Great version of Follow me Sergio!
Btw i was at the show in Strasbourg last night! Really great concert, with cool setlist. The Audience on the other way was a bit sleepy for me! You may find some videos on youtube as usual.
Here's the setlist:
The 2nd Law: Unsustainable
Supremacy
Interlude
Hysteria
Panic Station
Bliss
Supermassive Black Hole
Animals
Knights of Cydonia
Explorers
Time Is Running Out
Liquid State
Madness
Follow Me
Undisclosed Desires
Plug In Baby
Stockholm Syndrome
No man i didn't taped the show. I don't have a decent recorder for live shows. I had seating tickets and the sound was really really loud , so i think it wouldn't have been a good recording.
I watched it and ultimately I think I wouldn't mind watching them live, but they aren't as high on my list as I initially put them. Most of their "ballad" type songs feel really out of place compared to the rest of the set.
As for the stage, It's actually much bigger than I imagined. I might even say that it's too big for them and they don't really do a good job of filling it up until the pyramid drops. Even then, there are a few elements of the show that bother me, none of them related to the band's actual performance.
The first is the stage as I mentioned before. It feels too big for the band most of the time. Now you may say that 360 was a huge stage, but U2 (all members) know how to effectively use that real estate. Everybody is always on the move for the most part and they never seem to favor one area over another when they are away from the center.
The second major issue I had was their use of the pyramid. I liked the idea of having it there because they took advantage of the screens to superimpose visual effects on live footage of the band, eliminating the typical format of having band footage in the sides and artistic video footage in the center. However, I don't like how the pyramid closed in on them as they were playing. I felt that took away from the performance of the song. If they finished the song with the band totally visible, then dropped all the lights as the pyramid closed on them, it would have a much stronger effect, imo. Losing visibility of the band only works in some scenarios. When the video screens went all the way down and hid U2 for Zooropa, that enhanced the experience of the performance. Having Muse enclosed in the pyramid for Isolated System has a similar effect, but keeping them trapped for Uprising wasn't as effective of a use for me. Maybe if Matt wasn't let out of the bag first it would have felt more fitting.
Long story short regarding stage usage, don't hide the band while they are still playing. A grand unveiling always works, but it's not critical that we see them become trapped in it first.
Yeah, I agree on the hiding thing not being an atually good idea. I "liked" it during the first part of Isolated System, but... Oh anyway, bring on the stadium tour. They're gonna blow our mind with the stage design and interactivity with the audience, I'm sure.
I would love to see how they make this stage work in a stadium. One thing that I liked quite bit is that the pyramid wasn't initially visible since it was well hidden by the ceiling. In a stadium, there's no place to hide something like that. Plus, they'll have the same issues U2 had when they were building 360. There's no doubt that they will have to adopt the same general design as The Claw, but if I were them I would try to model the super-structure to be pyramid shaped. Use the same general design as Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage, but on a massive scale. The upper portion can have video screens on all 4 sides and the mini pyramid can be hidden inside the upper portion. It's times like this that I wish I knew how to draw...
I think the arena stage show overall was pretty good. I never really considered Isolated system to be a live song, and it was only Dom during Uprising who was hidden, and that was with some pretty cool visuals of him doing some kick boxing.
