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  1. Originally posted by germcevoy:The balloon thing suggests the production team didn’t quite have all the time they wanted (or needed). But all valid points stated above.
    The balloon thing was a fun way to introduce an audience member to the stage. Then they realized how there were aspects they hadn’t considered when it was in use. The door was an attempt to keep some of it in place after they decided having an audience member swing out over the audience May not work in the long run…
  2. Originally posted by u2wanderer1:[..]
    The balloon thing was a fun way to introduce an audience member to the stage. Then they realized how there were aspects they hadn’t considered when it was in use. The door was an attempt to keep some of it in place after they decided having an audience member swing out over the audience May not work in the long run…
    It was pretty cringy. But not the first time U2 has done a cringy bit before. I think they had the expensive prop (as Bono repeatedly called it) so they couldn't just drop it once it really didn't quite play out as planned.
  3. 4/5

    + The good thing is that The Achtung Baby's songs are all good.
    - The weakest songs on the tour were: Elevation, Atomic City and Vertigo.

    I don't mind a new drummer. The guys from U2 are already old men, so you just have to be happy that they are still playing concerts.

    Too bad there isn't a DVD from The Unforgettable Fire tour. That was when the band was at its best and all the songs were good.
  4. no Meerkat, 10/10 tour/residency/whatever

    keep the bar low, folks, its more fun this way!
  5. Honestly though, I can't say it much better than anyone else already has (hats off to both ger and hoserama) but I'll collect my thoughts for my own self:

    -Big, big props to U2 for doing an Achtung Baby album play, and even bigger props to them for swallowing most of their everlasting need to innovate to an nth degree and just giving us the fucking ZooTV setlist to open the show.

    -I am definitely in the camp that says things start to get weird once we hit the turntable. First the (publicly announced!) promise of rotating songs that almost never did. Then the somewhat obvious void of energy for an extended period. I think they could've done something a little bit more ambitious with the way they organized the set, but in all, the good decisions outweighed the bad here.

    -They 100% under-utilized the screen in ways that are about to become extremely apparent. "We didn't want to overwhelm people" is a fine excuse, but it frankly doesn't change the fact that the screen was underused.

    -One concession I will make to my opinion above is that after watching Hoserama's video he shared recently, with some excellent static shots that let me observe the content better, I saw things I had been missing even after watching countless videos of the show. The biggest one I noticed was just how much detail I'd been missing during the storm over the ocean in UTEOTW. This does seem like there's room for "you had to be there" folks, even though I don't typically subscribe to that mentality at all. The entire sensory experience of being in the Sphere has to be unlike anything a concertgoer has experienced before, so there is an element of "we don't know" that goes beyond "U2 is playing in arenas again; is this as good as it was last time"

    -I thought Bram was the tightest member of the band musically and performed in a way that made me pay attention to drum parts in songs that I never had before. The energy and raw passion he gave to his role was very heard. Proud of him.
  6. Originally posted by shappers72:[..]
    The first 8 songs have full on video production, tipping the nod to zoo tv along the way.
    The middle set was designed to strip out the intensity and it did
    The ‘wake up the baby’ set built a steady uphill climb from acrobat on the turntable visual right back out to full production.
    From the reveal at the end of Elevation it’s a staged romp through vegas and the desert to the Arc.
    It was designed specifically to do that.
    The production team worked on it for a straight 12 months and the rehearsal time was not restricted.
    Assumptions and reality don’t seem to align.

    Cheers to all of the above. Agreed completely. I loved the pacing of the show and the use of the screen to go along with it.

    My only two critiques: first, despite loving the design of the turntable stage, it limited the movement of all the band members. I prefer to see Bono bounding up and down a catwalk connecting main stage and B-stage, Edge roaming around, even Adam strolling to a new spot once in a while.
    Second, though I long ago made peace with U2 shows not varying much from night to night, a little more variation in the "turntable set" in the middle would have been welcome, as others have noted. I mean, to have just released a 40 song set of acoustic-driven reimaginings of songs with SOS and then barely use most of them...?
  7. Nevermind. Not worth the effort
  8. I am pretty sure many of the voters here did not see the show. And if you check the results, I am not alone in my assessment. Perhaps I am just the one who devoted time to put my two cents.

