"I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky..."
Hi there. Between the LJ wobbliness and my mostly-offline vacation status (I have no Internet at home aside from my phone so I access it at the public library. Sporadically. What of it?) I haven't been around much. In fact, I still have a Flashpoint recap waiting to be posted from two weeks ago. (I missed about half the latest episode thanks to being at the barn putting ointment on what appeared to be a very nasty bug bite Mitzi has ON HER UDDER, if you can imagine how much that must have hurt at the time, so no proper recap of that one. This probably offends the completist in me more than it bothers anyone else.)
However. My vacation is over as of yesterday, which I mostly spent dealing with something like 400 emails that had accumulated in my absence. (Yeah, I could have connected my work email to my BlackBerry, but why on earth would I do that?) (Seriously, the first summer I had the BB was also the summer I only got a week off anyway, and I spent most of said week responding to scheduling problems for a reference service. By the time I noticed I was doing this ON THE WAY TO AN AC/DC CONCERT at Magnetic Hill, I decided there is a limit to my devotion to duty and that work email could just damn well wait until I got back to work.)
So: I wasn't scheduling student meetings on my way to the U2 concert at Magnetic Hill.
The nice thing about the timing of that was, it was right at the end of my vacation. So, although there was a certain amount of oh noes, it's nearly over, there was even more yay, almost time for U2!
I've gone to a couple of shows at Magnetic Hill and have always found the venue itself to be nice, but a brute to get in and out of. I've also previously been lucky with the weather, so that was bound to run out eventually. My brother and I drove to NB under threatening clouds, and by the time we reached Moncton it was raining pretty hard. However, we had rubber boots and I had gotten rain pants at the tack store. We also agreed that if necessary we would hang from the side of a cliff to see U2, so we were undaunted.
My brother's girlfriend, M, and our nephew, C, were equally undaunted.
M had gotten passes for the shuttle buses, so we parked Elmo at the local hockey rink and shuttled over. This part was easy, especially since it was still relatively early and people arrived in a stream. Getting back out, as part of about 75,000 people, was considerably more problematic: the show ended around midnight and we only got back to the house we were staying at around 3:30. Plus, it was really fucking dark on the site. I say that now because I don't want to sound cranky at the end of an entry about what really was a beautiful day.
The rain let up around 4:00 PM, which was when we got on the shuttle. Twenty minutes later we were at the entrance to the site, were given "accept Jesus" cards by the same people who seem to try to evangelize at all rock shows at this venue. (The AC/DC cards were really mean-spirited about Bon Scott. I didn't read the U2 one, but I'm pretty sure God loves U2 more than he or she or possibly it loves mean-spirited evangelist types.)
Hiked past the zoo into the concert site, where we first beheld The Claw. I didn't know it was bright green with orange buttons! It was a very happy, cartoony Claw!
Pretty decent show summary from the Halifax newspaper.
There were some complaints beforehand, mostly I suspect not from U2 fans, that despite being called a "festival," the show only featured three bands. For me, the show could have featured one band, as long as U2 was the one. (Heh.) But Carney, on at about 5:00 PM for a short set that included several covers, was endearing: youngish (possibly not as young as they looked to me) and throwbacky with loud guitars and a singer who had a really cool falsetto. They seemed excited and went over pretty well--I will probably check out their album.
I can't remember if the flypast by Canadian Forces CF-18s happened before or after the next band, and I have no idea whether it was part of the show or someone just wanted a peek at The Claw. But it was loud and mighty cool.
I have, of course, heard of The Arcade Fire, but I'd never checked them out. I still don't know if I want to own their record, but man, they were some good live: a vibrant eight-piece with people swapping instruments and dancing and wearing gold lame (one of them, anyway.) They were an event. I really liked them.
Didn't upstage the headliner, though.
The Claw kind of vibrated into action about half an hour before U2 came on, the 360-degree screen displaying a crawl of various factoids about the world and the tour. (One was out of date by the time we saw it: according to Bono, the final tally of "babies born to crew members during the tour" was 18, not 17.) (Intra-crew weddings: two. Breeakups: eight. Bono: "I only wish I was kidding.")
