1981-08-16 - Slane, Ireland - Slane Castle

setlist

Performance notes: U2 participate in 1981's Slane Castle festival in support of headliners Thin Lizzy. U2 would later go on to headline Slane themselves twenty years later. Happy Birthday is sung for Aislinn, Edge's girlfriend (and later his first wife). This show features the live debuts of With A Shout, I Threw A Brick, Gloria, Rejoice, and October.
Setlist and comment provided by U2gigs.com.

songs per album

  1. Boy (7)
  2. October (6)
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show attendees: 6

aido
Ireland
Roy
Ireland
5 users from Ireland: Roy, aido, leitrimpottery, soulpatch, spookyfc
1 from United Kingdom: Andyok

review by KieranU2

13 years ago

Performance

There's a reason why I listened to this show. I was reading U2 by U2 and I quote straight from it - "Then in the middle of making this album we play Slane Castle with Thin Lizzy, the biggest open-air gig in Ireland, and we decide to play the new songs that we're working on that we've never played before. But not only that, we decide to play them first. We walk onto the song "Tomorrow", with uillean pipes playing - and we were shite. We failed spectacularly."

Now, this quote from Bono was quite accurate. Although, I never even heard Tomorrow in the bootleg. The new songs were not at all spectacular, nevermind good! I Threw A Brick was like Bono was rambling lyrics out of his arse, With A Shout is a terrible opener and Gloria was just absoutely shocking. It was all over the shop. Some of the Boy songs weren't performed particularly that good either. They were under-rehearsed because they were too busy creating October. It was like Bono had forgetten the lyrics to the Boy songs, which is mysterious since he only performed them at least 2-3 months before.

I'm giving it 3 stars because of the entertainment it brings. It was good gig to listen to, but it's not for them.

Also, Into the Heart wasn't in the bootleg. And some parts of songs were missing. In the likes of The Electric Co.


Sound

Not very good. Not that listenable at points. But you can hear Bono's words so that's why it's given it's rating.
Recording: Audience microphone - 1.5 stars

Audience

Really good. U2 got them pumping for Thin Lizzy. They also knew some of the songs too.

Overall

It's all been explained in the rest of the sections, but to summarise, not very good in the performance area, the crowd were pretty good, but the sound was poor.

all reviews

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andor Read more
KieranU2 Read more
patou2 Read more
CMIPalaeo Read more
2UToo Read more

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  1. Bono at Slane Castle