
Today marks 25 years since the Zoo-TV tour found its way down the yellow brick road to Sydney, Australia; 2 years into the tour. "Welcome to Zoo-TV y'all"
I was in the crowd that hot and humid November night and vividly remember being stunned by the stage set up. While there had been some coverage on 60 Minutes, these were the pre-internet days so things like the groundbreaking visuals and the set list were largely unknown to the audience.
The DVD is a great record of the show but the direct audio recording masks the horrible acoustics of the Sydney Football Stadium. The sound echoed and bounced off the concrete surfaces, resulting in a muddy cacophony of sound. You get some sense of that when Bono talks before EBTTRT. On the flip side, it does amplify the crowd noise.
I thought at the time that the ending was a bit flat - an unfamiliar mix of WOWY into LIB and then a melancholy CHFIL; but have grown to appreciate these. The rest of the show was fabulous, with the highlight for me being the triplet of BTBS - RTSS - WTSHNN. The transitions from one to another are sublime but it is the emotions in each that do it. The anger in Bullet is palpable, the pain in Running raw and Streets is pure ecstasy.
An unforgettable night, recorded for posterity, that I was a part of.