Then "Space Oddity" began playing and the video screens picked up the band walking toward the stage, and the sound the audience produced was nothing so restrained as "cheering." It was frank screaming for a few minutes there, the way you do when you have to let out the pressure or explode. Yeah, some of it was me.
I don't know whether people who follow the band around would have loved the set list, because it seemed to be tilted firmly toward the favourites. I personally always like when a band comes into a town they've never been to before, or haven't visited in many years, and they seem to have sat down and thought, "If we had never seen us before, which songs would we most wish to hear?" Neil Young, for instance, did that the first time he played Halifax a couple of years ago. (Bob Dylan... did not.)
Anyway, with the exception of "Bullet the Blue Sky," the setlist included pretty well every song I have been longing to hear. I assume they didn't play "Bullet" because everyone was in too good a mood: Bono was chatty (yeah, I know: Bono) and stopped a couple of times to thank everyone involved with the show, and mentioned the friends and family and other beloveds who had come to see the final show of the massive tour.
He also paused at one point to look up at the giant structure above him, and noted that, curiously, "it has no roof. Because obviously it will never rain!" By that point, in fact, it was not raining, although there was a gentle mist and I was still frankly grateful for the boots and rain pants. (Actually, the mud had one real benefit: it was soft, so even after standing for more than eight hours, I wasn't anywhere near as sore the next day as a woman my age should have been.)
And the rest of the band was cheery, especially Adam who seemed to be having a lovely time. And, you know, Edge. (That's all that needs to be said: Edge.)
And when "40" ended, Larry came out front to thanks us all again and wish us a safe trip home. At which point we got the hint, the band waved, and we began the slog into the dark.
Which slog made it hard to stay in an exalted frame of mind, but you know, it wasn't that bad really.
Set List
Even Better Than the Real Thing
The Fly
Mysterious Ways
To the End Of the World
I Will Follow
Get On Your Boots
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (with vocals by all assembled in the first verse)
Springhill Mining Disaster (one verse)
Stay Far Away/So Close (I think)
Beautiful Day (introduced by and with vocal assistance from an astronaut on the International Space Station)
Elevation
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Miss Sarajevo (I think)
Zooropa
City of Blinding Light
Vertigo
I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Rejoice
Walk On
One
Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen)
Where the Streets Have No Name (and now I can die contented, honestly)
Encore
Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender
Out Of Control
40
And of course there were additional little visual jokes and animations and the screen moved up and down and turned the set into a colourful cage match among the band, and Bono finished up by turning what looked like a lit-up steering wheel on a cable into a swing, and we all waved goodnight to each other and that was it.
I assume U2 had a less problematic trip home than we did, but to be fair, they took the long way round to come see us.
Yeah. Bucket list of bands: just about empty.
However. My vacation is over as of yesterday, which I mostly spent dealing with something like 400 emails that had accumulated in my absence. (Yeah, I could have connected my work email to my BlackBerry, but why on earth would I do that?) (Seriously, the first summer I had the BB was also the summer I only got a week off anyway, and I spent most of said week responding to scheduling problems for a reference service. By the time I noticed I was doing this ON THE WAY TO AN AC/DC CONCERT at Magnetic Hill, I decided there is a limit to my devotion to duty and that work email could just damn well wait until I got back to work.)
So: I wasn't scheduling student meetings on my way to the U2 concert at Magnetic Hill.
The nice thing about the timing of that was, it was right at the end of my vacation. So, although there was a certain amount of oh noes, it's nearly over, there was even more yay, almost time for U2!
I've gone to a couple of shows at Magnetic Hill and have always found the venue itself to be nice, but a brute to get in and out of. I've also previously been lucky with the weather, so that was bound to run out eventually. My brother and I drove to NB under threatening clouds, and by the time we reached Moncton it was raining pretty hard. However, we had rubber boots and I had gotten rain pants at the tack store. We also agreed that if necessary we would hang from the side of a cliff to see U2, so we were undaunted.
My brother's girlfriend, M, and our nephew, C, were equally undaunted.
M had gotten passes for the shuttle buses, so we parked Elmo at the local hockey rink and shuttled over. This part was easy, especially since it was still relatively early and people arrived in a stream. Getting back out, as part of about 75,000 people, was considerably more problematic: the show ended around midnight and we only got back to the house we were staying at around 3:30. Plus, it was really fucking dark on the site. I say that now because I don't want to sound cranky at the end of an entry about what really was a beautiful day.
