E&I tour hits Milan - All discussions

Originally posted by Streetfighter:Attended to 3 out of 4 show: red zone 11th and 16th, stand on the 12th. Standing in red zone, free of exiting in the parterre and following the band on B stage, was amazing. It was like a concert in a pub, so near to them. I've seen them 31 times, starting from Modena 1987. But I think these 3 nights in Milan will always remain in my heart. Band was so powerful and inspired, much more that JTT30. I was in fucking tears yesterday evening. Definitely the best tour after ZOO TV. There was definitely some magic in the air, and there was THAT intensity. You could feel WHERE the songs came from, tears and hope behind them. it was such a long time that I didn't feel THAT intensity. if anyone has any doubt about whether this band is still relevant or not, i think that this doubt was just washed away since the first note of The Blackout. You just think "U2 are in the house" and nothing else matters.

Originally posted by Remy:Finally finished editing my Milan photos. It's a rare photoset with the main stage, e-stage, c-stage and screen all covered!

https://twitter.com/U2start/status/1052646864275820545

Originally posted by Streetfighter:Attended to 3 out of 4 show: red zone 11th and 16th, stand on the 12th. Standing in red zone, free of exiting in the parterre and following the band on B stage, was amazing. It was like a concert in a pub, so near to them. I've seen them 31 times, starting from Modena 1987. But I think these 3 nights in Milan will always remain in my heart. Band was so powerful and inspired, much more that JTT30. I was in fucking tears yesterday evening. Definitely the best tour after ZOO TV. There was definitely some magic in the air, and there was THAT intensity. You could feel WHERE the songs came from, tears and hope behind them. it was such a long time that I didn't feel THAT intensity. if anyone has any doubt about whether this band is still relevant or not, i think that this doubt was just washed away since the first note of The Blackout. You just think "U2 are in the house" and nothing else matters.

Originally posted by litzsurfer:[..]
Great job Remy, wow some awesome pics for sure!

Originally posted by Remy:Finally finished editing my Milan photos. It's a rare photoset with the main stage, e-stage, c-stage and screen all covered!

https://twitter.com/U2start/status/1052646864275820545

Originally posted by u2tours:[..]
What camera or smartphone have used?

Originally posted by Remy:[..]
It's a Sony A6300 with a Sony 55mm f1.8 lens.

