I thought this was going to be a quick review, but I had a lot more to say than I thought I would. I was reading the first Surf Club zine (shout outs to Melon!) and was reading an article on how to make a shrine page. This website doesn’t have any shrine pages at the moment, and I’m not sure I’ll add them in the future, but I still took some inspiration. The article suggested talking about a concert you’d been to, and what it was like. And it got me thinking to the concerts I’ve been to.
I’ve seen bbno$, death grips, a bluegrass show, a few symphonies, and I’m going to an indigo girls concert later this year (which I’m so excited for, they’re my favorite band and I’m sure I’ll talk about them in the future.) I’ve also been to some small house shows, including a fundraiser event for my high schools music department, put on by my music teacher and leader of the death metal band The Reticent. I still wear that hoodie around the house! Also, do marching band competitions like DCI count as concerts? Let me know by emailing me or something idk.
But the first concert I went to was with my dad and my brother, U2’s Joshua Tree anniversary tour show in Washington D.C. Now the bbno$ show was in my colleges auditorium, maybe 2000 seats. The U2 concert was in a football stadium, a rather packed one at that, maybe 70,000 people there. I mentioned in my review of R.E.M’s Life’s Rich Pageant that my dad is a huge U2 fan, and he was so excited to bring my brother and I to this show. I was trying to be a cool rebellious kid who didn’t like anything so I acted like I hated it. But to be honest, hearing the songs I knew by heart from infancy was an incredible experience, one which I wish I was more present for.
The Joshua tree album consists of 11 songs, and you probably know the first 3 very well, they’re some of the bands biggest hits. The rest are good tracks, but I don't remember them as well. From what I’ve seen U2’s hits are incredibly good, and the B-sides fall to the wayside, even if they shouldn't. Maybe if the album was arranged in a different way I’d think of the other tracks more, but as it is now it's incredibly frontloaded. Bullet the blue sky is really good, though.
The Joshua Tree anniversary tour, on the other hand, was a lot of the songs from the album, plus the bands greatest hits. And of course, there were fancy lights and screens and giant banners going around the stands. We were at the very top of the stadium, our view of the stage obstructed by speaker pillars, but we could see the whole audience so that was cool. If I remember, the opener was the Lumineers, a mid-2010’s act that I imagine holds up pretty well. U2 concert videos are pretty common on websites like YouTube, and I’m sure you can find video from this tour. The album itself is available everywhere, obviously. Man, I need to get back to the obscure stuff.
Click here to go back to the music column hub