Alisaura said:
I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy other songs more, I would have loved to hear anything off Pop, or RTSS, or any of a dozen other songs. But being a U2-concert-newbie, so to speak, it felt very cool to hear Pride and Streets and One, and Bullet and SBS. I would hate for other U2-concert-newbies to never have the chance to hear Edge playing Pride or Streets, or to shout out "No More!". It's moments like that that you KNOW that U2 is right in front of you.
You hit the nail on the head with this. This is a very small segment of U2's fandom that we're sitting in -- the ones who have all the DVDs, who've seen several live shows, or own a lot of bootlegs. The reality is that most of the people who go to U2 shows aren't familiar enough with the U2 Live Experience to get sick of hearing certain songs.
I have several bootlegs, but when I saw my first and only show in 2005, I didn't own all the albums (I had only JT, ATYCLB and HTDAAB) and U2 was not my favorite band at that point. They were my favorite by the time I left the arena, but that's another story. I can't imagine that show without Streets, Pride, WOWY, SBS, Bullet, and Still Haven't Found. I didn't realize that Bullet was a staple of their live shows; it blew me away. Sure, now I can listen to all these bootlegs and realize that certain songs were much stronger on previous tours, but for me, that night was absolutely magical. If the setlist had contained a lot of more obscure material and a lot of the more popular songs had been dropped, I don't think it would have been the same.
So I've got to think of the type of fan I was a few years ago -- the audience is
filled with other people like this. U2 wants to put on a great show, and a huge part of that is putting together a setlist that will appeal to the greatest number of people in the crowd. It can be frustrating for the uberfans, but I understand where the band is coming from here.
That said, the only song that I think should absolutely never,
ever be dropped is Streets. That was a song that I never truly "got" until I heard it live. Wow. And I don't think it ever will be dropped. The band has talked about how, when a show isn't going well or feels a little flat, their one ace-in-the-hole is Streets. And they're absolutely right. I'd love for them to dust off Discotheque or A Sort of Homecoming or Gloria more often, and I still pine for the day that they play Acrobat, but I can see why they don't.