"Uprooting the Joshua Tree in Buffalo"
16 bit version
Taped, transferred & mastered by }{eywood
Grar/Lineage: At831s > Tascam DR-08 (Recording to .wav @ 24/96) > USB > Adobe Audition 1.5 (EQ, peak limiting, splins & fades) > Xrecode II (conversion to 16/44.1) > TLH (sector alignment, flac 8)
[see below for notes]
01 Sunday Bloody Sunday
02 New Years Day
03 Bad
04 Pride (In the Name of Love)
The Joshua Tree:
05 Where The Streets Have No Name
06 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
07 With of Without You
08 Bullet the Blue Sky
09 Running to Stand Still
10 Red Hill Mining Town
11 In God's Country
12 Trip Through Your Wires
13 One Tree Hill
14 Exit
15 Mothers of the Disappeared
16 Beautiful Day
17 Elevation
18 Vertigo
19 Mysterious Ways
20 Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
21 One
I saw U2 in the Toronto Skydome in 1997. I wore the shirt to this show. I saw that tour, Popmart, because I missed the ZOO TV tour, something I will regret for the rest of my life as I still see it as the greatest tour ever done by anyone until The Wall. Since then I have always wanted to see them again, and to take my son. Every tour their shows were very impressive, and when they announced they were playing the Joshua Tree album in its entirety I thought this is the time.
I must say that I was kinda disappointed at this. Although it isn't me favorite U2 album (that would be Achtung Baby) I was really psyched to see the whole Joshua Tree album live. But Bono's voice has deteriorated considerably in the last few years, and this seemed to ba a night where he just wasn't into it. The majority of the main set was lifeless and tired sounding, and to me they just phoned it in. Of particular notice was the low tuned Red Hill Mining Town. Does every songh have to be tuned to a different key? A couple were the same as the albums, most were tuned down onwe note, some were tuned down 2 notes. They never played this song before this tour, and apparently for good reason. Even tuned two notes lower Bono couldn't sing it well.
I'm not the only one who thought so, because at all the spots where the audience was encouraged to sing along they barely did, and the floor of the stadium was montionless throughout the show, no dancing or bouncing or arm waving.
Then we got to the song Exit and the band suddenly seemed to wake up. The 6 song encore was great! People dancing, singing along with Elevation, bouncing up and down. This is the U2 I came to see. Too bad they didn't show up til after 80% of The Joshua Tree was sucked dry of inspiration and left on life support.
Another complaint I have about Bono now is his changing the words to the songs (under a blood red moon), and singing them in the wrong place, around the beat (she moves...inmysteriousways). Annoying.
On the bright side, the show itself was amazing. For over an hour I thought the wall behind them was a painted plywood wall. Then it became the biggest single videoscreen I've ever seen (about as big as two WalMarts stacked one atop the other), with quality unlike anything before. OK Roger Waters' Wall was pretty impressive, and it was used more theatrically, but this did away with the projections and improved the clarity.
I was pretty amazed during Bad when they turned off all the lights for 2 minutes and the entire place was lit like daylight by 40,000 cell phones in flashlight mode. It looked like a dense starfield. Amazing (video included).
BTW, the vocals were distorted. The guy at the board apparently didn't care any more than the band how this sounded. What you hear on the tape is not my gear, it's theirs.
Bottom line: If you can't do something well, don't do it. It tarnishes your legacy.