnt look/sound live....
i thought it did sound live :shrug:
 
bono_man2002 said:


Well It sounds like he's singing along to a backing track...sort of....

on the GMA audio/video it it really didnt look/sound live....

They're definitely live. They differ in frequency/quality/length on every bootleg I've heard. It seems like what's being described is an editing problem.
 
KUEFC09U2 said:
but he isnt... the many many bootlegs of the shows prove that, but right away people assume he is lip sihcning, as i just said listen to all the bootlegs they sound totally diffferent,

I know...I'm just saying.
It was Live at the shows I saw....I'm betting this was just put on the DVD because prehaps Bono thought it wasn't a great performance ...or something....I dont know, to make the performance more "perfect" just for the dvd? :shrug:
 
bono_man2002 said:


I know...I'm just saying.
It was Live at the shows I saw....I'm betting this was just put on the DVD because prehaps Bono thought it wasn't a great performance ...or something....I dont know, to make the performance more "perfect" just for the dvd? :shrug:
well if thats the case isnt it the same performance were bono says he has a frog in his throat?
 
gorman said:


They're definitely live. They differ in frequency/quality/length on every bootleg I've heard. It seems like what's being described is an editing problem.

See my above post...

I agree that they have been live throught the tour.....I thought it was just thrown in on the dvd seen as how U2 are such "perfectionists"
 
bono_man2002 said:


See my above post...

I agree that they have been live throught the tour.....I thought it was just thrown in on the dvd seen as how U2 are such "perfectionists"
and see my post if they were bein perfectionists why would they include bono coughing into a mic, so why edit everything else expect that?

lets face it, this just sounds like a cock with ala streets on slane, and not bono lip sycnhing etc
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: My Chicago DVD review

bono_man2002 said:


Its pretty unacceptable for somone who is "very good"(at least the band think he's good)
I guess he's not the only one to blame though.....

Only two parts where the sound wasn't synchronising, thats an improvement from Boston and Slane.

haven't seen the dvd yet, just the mtv2 show. there are more points where it doesn't synch. i think it was real obvious at the end of vertigo. gives a bit of a britney spears feel to it. overall, looked stunning though.
 
Re: Re: Re: My Chicago DVD review

KUEFC09U2 said:
as i said why all of a sudden assume bono is lip synching? have people watched the slane dvd were bono does that trick with the mic? one min he is singing the next he is facing larry?

but oh no wait bono of today has to be faking it :|
I'm not assuming anything. Those smiles were not for the Bono lip-synching comment, it was for the "weird edits where music is not compatible with the footage" comment. On the thread about Hamish Hamilton I talked about how I hated that on both Slane and Boston DVDs. I hate this kinds of things. It annoys me. I know Bono does the "woo-hoo"s.
 
I believe the "lip synching" is Bono really singing the audio, but the video is takin from the night before or from a different time durring the song if they don't have good film for that moment. That's what they did durring WTSHNN durring Slane. (One second Bono's in front of the mic, the next he's behind it)
 
IrishDawg said:
I believe the "lip synching" is Bono really singing the audio, but the video is takin from the night before or from a different time durring the song if they don't have good film for that moment. That's what they did durring WTSHNN durring Slane. (One second Bono's in front of the mic, the next he's behind it)
:up:
 
KUEFC09U2 said:
people are just nit picking now, shall we go ever the slane DVD again?

did hamish do the same on slane. i saw that dvd at least 10 times and i don't remember it standing out. it really stood out to me the first time i saw vertigo chicago though.

does he do this on all concert films he directs?

so far he does a really good job covering adam and larry on this disc.
 
from watching the editing of Vertigo in the Chicago DVD I was very disappointed and turned off at the beginning as I thought it was WAY too overdone.. the color red WAY too saturated... . Vertigo doesn't need all that fast editiing to give the song a sense of craziness, it's nuts just looking at it straight on. HOWEVER, from there on I was very PLEASANTLY surprised at the tone and structure of how the DVD was put together. FOR ONCE! they captured Adam doing his thing during New Year's Day, totally cool seeing it focusing on both Edge and Adam during their respective solos and together jamming it out. AWESOME! OOTS.. gotta love it, just a pure song that is documented perfectly. COBL.. again, perfect balance of different shots and just letting things happen.. nailed the light curtains. The video just rocks when they're doing the slow panning shots as the show happens... when Hammish starts going nuts with the cuts and diffused shots, it just doesn't portray the mood as well, in my opinion.
 
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