U2 (February 26nd)

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(Note: I have no pictures of U2! I brought two cameras down with me, a really big camera with interchangeable lenses (Canon EOS 20D), and a small point and shoot (Canon SD450). I brought the point and shoot with me to my friend's house, but they made me leave it home because no camers were allowed and they were threatening to tak e them.)

U2, needless to say, was amazing. When any international group comes to Chile (or any other country in South America) it is a HUGE deal. The country stops. The newspapers has a special section about the concert, the news covers where Bono ate lunch. 80,000 Chileans spent at least $70 US for their tickets, and most of them know the songs by heart, even if they don't understand the lyrics. The stage setup was a giant screen that was at least 10 stories tall (well above the walls of the stadium itself).

Five years ago I saw U2 in Madison Square Gardens. The concert was great, especially as it came about a month after September 11. In that concert, when U2 played "One" in the encore, they rolled a screen of all the firefighters and policemen who died in the attacks. Still, I don't think that the New York concert had the energy that the one I saw in Santiago did. I don't know if it was because this was a stadium concert, or because, as I talked about above, seeing U2 is a little more special down here.

Either way, the energy of the show was amazing. Franz Ferdinand opened for U2, and is a big enough band right now in Chile to fill the stadium themselves. During the intermission, they played songs by other groups that had opened for U2 - Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, Kanye West and others. U2 came out to Arcade Fire's "Wake Up," which is probably one of my top five favorite songs in the last year and basically, a perfect song.

U2 played for two and a half hours, with two encores - much longer then a typical American concert. They played most of the songs from the new album, which although I find mostly average and recycled, I will now forgive them for. There was only one song from "All That You Can't Leave Behind," but five from "Acthung Baby" (which is incidentally, my favorite album, por lejos).

I think every U2 set list has "Pride," "One," "New Years Day," and "Sunday Bloody Sunday," along with maybe "Beautiful Day." This is where they shine in concert. Bono can get the crowd chanting for "Sunday Bloody Sunday" for a good 5 minutes and it still doesn´t get old. This time, however, they decided to do this cheesy "Coexista" thing in the middle of the song, where Bono put on a headband that said peace in Arabic and Hebrew.

This was really my only complaint about the concert. Bono wanted to talk politics. He kept on referring to the "new Chile." At one point Bono made the comment "If there are any ghosts in this stadium, they are long gone," referrring to the fact that some thirty three years ago during the coup, the military detained thousands of people (and tortured them) in the same stadium where we were not at for the U2 concert. Chileans get annoyed when foreigners do this, even if they agree with them.

The coolest moment in the concert was when, right before "One," Bono asked everyone to take out their cell phones. The whole stadium was lit up a faint blue. It was surreal, and something I won't forget for awhile.

U2 was the reason I decided to take off the day after the bar. It was kind of crazy thing to do, and a lot of things could have gone wrong. But, I made it, and it was well worth it.

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