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  1. Originally posted by u2met86:[..]
    Cesar I agree 100%. I have no problem with 95% of the core show staying static. But the rotational sets have become almost as routine because you know you're getting a mere coin toss.

    You hear the first 3 chords of Desire and you know exactly what's coming next, as well as what you have no chance of hearing. There's is ZERO wondering and zero surprise in the air.

    And as a result, I'm just not compelled to stream in live anymore.

    During Leg 1, this wasn't the case.

    I remember being at MSG when they played October and I completely lost my fucking mind... precisely because I wasn't expecting it and because they hadn't played it in 26 years. Not because it was part of an A-B-C rotation. 38 times later it's still a lovely song, but it just doesn't have the same effect.

    I remember Periscoping when they pulled out Two Hearts Beat As One. Just the gesture of "we're gonna change it up / take a chance" for me changes the atmosphere of a show.

    And it's not like they don't have tons of options:

    -Sleep Like A Baby Tonight would be a phenomenal “Love Is Blindness-esque” set closer of some sort, but it could also be a great e-stage Edge on dual piano / guitar song.

    -This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now could be a great e-stage acoustic guitar singalong.

    -I wish they played California half as much as Elevation on the e-stage. It’s one of the best (and only) straightforward rockers they’ve written since Beautiful Day.

    -Walk On has fallen off the face of the earth. Could be great full band, or Edge on piano.
    Couldn't agree with you more. The live parties in the 1st leg were great because no one knew what the e-stage songs will be. Remember the 1st time Crystal Ballroom was played? We almost broke the site.
    Now it's only a matter of asking: which night is this? 1, 2, 3 or 4?
  2. Originally posted by cesar_garza01:[..]
    Couldn't agree with you more. The live parties in the 1st leg were great because no one knew what the e-stage songs will be. Remember the 1st time Crystal Ballroom was played? We almost broke the site.
    Now it's only a matter of asking: which night is this? 1, 2, 3 or 4?
    I agree 100% with all this post having seen U2 51 times and on every tour since 1980 (i probably on of the oldies on here lol ) I must admit I have kind of fallen out of love a bit with U2 on this leg of the tour I wa exoecting so much more.........I m gutted t osay I enjoyed the show in London more than I did seeing them in Dublin on Monday night..........In everyone of my 50 gigs up to Monday I always got one surprise London was All I want is you Monday Iwrote the setlist down for my friends before the gig and I got every song right I was gutted lol
  3. Had a thought while I was out walking today on my lunch.

    When I first saw the Innocence and Experience show, I was really happy to see that the band had taken a conceptual approach to the show, but I thought they could have done even more with that concept and had it run through the whole show. Anyway, I'm sure this has been thought of before, but how cool would something like the following setlist be?:

    1. The Ocean
    3. The Miracle
    3. I Will Follow/Out of Control/11 O' Clock Tick Tock/Gloria
    4. Iris
    5. Tomorrow
    6. Sunday Bloody Sunday
    7. Raised By Wolves
    8. New Years Day
    9. Pride
    (sometimes Bad could be thrown in here)
    10. Where The Streets Have No Name
    11. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
    12. With Or Without You
    13. Every Breaking Wave/Song for Someone

    INTERMISSION (Love Rescue Me from December 30th 1989 with the "Dream it All Up Again" speech)

    13. The Fly
    14. Until The End of the World
    15. Zooropa
    16. Last Night On Earth
    17. Gone
    18. Stuck In A Moment
    19. Beautiful Day
    20. Grace
    21. City of Blinding Lights
    22. Vertigo
    23. One Step Closer/Yahweh/Moment of Surrender

    ENCORE

    24. No Line On The Horizon/Get On Your Boots
    25. California
    26. The Miracle
    27. The Ocean


    Basically a show that spans their career. I didn't throw in so many rotating songs because the band never does, and I feel like this is pretty encompassing (although others may disagree with some of the selection). I think many of the segues would totally work, I threw in some stuff in the second half to still line up with the band's desire to discuss the Syrian Refugee Crisis (Zooropa until Grace could be an entire section to be considered devoted to it) and I think the flow of the show would be awesome. I also think ending the show mirrored with the beginning would be a cool throwback to their early shows.

    What do you guys think?
  4. Originally posted by RattleandHum1988:Had a thought while I was out walking today on my lunch.

