1. Every month we have a bootleg in the spotlights, the bootleg of this month took place on 1997-09-23 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. You can download this bootleg, read reviews or write your own review on the bootlegs page here. In this thread you can discuss this bootleg!



    1997-09-23 - Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Kosevo Stadium

    Setlist:
    1. Mofo
    2. I Will Follow
    3. Gone
    4. Even Better Than The Real Thing
    5. Last Night On Earth
    6. Until The End Of The World
    7. New Year's Day
    8. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
    9. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / Stand By Me (snippet)
    10. All I Want Is You / Many Rivers To Cross (snippet)
    11. Staring At The Sun
    12. Sunday Bloody Sunday
    13. Bullet The Blue Sky / America (snippet)
    14. Please
    15. Where The Streets Have No Name

    encore(s):
    16. Discothèque / Life During Wartime (snippet) / Take Your Partner By The Hand (snippet) / Discothèque Howie B Hairy B Mix (snippet)
    17. If You Wear That Velvet Dress
    18. With Or Without You
    19. Miss Sarajevo
    20. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
    21. Into The Groove (snippet) / Mysterious Ways
    22. One
    23. Unchained Melody

    Attendance: 50,000


    Part of the story of the show, an extraction from Pimm's book U2 LIVE:
    Shortly after landing in Sarajevo in the Lemon plane, Bono tells reporters: "It's great to be back. Are we really here? We've been working for four years to come.". In 1993, on the road in Italy, U2 met a film crew from Sarajevo who wanted to interview the band and tell them what was going on in their city. U2's immediate reaction was to perform in the city to draw media attention, but the plan was nixed. It was too dangerous for the band and the audience. Instead the band agreed to do the much discussed live satellite link up with Bill Carter in Sarajevo during the Zoo TV set. Carter's 'Miss Sarajevo' documentary about the young women in the city holding beauty contests during the sieg inspires U2 to write the song Miss Sarajevo, recorded with Brian Eno and Luciano Pavarotti and released under the name of 'Passengers'.

    In 1995, Bono and his wife, Ali, spent New Year's Eve in Sarajevo, flying in on a United Nations aid flight. Bono sang a few songs at sessions in bars, and promised to return with the band.

    The first band to visit Sarajevo after the war was a Newcastle trio called China Drum. They travelled to the country in July 1996, with their gear, their crew and a journalist, Andrew Mueller, all in one van. Mueller later said the trip was a logistical and administrative nightmare. And that was for one van, three chords and the tutruth. U2 bring in the entire PopMart show. It's the first major show in the country since the war ended in 1995. Not a single comrpromise is made on the production. The Lemon, the Arch, the Stick and the Olive. They're all going in. The band receive help from Moe Sacerbie, the Bosnia Ambassador to the UN. Paul McGuiness comments: "We thought it was going to be difficult. But it's been quite straightforward. People ahve just wanted to help. We've blagged a lot of equipment, forklifts and so on, from the miliary and the local crew have been incredibly enthusiastic. There was talk of just doing a scratich show, but we tfelt it was important that we treat this as another city on the tour, to pay them that respect. To come here and not do the whole show would have been rude."

    U2 lose money on the production as ticket prices are kept low, an average of $18, which does not cover the cost of the production. Any income generated from radio sales goes to War Child.


    Background story on the Siego of Sarajevo
    The Siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, conducted by the Serb forces of self-proclaimed Republika Srpska and Yugoslav People's Army (later transformed to the Army of Serbia and Montenegro), lasting from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996.

    It was fought during the Bosnian War between poorly equipped defending forces of the Bosnian government, who had declared independence from Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Bosnian Serb forces (Army of Republika Srpska) (VRS) located in the hills around Sarajevo, who sought to destroy the newly-independent state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and create the Serbian state of Republika Srpska (RS). It resulted in large scale destruction and dramatic population casualties. It is estimated that of the more than 12,000 people who were killed and the 50,000 who were wounded during the siege, 85% of the casualties were civilians. Because of killing and forced migration, by 1995 the population decreased to 334,663 - 64% of the prewar population.

