theu2fly said:
Main Set: Bad, With Or Without You, City Of Blinding Lights, New Year's Day, I Will Follow, All Because Of You, Mysterious Ways, Beautiful Day, Miracle Drug, Love And Peace Or Else, Exit, Until The End Of The World, The Ocean, Where The Streets Have No Name, Vertigo
Encore(s): 11 O'Clock Tick Tock, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, Crumbs From Your Table, One, Stuck In A Moment, The First Time, Yahweh
Comments: Tonight, anything goes as U2 tears up their standard setlist. Bad opens the show for a first time, and With Or Without you gets a second slot, the first time it's ever happened. Exit is played for the first time since 1987. Vertigo closes the main set for the first time. 11 O'Clock Tick Tock is played for the third time, twice on Elevation and it's debut on Vertigo tonight.
Ok... Here's my thoughts
1. Opening with Bad would be cool, however I'm still a firm believer in "open with a song from the new album." So unless/until U2 tours without a record to promote, that just wouldn't be right.
2. If you're opening with Bad, why in the world would you want to put a song afterwards that starts in almost the same way? This would kill whatever intensity that Bad had created.
3. City, I think is a song that much like Streets needs a decent segue. WOWY would not be such a song, although kudos for picking something that starts somewhat soft and builds, going into Elevation after WOWY would have been awful.
4. New Years Day after City would actually be well worth working on, I could see a COBL/NYD combo ending shows at some point.
5. It only took until the 4th song to let people know that this is in fact a rock show...keeping that going is a good thing. Though there has to be a better choice than I Will Follow. I think...after reinventing it on Popmart, and again on Elevation, they need to do something different to it again to keep it fresh. Listen to JT/Lovetown era I Will Follow - when that song goes on autopilot, it's an ugly thing.
6. I think All Because of You is too much of a straight rock song to go after IWF, it may get a bit monotonous.
7. Mysterious Ways is DEAD on this tour. And was on the last tour, really. Either put the piano solo and "I'll buy you roses" parts back in, or drop it. That, and putting ABOY and MW right next to each other.... neither song blows me away live, to be honest. It just would be a dead 10 minutes.
8. Beautiful Day would work in just about any spot in the show EXCEPT this one. Because it sounds a lot like Miracle Drug.
9. Same comment as above.
10. I do like the idea of Miracle Drug--> Love and Peace, both songs seem to speak to the improvement of man. Certainly there's a lot more similar about MD and Love and Peace than Sometimes... and Love and Peace.
11. You know....I really see this working the otherway around. Exit would flow really well into Love and Peace (because Exit kind of fades out, and Love and Peace fades in, even live), the only problem would be the logistics of getting Larry up front while he's still playing. Perhaps he could just play the tom at his drumset.
12. Until the End of the World kinda works with the Heart of Darkness thing, I think moreso than the band has realized. Good call.
13. You've lost me again. I don't think there was really much point in doing The Ocean aside from nostalgia... and there would be zero point at all in doing it as the *only* old song brought back. Also, it's quite possibly the only thing worse than Pride as a Streets segue.
14. Oh, and what did you put here? Streets. At least they can't tie Africa into it this way.
15. Streets-->Vertigo would be really cool, and a great way to end the show. In fact didn't they play around with this during rehearsals? (Ending with Vertigo1, that is)
16. Opening with 11oclock probably would get the same reaction opening with Zoo Station did. Which by all accounts wasn't a very good one. Good song, but for the encore you want to get them hopping again, quickly.
17. Though putting Still Haven't Found after it works out pretty well... you did structure this first encore very nicely - for every possibly not recognized song, there's a very well known song right next to it.
18. Crumbs From Your Table followed by One... the only problem here is, where do you put the speech? After Crumbs... just doesn't work because the audience may not know Crumbs, and the last thing you want after an unfamiliar number (especially this late into the show) is a speech. However, putting it before Crumbs is also a disaster because then you've got slow song-speech-new song. Again, not great for excitement. I'm not really sure how to resolve this.
19. "One" ending the first encore...well, I don't think it works ending the main set...did anyone see them early enough in the tour that they were still doing this? And did it work? I think as long as there's some "do you hear me coming Lord..."'s, it'll work ok.
20. I've always been a little confused by U2's desire to fade out rather than burn out. Most rockshows go out with a bang, rather than 40, or Love is Blindness, or One, or whatever. Stuck in a Moment is at least one of their better acoustic arrangements.
21. The First Time following Stuck.... I don't like at all, they're both about the same tempo, same style (at least on this tour)... and just generally bland when right after the other.
22. It's best to end on agreeing about something, so let's stop with this one. Yahweh is the ending that never was, as far as this tour goes. Specifically that last verse, I could see it being very....like Elvis on the ZooTV tour. Twould be great.
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