The rain let up around 4:00 PM, which was when we got on the shuttle. Twenty minutes later we were at the entrance to the site, were given "accept Jesus" cards by the same people who seem to try to evangelize at all rock shows at this venue. (The AC/DC cards were really mean-spirited about Bon Scott. I didn't read the U2 one, but I'm pretty sure God loves U2 more than he or she or possibly it loves mean-spirited evangelist types.)
Hiked past the zoo into the concert site, where we first beheld The Claw. I didn't know it was bright green with orange buttons! It was a very happy, cartoony Claw!
Pretty decent show summary from the Halifax newspaper.
There were some complaints beforehand, mostly I suspect not from U2 fans, that despite being called a "festival," the show only featured three bands. For me, the show could have featured one band, as long as U2 was the one. (Heh.) But Carney, on at about 5:00 PM for a short set that included several covers, was endearing: youngish (possibly not as young as they looked to me) and throwbacky with loud guitars and a singer who had a really cool falsetto. They seemed excited and went over pretty well--I will probably check out their album.
I can't remember if the flypast by Canadian Forces CF-18s happened before or after the next band, and I have no idea whether it was part of the show or someone just wanted a peek at The Claw. But it was loud and mighty cool.
I have, of course, heard of The Arcade Fire, but I'd never checked them out. I still don't know if I want to own their record, but man, they were some good live: a vibrant eight-piece with people swapping instruments and dancing and wearing gold lame (one of them, anyway.) They were an event. I really liked them.
Didn't upstage the headliner, though.
The Claw kind of vibrated into action about half an hour before U2 came on, the 360-degree screen displaying a crawl of various factoids about the world and the tour. (One was out of date by the time we saw it: according to Bono, the final tally of "babies born to crew members during the tour" was 18, not 17.) (Intra-crew weddings: two. Breeakups: eight. Bono: "I only wish I was kidding.")
Then "Space Oddity" began playing and the video screens picked up the band walking toward the stage, and the sound the audience produced was nothing so restrained as "cheering." It was frank screaming for a few minutes there, the way you do when you have to let out the pressure or explode. Yeah, some of it was me.
I don't know whether people who follow the band around would have loved the set list, because it seemed to be tilted firmly toward the favourites. I personally always like when a band comes into a town they've never been to before, or haven't visited in many years, and they seem to have sat down and thought, "If we had never seen us before, which songs would we most wish to hear?" Neil Young, for instance, did that the first time he played Halifax a couple of years ago. (Bob Dylan... did not.)
Anyway, with the exception of "Bullet the Blue Sky," the setlist included pretty well every song I have been longing to hear. I assume they didn't play "Bullet" because everyone was in too good a mood: Bono was chatty (yeah, I know: Bono) and stopped a couple of times to thank everyone involved with the show, and mentioned the friends and family and other beloveds who had come to see the final show of the massive tour.
He also paused at one point to look up at the giant structure above him, and noted that, curiously, "it has no roof. Because obviously it will never rain!" By that point, in fact, it was not raining, although there was a gentle mist and I was still frankly grateful for the boots and rain pants. (Actually, the mud had one real benefit: it was soft, so even after standing for more than eight hours, I wasn't anywhere near as sore the next day as a woman my age should have been.)
And the rest of the band was cheery, especially Adam who seemed to be having a lovely time. And, you know, Edge. (That's all that needs to be said: Edge.)
And when "40" ended, Larry came out front to thanks us all again and wish us a safe trip home. At which point we got the hint, the band waved, and we began the slog into the dark.
Which slog made it hard to stay in an exalted frame of mind, but you know, it wasn't that bad really.
Set List
Encore
And of course there were additional little visual jokes and animations and the screen moved up and down and turned the set into a colourful cage match among the band, and Bono finished up by turning what looked like a lit-up steering wheel on a cable into a swing, and we all waved goodnight to each other and that was it.
I assume U2 had a less problematic trip home than we did, but to be fair, they took the long way round to come see us.
Yeah. Bucket list of bands: just about empty.