Great show! Yeah, we didn't get The Fly. However, the crowd was VERY loud, at least where I was (dead center outer rail, two back---hard to believe I was #597). People were singing nearly every line of about 3/4 of the songs. Pretty impressive. Bono picked up on it & a few times shouted out how great & loud the crowd were.
I don't know where the Bruce stuff came from. No one near us in line or on the floor talked about it at all----it seems like it was just that one guy's "source."
In a sense, I'm glad that I got to see the Achtung opening in Baltimore AND this set, especially a great performance of the album version of Magnificent. Other highlights:
- Bono absolutely nailed the opera part of Miss Sarajevo---it really may have been the best performance of it since he nailed it in Milan on Vertigo.
- Bono didn't hit the high "staaaaay" in Stay, but he damn well gave it his all to try and get it
- Edge flubbed a note early in a song, I believe it was UTEOTW, and when Bono walked toward him a moment later, Edge had this fun "oops!" smile on his face.
-Bono got absolutely, completely absorbed and fired up by the rap in MOS. It looked like if he kept going, he could've gone into a dark Exit/Mofo-type place. He was still winding down as the rest of the band were already stepping forward and clapping toward the crowd. That residual energy really made me think that he might up and say that he wanted to do another song after MOS. Of course, it only turned out to be Happy Birthday....I would have been bummed to end on that if it were for some politician or tour promoter, but we all were really into it after hearing that it was for Nelson Mandela.
As for being a goofball & starting the thread despite not being able to post tags
, I just had to share that Breathe was seriously soundchecked but didn't have any over place to put it. My bad.
I'm fairly certain it was the crew. It was done in the earlier part of the afternoon (they worked on it from about 2:30 through 3:00) & occurred after not just a few songs, but also after the check of the recordings of the Boots intro, the "Hello, Philadelphia from the International Space Station" recording, and a few other of the recorded bits. The full band soundchecked two songs I believe much later on, closer to when they let us in. It may have been the band for Breathe----they worked on it for a good 20+ minutes, and worked on it with sections of instruments and all instruments together---but I just doubted it because if how early it was.
The Trip Through Your Wires bit was about 30seconds to a minute long & occurred shortly after they finished working on Breathe. So, whoever did Breathe, it was the same guitarist who did Trip. Shawn Bonneau seems to have heard it, too, so it wasn't just me!