    Cheers,

    J
  9. Originally posted by jick:The show itself could not measure up to the last 3 tours - JT Tour and ei Tour. The former had 8k videos shot by Anton Corbijn himself, while the ei Tour had some nice moving images. Meanwhile, the Sphere was just a "budget" version of the last 3 tours with just an added sky, roof, or ceiling. It did not feature real videos but just graphics created by people in the computer gaming industry. The supposed "finale" was just a collage of animals that was not even moving, and was copy/pasted and repeated many times just to fill up the Sphere screen. The Fly was a rehash of the ei Tour graphics. So what if Streets or Atomic City had a sky above? Guess what, the same thing can be said for stadium shows in the JT Tour but they actually had the real sky above instead of a make-believe one.

    Bono was zapped of all his political commentary and religious references. Perhaps it was by design to appease those who ridicule him for talking too much in previous tours. But agree or disagree with his words, they are what charges him up to do a great show. Robbed of his ability to rant, preach, and pray, Bono is uninspired and like a headless chicken.

    The Edge is the scientist and perfectionist of the band. He is so meticulous with his amps and the signal that he used different wires, microphones, speakers, amps, and for every song. Now, he doesn't use his old rigs and Dallas isn't as prominent here because Edge is using an "amp emulator" which is something that just mimics what he used to do before through trial and error. The guitar is not authentic Edge but more of a "sounds like" Edge.

    Clayton seems to be in another planet whenever he is not focused on communicating with Van Den Berg to guide him through the songs. If he is not making contact with Van Den Berg, he seems like he is somewhere else worried about his mustache or his next fashion statement. Is he really present with us?

    Van Den Berg is pure energy. I cannot say enough superlatives to commend his effort on carrying on the legacy of Mullen's music. He is doing his best. He seems to be the most professional and hard working member of the band. But that's the problem: he is not a member of the band but a substitute. When your substitute outworks you, then you know it is a tour to forget.

    So yes, I voted that this is a tour to forget. It sounds like an uninspired U2 cover band, doing cabaret karaoke, with some nice graphics and manufactured sky above for better effects.

    Let's forget all this and move on to the next album and tour.

    Cheers,

    J

    Interesting perspective sir ...I Hope They Bring Back The Larry Mullen Band Next Time ?
  10. Originally posted by hoserama:[..]


    November 1st...they played every song expertly, great vibe, Bono clearly in good spirits and lots of random extra snippets. It's a bummer there isn't a quality recording for people to hear it (ahem).

    Regardings the point about 15 shows being excessive, you're probably right. I wouldn't recommend seeing the show that many times for most folks. I have no regrets (although my bank account might disagree). I will say that the show really benefits from seeing it at least twice, as it can be a bit overwhelming the first time you see the show. My mother joined for two shows with me in November, liked it so much, and ended up coming out for two more shows in December with my cousin. Both of them agreed there was a real benefit in seeing the show twice.

    I'm also the guy who saw the Bono book tour show six times, so a little insanity is expected.

    You must have a lot of disposable income or else be Certifiably Insane 🤣I get why some people travel to different countries on a proper tour to see them as you get a different experience on multiple levels ,but even for the band it must have done their head in after the first week playing the same venue night after night where half the audience were zoned out from looking at the screen so much.
  11. Originally posted by popmarter:[..]

    You must have a lot of disposable income or else be Certifiably Insane 🤣I get why some people travel to different countries on a proper tour to see them as you get a different experience on multiple levels ,but even for the band it must have done their head in after the first week playing the same venue night after night where half the audience were zoned out from looking at the screen so much.
  12. Those poll results are pretty stunning, 700+ votes in.