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo


    The band on this show
    "And if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile."
    - Larry highlights the Sarajevo Popmart show as the best ever U2 concert

    We encourage you to listen to this bootleg this month and write your own review, the more, the better. Enjoy!
  2. No much left to discuss on this boot. It all has been said over the years and on different sites.
    Nevertheless, I thought I'd provide a rather unusual concert review from a mate who was there:

    Originally posted by slateblueThat whole Sarajevo trip was a mad idea, and to be honest, I had never dreamt that I would really make it, that I would go there in the end. After having seen four PopMart shows in Germany and the two in Dublin, I thought I would finally be able to bring PopMart to an end, but there still was the concert in Sarajevo which was on my mind the whole time! So I finally decided to make it happen, no matter what. The trip to Sarajevo was a package deal including the coach ride from Vienna (Austria) to Bosnia, concert ticket and an overnight stay in a hall guarded by SFOR-soldiers. All in all it cost approximately US $ 110, so it seemed like a good thing to do. The only problem was that I completely forgot about the fact that I needed a passport to be let into the country! As I had never possessed a passport and was very excited about the upcoming trip, I just didn’t realize that this was a very important thing. I only remembered it the night before which of course was a bit late, so when I was in Vienna the next day, I went to the German consulate and told them about my problem. They weren’t particularly friendly, and to put it in a nutshell: They couldn’t help me, and so my friends convinced me to just try it and go for it. So I got into the coach without a passport... I was so sure that it would only be a matter of time until I was thrown out of the bus at one of the three borders we were about to pass, but fortunately, everything went well and I didn’t get into trouble. (I was told two weeks later that for the day of the U2 concert, the conditions of entry for Bosnia had been relaxed, so there would have probably been no need to worry.) But still I think I was very lucky, and I advise no-one to try such a thing. It was stupid and naive, and things also could have turned out in a different way.

    On Tuesday morning at 3am, we passed the Bosnian border, and I think I will never forget what I saw there. I remember it was pitch dark in the bus, outside there was fog and all you could see were silhouettes of ruins on either side of the road. When the fog cleared up a bit, you could see graves in the back-gardens and bombed houses, and it all looked so ghostly through the fog and the silence - nobody said a word. It was complete madness. There’s villages only existing on the map, no-one lives there anymore. And then all those craters on the fields, one after another, you just drive past all that and you simply cannot believe it. I remember thinking that the band should as well see all that, that they should actually travel through Bosnia by bus in order to see what we saw. Suddenly you realize that this is real, this is not just another news report you see on TV. I couldn’t help thinking, and this may sound stupid, ”It really happened”.

    After a while, we reached a small town which appeared to be well preserved, and I remember thinking, this is a really nice spot. On our way back, I could read the town sign: Bihac. Anyway, after a seven-hour-ride through Bosnia, we finally arrived in Sarajevo, and again, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There is literally not one house without bullet holes. There’s balconies hanging from façades, and everything is razed to the ground, and no-one seems to care. They probably cannot keep up and so this is normality for them, and I supposed this was what shocked me most. And all the cemeteries! One is bigger than the other, and the most frequent date of death on the gravestones is 1993. That was the year when I became a U2 fan. Zooropa 1993...

    So, we arrived in Sarajevo at 10:30am and went straight to Kosevo Stadium. We, that is Boris, Thomas, Stefan, Katja, Ingrid and I. We’ve got to know each other at different U2 shows and met again for the trip to Sarajevo. Strangely enough, the other people from our bus didn’t seem to be half as crazy as we were. You should think that U2 and their music mean something really special to someone who takes the challenge and the risk to drive 16 hours from Vienna to Sarajevo, but somehow, they all seemed to be more interested in other things, and I never heard them talking about the concert. Anyway, the six of us went to the stadium in order to make sure that we would get a good place right at the b-stage. During soundcheck, Miss Sarajevo and Sunday Bloody Sunday were played again and again, but we weren’t sure what to make of it. We knew that with U2, you may never trust what you hear at soundchecks!

    At 3pm the gates were opened, and security didn’t check our bags properly which I found a bit frightening. They only asked me about what I had in my bag and took a glance into it, so if I had carried a weapon or a hand grenade with me, they probably wouldn’t have discovered it. That was a moment when I got worried about safety, also because the stadium was located in a valley surrounded by several high houses on hills. I thought if any madman wanted to shoot the four band members right off the stage, there would be several possibilities. But maybe those high buildings were controlled by the police and SFOR-soldiers, I don’t know. So, it was only about half an hour after the gates had opened when suddenly a roar went through the crowd: The Edge came on stage! He took a guitar, played some bits of Miss Sarajevo, talked to Dallas Schoo and Flood and disappeared again after maybe ten minutes that seemed to last forever. I don’t know if he has ever done that before, but it just added to the specialness of the day.

