Sorry, Tim. Performance ★★★★
The title "3rd leg Joshua Tree Tour" should give you a hint about the performance quality. This is a band who's clearly enjoying what they do. Bono delivers excellent vocals from the first "Whoa!" in Streets to his last "Hoooww long" in 40 and the band is tight and precise, no particular mistakes, nothing to blame them for. Edge is on fire and the particular bass-y nature of this recording allows Adam to come by surprisingly strong. There is no song that stands out among the rest in my opinion, although Streets, I Will Follow, Trip Through Your Wires (great speech&presentation), Help, Exit and Running To Stand Still come out as highlights. Out Of Control was fantastic (what an interlude!), although it's not the best option for a lead up for 40. Anyway, I like its symbolic meaning. The changes in the setlist work pretty good in my opinion, and TTYW after I Will Follow works much better than I Still Haven't Found (although that's the classic JT beggining). Well, I might agree with previous reviewers in one point: WOWY following October was awkward!!!
Audience ★★★★½
Excellent. They go crazy when a crowd is supposed to go crazy (mainly at Streets, I Will Follow and Sunday Bloody Sunday, and surprisingly during Gloria too) and they're more than OK during the rest of the show. Their singalong during Help was a very positive surprise, I loved it, as well the Running To Stand Stilll one. The guy speaking (with the taper? Maybe) over the intro of Exit was despicable. Apart from that, impeccable behaviour from the crowd. Participative, respectful and passionate. Fantastic. Hearing them actually improved the listening experience.
Sound ★★★½
The taper should have adjusted his mic and gear BEFORE the show, not during Streets. Nevertheless, let's not be ungrateful pricks, and reckon that a 2-minutes muffled recording is miles better than no recording at all
Moreover, the adjustments during Streets allowed us to notice how different can be a recording just by placing the mic in one spot or another... Amazing improvement, from a less-than-2-stars recording to a Very Good > Excellent audience. There are spots when the sound quality decreases a little (there's two cuts during the end of Exit too, and the transitions from song to song seem to be very rough, although that might be a fault of the mp3 encoding and probably the lossless versoin should solve it), but they're rare spots, barely noticeable and they don't ruin the bootleg at all. Overall ★★★★
All the other positive points make up for the ocassional unstability of the recording. A very good show which I already recommended some weeks ago to a friend, and I still do for whoever's reading me. If you have 2 spare hours, give this a listen. You won't regret one single minute (well, maybe the 3 first minutes of Streets, hahaha!) and you can find some gems in here. Enjoy.
It's been a while for me.
The only show with Sergio live. 