Originally posted by Streetfighter:[..]
Remy, your pictures are amazing. After Milan, I started to think that this very great U2 page should before or after make a special about WHAT this show really means. About this, I want to share with you some thoughts, also if most of them are obvious, that came to me after attending three shows. This show is a kick in the ass. Unforgettable. For one moment, I would like to talk about the SHOW, and not about what we really love: their music. If we move away from the sonic orgasm of what U2 are in live mode, if we move away from the beauty of those songs (that I don’t understand from which place of the universe they come from and how they landed in the minds of these 4 irish boys), probably we can see that this show works on two different level in the journey from innocence to experience. This is what I felt. An individual level and a universal one. From innocence to experience, referred to a person or the band , from innocence to experience referred to world, nations, people. It is a complex story with a lot of flashbacks. It starts with catastrophe. Personal catastrophe (the sound of the scan), universal catastrophe (images of our destroyed cities during and after World War II). Blackout is universal catastrophe, Lights Of Home is individual one, Bono’s mysterious disease. This is a meditation point from which they go back to innocence of Follow and Gloria. Then they move on with the journey from innocence to experience and “the walls rising up between and inside us” in the Berlin set of the show until intermission. When the band comes out again they are in full experience phase. But the fact that Acrobat is actually sung by Macphisto, it means that something went wrong in the experience. Something went wrong between them as persons, but Macphisto’s political speeches (the first, real political statement of the show) seem to suggest that in this journey something went wrong in the global world too. I had the feeling that Bono, with a real clever and sneaky master stroke, uses the pretence of his personal (or the band ones) journey from innocence to experience, to show us the parallel journey of the world: in this way he can disengage himself from real political sermon, talking only as a person, and leaving the political level free to act subliminally (through visuals, sometimes). Bono is not new in using theatre technics. Look at Macphisto‘s old trick: using a mask, you are not real Bono, and you are free to say what you want. But at this point, I understood that images of our destroyed cities during and after World War II seem to mean that innocence IS the world after war itself. It fits: the hope at the end of the war, the sane ingenuity of people who came out of a catastrophe and want to rebuild a destroyed world, like scared children, all of this IS innocence. World is innocent after a war. Until the nineties, as Bono once said, we were thinking that this world would have been better and better. For some decades, maybe it was like this. But something went wrong, when world entered in its experienced phase. Then it came hypocrisy. The evil hypocrisy of Acrobat, and hypocrisy is the enemy of sane ingenuity. It is interesting that Bono has to wear Macphisto’s mask before this song, as if it’s the devil singing, and not him, maybe because he feels ashamed about experience’s contradictions. Second level, the universal one, starts to operate from Summer Of Love. This song shows, at universal level, the same place in which we got with Acrobat at an individual level: literally that sea of contradictions that are under the word’s experience. Remember the image of the cruise liner at the horizon and the immigrant boat behind it. There are some flashbacks from this point, apparently it seems that Pride shows a key moment of the loss of innocence of the world, the Luther King’s murder, while New Year’s Day looks like a bitter remind of what innocence could do (Solidarnosc), and what it would do if still it would be used to develop the concept of Europe. The enchore is an attempt of giving an answer to innocence/experience contradiction: remember the sentence “wisdom is innocence at the end of experience”. It is an individual answer in Landlady, a universal one in One. Innocent love (at all level) is an answer. In the same way Love Is Bigger acts at individual level and 13, despite the fact that it’s a very personal tune, acts at universal level. “There is a light we can’t always see, if there is a world we can’t always be. If there is a dark that we shouldn’t doubt (so wonderful sentence!), but there is a light, don’t let it go out”. So it’s clear that the light bulb at the end of the show is the light of innocence. Bono takes it out from a small model of his old house in number 10, Cedarwood Road. It is innocence with no doubt. It is clear what this innocence means at individual level: being experienced, but with youth’s innocence; in a word, being wise. What that light means at band level is clear too: it is evident that this is a circular loop and that the band symbolizes in this way that they come to the end of a cycle. It is a strong ending at band level, so different from the end of the cycle of the eighties: “we have to go away and dream it all up again”. This ending is more categorical and conclusive, so I asked myself, seeing that light, if there would be a tomorrow for the band after this tour or if the cycle has come to a complete and definitive end: Bono’s walking off-stage, philosophically from a side door, looks like “someone who will go in a different place”. But how this light bulb works at universal level? I noticed that at the end of the show lights are not immediately turned on. For more that one minute we were in complete darkness, with only this light bulb swaying like a pendulum over our heads. It is a feeble and weak light, a shaky one, it looks so helpless. I asked myself why leaving us in the dark with only that light, while we all want to get out of the venue, we all want lights, strong ones. In the beginning I was sure that it was just an expedient to not ruin the pathos of that very moment. But after three shows, I looked at that light bulb. And I had the strong feeling that it is innocence at universal level (obviously) and that the dark venue, the completely dark venue, the dark in which WE are immerged, it can only means what WE really are: the world. Innocence is shaking, week and helpless, over a DARK WORLD. It is not the bright shining light of after-war era. It has become a candle. And it seems to me that leaving that light there and oblige people to look at it is a strong warning to not let it go out, as people and as nations.