    When I first saw the Innocence and Experience show, I was really happy to see that the band had taken a conceptual approach to the show, but I thought they could have done even more with that concept and had it run through the whole show. Anyway, I'm sure this has been thought of before, but how cool would something like the following setlist be?:

    1. The Ocean
    3. The Miracle
    3. I Will Follow/Out of Control/11 O' Clock Tick Tock/Gloria
    4. Iris
    5. Tomorrow
    6. Sunday Bloody Sunday
    7. Raised By Wolves
    8. New Years Day
    9. Pride
    (sometimes Bad could be thrown in here)
    10. Where The Streets Have No Name
    11. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
    12. With Or Without You
    13. Every Breaking Wave/Song for Someone

    INTERMISSION (Love Rescue Me from December 30th 1989 with the "Dream it All Up Again" speech)

    13. The Fly
    14. Until The End of the World
    15. Zooropa
    16. Last Night On Earth
    17. Gone
    18. Stuck In A Moment
    19. Beautiful Day
    20. Grace
    21. City of Blinding Lights
    22. Vertigo
    23. One Step Closer/Yahweh/Moment of Surrender

    ENCORE

    24. No Line On The Horizon/Get On Your Boots
    25. California
    26. The Miracle
    27. The Ocean


    Basically a show that spans their career. I didn't throw in so many rotating songs because the band never does, and I feel like this is pretty encompassing (although others may disagree with some of the selection). I think many of the segues would totally work, I threw in some stuff in the second half to still line up with the band's desire to discuss the Syrian Refugee Crisis (Zooropa until Grace could be an entire section to be considered devoted to it) and I think the flow of the show would be awesome. I also think ending the show mirrored with the beginning would be a cool throwback to their early shows.

    What do you guys think?
    That set would've be awesome.
  5. +1

    anyway i think they rotate a lot ( for U2) and they can still do it ( more than they did during the las leg)
  6. Probably, yeah. I just think that chronological set would be so damn cool.
  7. Originally posted by RattleandHum1988:Had a thought while I was out walking today on my lunch.

    When I first saw the Innocence and Experience show, I was really happy to see that the band had taken a conceptual approach to the show, but I thought they could have done even more with that concept and had it run through the whole show. Anyway, I'm sure this has been thought of before, but how cool would something like the following setlist be?:

    1. The Ocean
    3. The Miracle
    3. I Will Follow/Out of Control/11 O' Clock Tick Tock/Gloria
    4. Iris
    5. Tomorrow
    6. Sunday Bloody Sunday
    7. Raised By Wolves
    8. New Years Day
    9. Pride
    (sometimes Bad could be thrown in here)
    10. Where The Streets Have No Name
    11. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
    12. With Or Without You
    13. Every Breaking Wave/Song for Someone

    INTERMISSION (Love Rescue Me from December 30th 1989 with the "Dream it All Up Again" speech)

    13. The Fly
    14. Until The End of the World
    15. Zooropa
    16. Last Night On Earth
    17. Gone
    18. Stuck In A Moment
    19. Beautiful Day
    20. Grace
    21. City of Blinding Lights
    22. Vertigo
    23. One Step Closer/Yahweh/Moment of Surrender

    ENCORE

    24. No Line On The Horizon/Get On Your Boots
    25. California
    26. The Miracle
    27. The Ocean


    Basically a show that spans their career. I didn't throw in so many rotating songs because the band never does, and I feel like this is pretty encompassing (although others may disagree with some of the selection). I think many of the segues would totally work, I threw in some stuff in the second half to still line up with the band's desire to discuss the Syrian Refugee Crisis (Zooropa until Grace could be an entire section to be considered devoted to it) and I think the flow of the show would be awesome. I also think ending the show mirrored with the beginning would be a cool throwback to their early shows.

    What do you guys think?
    That's a really good idea.
  8. It would be REALLY cool if the band used old footage and pictures throughout parts of the set that sort of reinforced how they changed. Sort of how they're doing with Iris, but show like the Pride video during Pride and Live Aid during Bad, maybe in slow motion etc. etc.

    Could be really badass.
  10. I had worked on the below post as an article but left it too late to post.

    Setlists 2015

    Note; I write this piece entirely from the viewpoint of a fan who tends to visit around 5 shows per tour and follows every setlist in between. I think a lot of us are alike and we are all aware (or should be) that we account for maybe 1% of fans who attend multiple shows. On the grand scheme of things this makes us entirely irrelevant but this is who we are and although this might sound like a case of ‘first world problems’, it is the world that we choose to live in when we follow U2 all over the place.

    ------------------------------------

    I am writing this on the train on the way to Dublin to see the third and fourth shows there. These will be my fourth and fifth shows of the tour and I have followed most of the shows up to now (mainly European leg) on the forums with you lot following periscopes and mixlr’s. General reaction has been that the band have been performing to a very high standard each night but the setlists have become a little stagnant as the tour has progressed. My aim here is to add some perspective to fight the band's corner a little.

    I want to start by comparing some unbiased stats between the opening 2 legs of this tour with the opening 2 legs of both 360 and Vertigo. These are the tours during which we have been able to get pretty much live updates on and perhaps saw the birth of the ‘setlist party’ where every little detail about the set can be scrutinized in real time.

