Bootleg Round Table

Originally posted by iTimRight, I've had time to listen etc. Listened through once, listening again now as we, I, type.

Sound quality:
I thought it was 'good'. Can hear what's coming out of Bono's mouth, you can hear Edge, LArry's drums sound a bit 'tinny' to me but you can hear them. Though I can't really hear the bass, don't know if it's me or just this song, it sort of has it's phases, when you can hear it, then can't. It's certainly not shit quality. But it could be a bit better.

Performance:
Erm...it failed to captivate me I'm afraid. "Gloria" was a nice change, suppose it was brought in to get rid of "New Year's Day"? If it was, top stuff. NYD is getting a bit tedious now. It started off alright, COBL and Vertigo were played well, crowd were reacting too. As mentioned, Gloria was ace to hear. Nothing too special about Elevation. I'm not really a fan of this Vertigo Tour version, preferred the Inlfux Mix from the Elevation Tour itself. ISHFWILF was kinda ruined by the talking at the start by Bono. Why thank everyone on the 5th track? At least wait until the penultimate song. Same old Beautiful Day, I love it and i liked the Jingle Bells snippet at the end followed by a sincere "Happy Christmas" from Bono. Then his little wishlist. That was great lol. Original of the Species, I'm a fan of this song, but the performance in this show, didn't do it any justice at all. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, well, they could perform this song bad and and I wouldn't notice. I put my own emotion into it every time I hear it. Not a bad performance. Love And Peace was good. Cue Sunday Bloody Sunday, great tune, but this Jesus, Jew, Muhammed thing in the middle does my head in. Far to strung out. The coexist thing is fine, just doesn't need to last so long. Love the transition from SBS to Bullet though, works really well. and on that note, Bullet is performed relatively well. Miss Sarajevo is performed very well I think, Bono does Pavarotti's bit well in my opinion. Bono once said that the song to bring an astray u2 gig back on track, is Streets and it's true. All of a sudden the show had pace, sound, excitement and then, we get the speech with One. Until The End of The world is brilliant, always has been. Mysterious Ways is so boring live, it's too long and too repetitive. Crumbs is pretty poor. A bit rough for me. Instant Karma was a pretty good way to make up for the previous song, well played. Yahweh, I love it stripped down, love it, has a lot more feeling to than the album version. and 40 is always a nice way to close a show I think. Prefer it at the end then lodged between Bad and streets that's for sure.

Overall:
Well, like I said earlier, it failed to really captivate me. Just seemed to lose all momentum after Beautiful Day and the ordering of the setlist didn't really help it. Erm...that's about it really. It was a good show, but i don't htink i'll listen to it all the way through for a while yet. Just pick out the odd songs now and then. However, i think this may be down to a bit of a HTDAAB/Vertigo Tour burnout. Downloaded a few shows before this from Vertigo, listened to them, also listened to HTDAAB a few times this week, so the songs are getting a bit samey as are the setlists, probably why Gloria made a refreshing change. I'm sure if i leave vertigo alone for a bit, this show could gain and extra half a star or an extra star for the rating below. We'll see.

My Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Originally posted by drewhiggins2005-12-05 - Boston, Massachusetts - Fleet Center


Sound

Listening to a lot of later North American shows like Chicago and Philadelphia, it was about as good as those shows. I could pick up many of the instruments by setting both my Foobar and iPod equalizers to ones with a lot less bass. Not bad, but not out of this world either.


Performance

A very Christmas-orientated show with snippets like We Wish You A Merry Christmas, Jingle Bells, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home). It just wasn't as good as the early shows or even the previous European shows, and I'm thinking maybe it's something to do with the endless nights playing each song every single night at those said killer European gigs. As usual the songs that stood out were Gloria (anything is better than a tired rendition of New Year's Day), but at the same time, it actually still sounded familiar to me from the early 80s shows like London, Denver, Manchester, Loreley - plus the JT period - but should have been in all the shows on a rotation of Electric Co, New Year's Day, 11 O'Clock Tick Tock... - not just at certain leg points. City of Blinding Lights was in top form as usual.

Maybe it's just me but I wasn't interested in the encore - and at one point sent me to sleep. I prefer something like Zoo Station > The Fly with a bit of life. Crumbs From Your Table should never be played again as should Yahweh. But there were some great songs to make up for a boring encore; Until The End of the World and ''40''. One more thing; if you're not interested in playing a song, don't. With or Without You bored me to tears - Bono's voice was strained and in fact, I skipped the song because it was so painful. One was nothing spectacular as usual, and the speech made it even more tedious. We get the idea you have a ONE.org campaign, Africans are dying of AIDS - so stop fucking around and play the fucker, would you. U2 tried to incorporate new songs (Crumbs, Instant Karma...) but unfortunately, most of the gatherers are probably casual fans (Bono's a knob, the nameless drummer, but Beautiful Day and One are the greatest songs since sliced cheese) and you can't do much because they'll have a sook about how boring the songs are. The snippets were well worth admission price (or download) alone. Rock the Casbah, Van Morrison's Gloria, Rockaway Beach, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), She's A Mystery To Me...what else could you want.

I'll keep the show, but I don't expect to listen to it much, except when I'm bored. Get Philadelphia or Chicago (2005-09-21) and hear some great efforts, plus giving the crowd something to have fun along with - seriously, how many casual fans know of Gloria, or even much about October? You mean to tell me, you play songs from your lowest-selling album, yet you play no songs from what could be your most innovative album (Pop) - come on, surely you can do Please or even another version of Discotheque. Pay attention to your fans, they do like Pop - even the casual ones may like it too!

U2 seriously need to go back to the drawing board to avoid another show as bad as this one. I'm glad that it was a bootleg and I wasn't there, otherwise I may have gotten up the front and told the band to play some real songs, not this excuse you call 'Vertigo'.

Rating: 2.5/10

Originally posted by aussiemofo[..]

Holy shit, that's harsh! I agree with you on the snippets - they were top notch. But I applaud the diversity of the setlist and I don't care too much about the 'casual fan'. I'm with you on Pop. Looking forward to seeing it play a greater role on the next tour.

Originally posted by drewhiggins I'm glad that it was a bootleg and I wasn't there, otherwise I may have gotten up the front and told the band to play some real songs, not this excuse you call 'Vertigo'.

Originally posted by haytrain[..]

Come on, Drew....tell us how you really feel!

Originally posted by DanI think it's easy for us dorks to forget that we annihilate these bootlegs and performances. Most people will only ever see one show per tour, if they're lucky. Certainly, most people will not then go home and download 100's of bootlegs and dissect them to the last note.
I think someone has observed already (if not for this boot then for another (I get to read them a lot...)) that U2 rarely put a foot wrong live. Occasional wrong-notes and a bit of Bono-voice-bashing besides, they are consumate and, bluntly, fucking awesome live. No band touches them in my opinion.

Therefore, when I say average, that is intended as high-praise. I enjoyed this show. There are better shows for sure, and there were sloppy parts, but average U2 is very good. Let's not lose sight of that.

I can guarantee that is you were at this show, you would have had a ball.