    At 7pm, the audience was welcomed by a promoter in Bosnian and English. Next up was the Mesdzidski Choir which consisted of men and women singing traditional tunes. After that, there was a punk band called Protest and afterwards another band called Sikter who started their set with the Bosnian national anthem. Everybody sang along very loudly, it was incredible, almost like at the end of Pride (In The Name Of Love). The whole atmosphere was beyond words, people were singing and dancing the whole time while they were waiting for U2. And when Howie B came on stage, we all knew it was only a matter of time...

    As I think that everybody who reads this has already been to at least one PopMart show, I’ll only concentrate on things that differed from other shows. The animations on the screen were partly new. I know this sounds incredible, but we supported each other in that we had never seen them before. During Even Better Than The Real Thing, all those Zoo TV products like Eau de Zoo were rushing across the screen, and at the end of Where The Streets Have No Name, angels were flying across it. Bono lost his voice very early on in the show, and I felt the way it looked was worse than the way it sounded. (You couldn’t hear it as well as you can on recordings from that show, at least not from where we were standing.) He stood on the b-stage, rubbed his neck, shouted ”I can’t... I can’t...” and looked like the picture of misery. You could tell from the expression on his face that he must have been in great pain, and I just hoped that he would be able to carry on. What went through my mind was that how the band and especially Bono was looking forward to playing in Sarajevo for such a long time, and now that the day has arrived and he wants to give 150%, he is not even able to give 100%, and how badly that must suck for him. He took regular nips from a cup probably filled with some medicine for his throat. Before I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, he said, ”My voice is gone, but your voices are strong... may I ask you to carry me like you carried each other in those weeks, months and years and sing with me this song...”. After that he sang Stand By Me, and he looked as if he was really giving us all there was left in him. And then came the first huge surprise of the night. After Staring At The Sun, Edge was handed an electric guitar by Dallas Schoo, and those who had already seen the show and therefore expected a karaoke song looked at each other somewhat bewildered. Suddenly Edge started playing the melody of Sunday Bloody Sunday. That was the moment when I knew that all the effort had been worth it, coming all the way from Germany to Bosnia. I couldn’t believe it. Edge sang the most beautiful and emotional version of Sunday Bloody Sunday I had ever heard. It was incredible, it really defies description. Don’t forget that this was the very first time they played that song on the PopMart tour!

    Bono apparently had underwent some miracle treatment backstage, because when he came back for Bullet The Blue Sky (Miami was dropped), his voice was in a better condition. During With Or Without You, Bono got a girl on stage with whom he danced very close and for a very long time, and when she wanted to pull back from him, he just held her hand and wouldn’t let her go, so she came back to him and they danced some more. That was a nice moment. After that song, Bono said, ”We have a song that we never played before as a band live... anyway, you may know this, I hope you like it.” Brian Eno came on stage and took a gramophone with him which was probably supposed to be a symbol for Pavarotti. So they played Miss Sarajevo, and Pavarotti’s face appeared in the middle of the screen with the models to his left and right, carrying banners saying ”Don’t let them kill us”. At the end of the song, Bono said, ”Sarajevo, this song was written for you, I hope you like it ‘cause we can’t fucking play it... Goodnight Sarajevo, thank you for having us. Thank you for your generosity. Your voice is much stronger than our voice, and we heard it and we were lifted by it. Thank you...”

    Tickets for the show were only about US $ 11, but as we bought them in Vienna as part of the package deal, we paid US $ 28 which is still not much. As far as T-shirt prices were concerned, I only know that the green-yellow sports shirt was 50% cheaper, and stuff like pins and condoms cost the same as usual. We hoped that maybe they would sell special Sarajevo-T-shirts, because at the Dublin shows, they sold official Dublin shirts which were grey, had the lemon on the front and the Dublin dates on the back. But unfortunately, they didn’t, so we tried buying the shirts of the local security. They were black, and on the front, they only had a small PopMart logo, whereas on the back, it said ”STAFF SARAJEVO 23 SEPTEMBER 1997” in big white letters. So we asked them if they would sell their shirts, and they agreed at once! They were happy with the money they had made, and we were very happy with our ultimate souvenir. By the way, there was an incredible amount of SFOR-soldiers at the concert (as members of the audience), they had 1000 to 1500 seats reserved on either side of the stadium. And they were very loud and threw a real party, it was amazing!