    Let’s start with SOI. We have heard 53 songs over 2 legs (I haven’t included Happy Birthday or The Fly intermission). That is a big number in comparison to 37 songs apiece shared by the 2 previous tours during their opening legs. Of these 53, N-N-N-N-N-N-Nineteen have been been played at practically every show and 18 have made five or less appearances (including 7 of which were one-offs). These latter points are the points which influence the impression that the setlists have become static and that is hard to deny but, what can’t be denied is that 53 is a considerably larger number than 37 so why the bad rep this year?



    Have a look at the above chart (@markpeterboro) which gives a beautiful illustration as to where the keyboard warrior begins to tire at the setlists. We refer specifically to the middle and end of the graph where the e-stage and encore come into play. There is no denying that the left hand side of the chart is a lot busier than the right. It is also notable that things become even more static towards the extreme right with two almost complete setlists being played in rotation. Why?

    The start of a tour is always more experimental with new material to be worked out and themes and narratives yet to be shaped. This is supported by the fact that a lot of the newer material seems to have been concentrated on these earlier shows (The Troubles, California, Crystal Ballroom, Lucifer’s hands). For whatever reason, these have been sadly left behind (for now) and replaced with a fairly static rotation of casual favourites for Europe. I can only speculate as to the reasons but we can leave that for open discussion. I find it odd that the band took so much time recording this new album only to have such little faith in the same music in the live arena. This is my biggest criticism of this tour to date. This is the same band who opened each and every ZooTV show with 6 or 7 songs from the new album. We are lucky to get this number of new songs in the entire setlist this year.

    My second criticism is the encore. COBL-BD-CLOSE. Every night. That just isn’t enough to get my juices flowing I’m afraid and again, it has become more static since the tour has progressed. Early shows had Miracle Drug and The Troubles but both disappeared as fast as you can say ‘TIIIIMMMMMMEEEEEE’ to be replaced by COBL every.single.goddam.night. Beautiful Day is what it is and I don’t see how they could NOT play it but shake up the order or something. Have a rotational encore. Anything please!. But then they play Bad & 40 then we are all crossing our legs to hide any awkward boners and all is well with the world again.

    There was so much potential this year. A new album (and potentially a second but where did that go?), talk of an entirely different show each night (where did that go?) and it all started well enough but has gradually ground to a halt with regards to the setlist.

    On the flipside, every show I have been to has been an absolute blinder with the whole band playing out of their skin and seeming on the surface to be really enjoying themselves. The band is a well oiled machine on tour though and if they work out a set that is comfortable, fits the narrative, the visuals and the timing (11PM finish every night) then they seem happy to run with it. Should we criticise it? I work 9-5 every day and do the same shit over and over and rarely give any more than required. Is it the same for the band? We will never get into the mindset of the band to truly understand why they do things like they do but this is how it has been forever and we are still here.

    That leads me to us. Are we the problem? I mentioned already that we are the 1%. We are the die hards that are hard to impress. We have been through this so many times yet here we are checking in every night to see what the band didn’t play. But we are still here, still going to multiple shows and still having a blast. Isn’t that what’s important?

    I could go on but I want to incite some discussion. I have saw 5 shows and I have mostly loved them all. I’ve saw guests on stage and heard Bad 3 times, Out of Control twice and even Gloria. I can criticize elements of the show but I cannot complain. I handed in my rights to complain about setlists back in 2009 when the band played Ultraviolet.
  11. Well said, those are some good points. I will say that they did a good job at least keeping the narrative intact, and played a decent number of SOI songs. Volcano saw a good number of shows. The encore was not very interesting, but, like you said, it wasn't really meant for die-hard fans, these are for fans that may come to one or a couple shows. COBL, BD, and the like are much more well known than Miracle Drug or The Troubles, and Bad (interesting analogy by the way) spruced it up every few shows.

    Even playing Spanish Eyes or Zoo Station was a risk, when the played Electrical Storm on the 360 tours fans just stood there expressionless and went "what is this?" from what I've heard.

    After reading your post, I am actually a little more satisfied with the band.
  12. Great write up, very unbiased.


    ---

    Your football team can have more than 20 players regularly making the starting 11, but when they go to the Champions, you know that the starting 11 won't change, even if that will leave some really interesting players on the bench.

    Elevation might be a lazy player with no technique at all, but he's a hell of a killer on the box, so he'll be on the starting 11 as often as he can, even if that means leaving great aesthetic dribblers like Crystalinho du Ballroomosa on the bench.

    North America had the better rotation, but Europe had the "best*" setlist.

    Again, great article. It should go to the main page...

    (*best for the majority of people, not for us...)