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U2 rocks.

Seriously.

It was definitely the best live band concert I've ever seen!!! I say live band because I feel like seeing one individual in concert is so different that I can't compare, but OH MY GOODNESS, they were fantastic. A partner at my law firm had gone to the concert the night before and said that it wasn't much of a "show", just mainly U2 singing on stage and I have to say I disagree. They had quite a few special effects, like this circular stage that had lights circling around the edges, sometimes at opposite times, I guess to create the "Vertigo" effect. There were also these hanging sheets of tiny mirrors that reflected whatever lights or laser shows were bounced on them, so sometimes it was rainbow colors, other times an image of a man walking, other times a face speaking, those mirrors were unbelievable.

Bono walked around the circular walkway and even once pulled a young woman out of the audience to stand on stage with him as he sang "With or Without You." He often met out in the middle of this circular stage with the Edge or another member of his band and they would sing and play together.

U2 played all the new famous ones and all the old famous ones. I'm afraid I'm going to forget so many songs, but they played:
One
Beautiful Day
Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of
Elevation
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Sarajevo
I Still Having Found What I'm Looking For
Where the Streets Have No Name
City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
All I Want Is You

And several more that are slipping my mind right now. He spent a good 15-20 minutes speaking about basic human rights and flashing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights across a screen hanging above the stage while he talked about poverty and the need to unite to help others, whether they be in Louisiana or Mozambique. It was political, but political on such a basic level of decency that I doubt anyone got offended. Of course, I was ecstatic for him to discuss human rights at the concert given my history.

One of the most powerful moments of the concert was when he asked everyone to pull out their cell phones and make them light up. The lights were shut off in the huge concert hall and it looked like an upside-down planetarium (if that makes any sense). All these little pinpricks of light coming from cell phones waving around and it was surreal. As if we were swimming in the sky.

Before I forget, Keane opened for the band, and they were really good! Very energizing and I surprisingly knew several of their songs. This morning I heard two of their songs being played on the radio so they must be becoming more popular.

I would definitely recommend seeing them, although paying the ticket prices was painful. My firm gets seats to each concert so we were guaranteed good seats but I was shocked at how expensive they were. My one complaint is that a drunk couple snuck into our section (we were in the front row of the first section above the floor but below the boxes) and were dancing and practically having sex right next to me. I suppose the female part of this couple was trying to be seductive, so she kept throwing her hips and arms all over the place and whipping her hair across my face. Josh had to brace his arms around me at one point to keep her from whacking me with her crazy dancing and we asked her twice to knock it off. They didn't actually have seats and were just standing in the aisle and slowly inching their way into our row so we could have called a seat usher, but I didn't want to make a scene with drunk people. I don't know who we watched more for the first half hour, though, the drunkards or Bono. At least they were amusing!