Originally posted by Streetfighter:[..]
Remy, your pictures are amazing. After Milan, I started to think that this very great U2 page should before or after make a special about WHAT this show really means. About this, I want to share with you some thoughts, also if most of them are obvious, that came to me after attending three shows. This show is a kick in the ass. Unforgettable. For one moment, I would like to talk about the SHOW, and not about what we really love: their music. If we move away from the sonic orgasm of what U2 are in live mode, if we move away from the beauty of those songs (that I don’t understand from which place of the universe they come from and how they landed in the minds of these 4 irish boys), probably we can see that this show works on two different level in the journey from innocence to experience. This is what I felt. An individual level and a universal one. From innocence to experience, referred to a person or the band , from innocence to experience referred to world, nations, people. It is a complex story with a lot of flashbacks. It starts with catastrophe. Personal catastrophe (the sound of the scan), universal catastrophe (images of our destroyed cities during and after World War II). Blackout is universal catastrophe, Lights Of Home is individual one, Bono’s mysterious disease. This is a meditation point from which they go back to innocence of Follow and Gloria. Then they move on with the journey from innocence to experience and “the walls rising up between and inside us” in the Berlin set of the show until intermission. When the band comes out again they are in full experience phase. But the fact that Acrobat is actually sung by Macphisto, it means that something went wrong in the experience. Something went wrong between them as persons, but Macphisto’s political speeches (the first, real political statement of the show) seem to suggest that in this journey something went wrong in the global world too. I had the feeling that Bono, with a real clever and sneaky master stroke, uses the pretence of his personal (or the band ones) journey from innocence to experience, to show us the parallel journey of the world: in this way he can disengage himself from real political sermon, talking only as a person, and leaving the political level free to act subliminally (through visuals, sometimes). Bono is not new in using theatre technics. Look at Macphisto‘s old trick: using a mask, you are not real Bono, and you are free to say what you want. But at this point, I understood that images of our destroyed cities during and after World War II seem to mean that innocence IS the world after war itself. It fits: the hope at the end of the war, the sane ingenuity of people who came out of a catastrophe and want to rebuild a destroyed world, like scared children, all of this IS innocence. World is innocent after a war. Until the nineties, as Bono once said, we were thinking that this world would have been better and better. For some decades, maybe it was like this. But something went wrong, when world entered in its experienced phase. Then it came hypocrisy. The evil hypocrisy of Acrobat, and hypocrisy is the enemy of sane ingenuity. It is interesting that Bono has to wear Macphisto’s mask before this song, as if it’s the devil singing, and not him, maybe because he feels ashamed about experience’s contradictions. Second level, the universal one, starts to operate from Summer Of Love. This song shows, at universal level, the same place in which we got with Acrobat at an individual level: literally that sea of contradictions that are under the word’s experience. Remember the image of the cruise liner at the horizon and the immigrant boat behind it. There are some flashbacks from this point, apparently it seems that Pride shows a key moment of the loss of innocence of the world, the Luther King’s murder, while New Year’s Day looks like a bitter remind of what innocence could do (Solidarnosc), and what it would do if still it would be used to develop the concept of Europe. The enchore is an attempt of giving an answer to innocence/experience contradiction: remember the sentence “wisdom is innocence at the end of experience”. It is an individual answer in Landlady, a universal one in One. Innocent love (at all level) is an answer. In the same way Love Is Bigger acts at individual level and 13, despite the fact that it’s a very personal tune, acts at universal level. “There is a light we can’t always see, if there is a world we can’t always be. If there is a dark that we shouldn’t doubt (so wonderful sentence!), but there is a light, don’t let it go out”. So it’s clear that the light bulb at the end of the show is the light of innocence. Bono takes it out from a small model of his old house in number 10, Cedarwood Road. It is innocence with no doubt. It is clear what this innocence means at individual level: being experienced, but with youth’s innocence; in a word, being wise. What that light means at band level is clear too: it is evident that this is a circular loop and that the band symbolizes in this way that they come to the end of a cycle. It is a strong ending at band level, so different from the end of the cycle of the eighties: “we have to go away and dream it all up again”. This ending is more categorical and conclusive, so I asked myself, seeing that light, if there would be a tomorrow for the band after this tour or if the cycle has come to a complete and definitive end: Bono’s walking off-stage, philosophically from a side door, looks like “someone who will go in a different place”. But how this light bulb works at universal level? I noticed that at the end of the show lights are not immediately turned on. For more that one minute we were in complete darkness, with only this light bulb swaying like a pendulum over our heads. It is a feeble and weak light, a shaky one, it looks so helpless. I asked myself why leaving us in the dark with only that light, while we all want to get out of the venue, we all want lights, strong ones. In the beginning I was sure that it was just an expedient to not ruin the pathos of that very moment. But after three shows, I looked at that light bulb. And I had the strong feeling that it is innocence at universal level (obviously) and that the dark venue, the completely dark venue, the dark in which WE are immerged, it can only means what WE really are: the world. Innocence is shaking, week and helpless, over a DARK WORLD. It is not the bright shining light of after-war era. It has become a candle. And it seems to me that leaving that light there and oblige people to look at it is a strong warning to not let it go out, as people and as nations.