    After the show, we had a quick meeting with the other people from our bus in order to take our sleeping bags into the hall where we were supposed to spend the night. It was a very old, bombed, ruined hall located next to the stadium which formed a strange contrast. Moreover, there was a cemetery next to the hall and the stadium which created an even weirder sight. Those are the things that remind you of the fact that this is not a city like all cities. When we arrived there at the morning, there was a funeral taking place. So, we took our sleeping bags, threw them into the hall, and off we were to the Holiday Inn where U2 were staying. There’s probably no need to say that we were the only ones who went there, the other people from our bus were going straight to sleep. Oh well.

    When we arrived at the hotel, we were the only ones there, and in the course of the night, we were only joined by two girls from Croatia and one guy from Slovenia. Everything was very quiet and relaxed, we were really lucky. So we waited for the band to arrive, and whereas Ingrid sat down in front of the hotel, the rest of us sat down a bit more on the side. At 2:20am, a red Nissan Primera arrived and Bono was in it. First I didn’t recognize him, but then Stefan said, ”It’s Bono!”, and we made our way to the front doors of the hotel. When Bono got out of the car, the only one of us he saw was Ingrid, so he lured her with his finger, that was funny. We joined him, shook hands (a limp handshake, he must have been very exhausted) and talked to him about the concert. He spoke in a very low voice and was delighted when we told him that we thought it was an outstanding show, and when he asked us where we were from he was surprised to hear that we had traveled that far to see U2. We then asked him if he would give us autographs, and he even agreed to have his picture taken. He then said goodbye and we told him to rest his voice, and so he entered the hotel. We were very happy and we knew that it would only be a matter of time until the rest of the band would arrive! So it took about half an hour until the red car arrived again, and this time, it was Adam! It was the same as with Bono, he got out, we said hello, talked a bit, and asked him whether he would give us autographs and whether we may take a picture with him, and he said ”Sure!”. He was very kind although he didn’t talk that much. After Adam had entered the hotel, it took a whole while until the next important person came - Howie B. Not quite the one we had been waiting for, but he too was very nice and friendly. Then Paul McGuinness appeared and squeezed himself onto the back seat of a Volkswagen with two other people, and that really was a funny sight. But it was cool to see that even he still drives around in small cram-full cars. After another one and a half hours, at around 4:30am, the red Nissan Primera arrived for the third time and brought us The Edge! He was really cute, he got out of the car, turned around, saw us, and just stood there and looked at us, smiling. Then he came and gave us autographs, had his picture taken and so on. Boris told him that he loved Sunday Bloody Sunday, not only the fact that he played it but particularly the way he played it, that he felt it had been very emotional. And Edge thanked him and admitted he had been pretty nervous about it. He then signed the Slovenian’s car and went into the hotel. Now the only one still missing was Larry who arrived between 5am and 5:30am. He was very funny and that surprised me a bit because I had had the impression that with Larry, you can never be sure what mood you catch him in. Anyway, we asked him about the rumours that U2 are allegedly going to play some more shows in Europe in 1998, and he answered: ”No, I don’t think so... No, really, we’re going to take all that stuff to elephants’ graveyard.” Ingrid asked him to sign her shirt with Bono on the front and Edge on the back, and she said: ”Unfortunately, you’re not on it!”, and Larry replied: ”Well, I’m only the drummer... Do you want me to sign on Bono’s face?” By the way, he had lipstick traces on his mouth. One of the two Croat girls wanted to have her picture taken with him, and when she came up to him and asked ”Can I hug you?”, she had already put her arm around him without waiting for an answer, and I had the impression that he was a bit annoyed at her for this. Before he went into the hotel, he told us that each member of the band was inside now and after he had disappeared, we too went back to the hall where we were supposed to spend the night with the other people from our bus. We crawled into our sleeping bags at around 6am, got up again at 9am in order to buy some food and started our way back to Vienna at 10:30am. The others in the bus again were really strange, no-one talked about the show, or if they did, I didn’t hear it. We arrived in Vienna Thursday morning at 2:30am, and I was back home in Darmstadt the same day at 2pm.

    What a trip! I can hardly believe it. I’ve seen such an incredible amount of things that will still take me some time to digest. It just seems so unreal...
  3. Originally posted by yeah:No much left to discuss on this boot. It all has been said over the years and on different sites.
    Nevertheless, I thought I'd provide a rather unusual concert review from a mate who was there:

    [..]


    We thought we'd start with a well known one. More rarities in the following months.

    Nice review there
  4. Another great feature Remy (and the crew members too, of course... )! I will have a listen tonight and post a very nice review!
  5. So, I'm a bit confused right now. Will the BRT continue in its current form or will it be taken over by the Bootleg of the Month (meaning we'll review a bootleg every month instead of every 2 weeks) ?

    And when will the new Bootleg of the Month come? At the end of August, or 17 September?
    Sorry for my misunderstanding, but questions are there to be answered so I ask them.
  6. Originally posted by MWSAH:So, I'm a bit confused right now. Will the BRT continue in its current form or will it be taken over by the Bootleg of the Month (meaning we'll review a bootleg every month instead of every 2 weeks) ?

    And when will the new Bootleg of the Month come? At the end of August, or 17 September?
    Sorry for my misunderstanding, but questions are there to be answered so I ask them.


    The first one, don't know yet, will depend on how it goes. Goal is to have every review posted in the reviews section though, and the bootleg round table is currently replaced by the featured content topic of Sarajevo.

    Second one, new bootleg will come at the end of August, beginning of September. This one is just for two weeks
  7. Originally posted by MWSAH:So, I'm a bit confused right now. Will the BRT continue in its current form or will it be taken over by the Bootleg of the Month (meaning we'll review a bootleg every month instead of every 2 weeks) ?

    And when will the new Bootleg of the Month come? At the end of August, or 17 September?
    Sorry for my misunderstanding, but questions are there to be answered so I ask them.


    Check out the BRT topic Casper. I've hopefully answered everything there.

    We're not planning to stop the BRT.
  8. Added my review!
  9. LOVE 2.9
  10. Originally posted by Remy:[..]

    The first one, don't know yet, will depend on how it goes. Goal is to have every review posted in the reviews section though, and the bootleg round table is currently replaced by the featured content topic of Sarajevo.

    Second one, new bootleg will come at the end of August, beginning of September. This one is just for two weeks


    Allright, thnx for clearing things up.

    Originally posted by djrlewisCheck out the BRT topic Casper. I've hopefully answered everything there.

    We're not planning to stop the BRT.



    Thanks to you too Dan
  11. Okay, my debute as reviewer! I hope you like it!


    Performance:
    My very first review...I hope you like it!

    Okay, this gig was probably the most emotional and one of the best gigs of the PopMart-tour. Bono's voice was a bit raw and not really great, but his voice was terrible the entire PopMart-tour IMO....Awesome stuff were Mofo/I Will Follow (really like those two combined!) UTEOTW, BTBS and the ending of LNOE, which was THE highlight of every PopMart-show!

    But personally I like PopMart Santiago way better. If you had to choose between those two, I would always choose Santiago, 'cause Bono IS on fire there...
    Still a solid 5-star performance!

    Crowd:
    The crowd was unbelievably great, but I got the feeling that South-American audiences are way louder...Still, we're talking Sarajevo in war and that's what makes this boot even more remarkble...

    Sound:
    Simply great...

    Overall:
    Highlights: Awesome Mofo/I Will Follow, same for UTEOTW....but THE highlight is SBS>BTBS>Please>Streets. Simply amazing....Probably the best BTBS of the entire tour...Discotheque, Miss Sarajevo, HMTMKMKM and One are very good too

    Lowlights: There certainly were a few lowlights. EBTTRT is not cool, same for AIWIY and SATS...
    And a personal note: I dislike ISHFWILF....
    And the last lowlight was Mysterious Ways. I loved the MW's from PopMart, but this one just didn't 'got' me...

    Still a great gig, which you should have listened too...

    I hope you liked my review!
  12. I'll be posting one hopefully this week.

    BTW Harry - nice review of Paris 7 May 1992. Downloading now.