1997-04-25 - Las Vegas
Tour: Popmart
Songs played: 25
Audio recordings: 1
Videos: 1
  1. There's a great shot of Adam when they're waiting for Mofo to start and you can tell he's just absolutely shitting himself.... even with the mask on
  2. Originally posted by LikeASong:Yes, Pride was played on the Gretsch Country Gentleman, but it was in Bb (Eb tuning) as usual Bono was just struggling, as in the whole of Popmart. And sure, Nevada's desert had an impact as we very well know.

    It was for the first few shows I think? Surely the earliest it ever was in a setlist on those first few shows until JT17 (bar one Elevation show in Boston I believe when it was second)
  3. Originally posted by superchuk5:First time listening to this show, and while some songs are train wrecks, the show as a whole was not a total disaster. We know they were unrehearsed, but I wonder how much of it was technical. For example, there's basically no guitar for the first two verses of Discotheque and I can't imagine Edge just forgot the chords.

    On the other hand, while I have a soft spot for live musicians screwing up songs (they're human), there was a LOT of that here.


    There was so much smoke out on the b-stage that Edge couldn't find his effects pedal to turn on his guitar during Discotheque. His version of the story is that he was on his hands and knees crawling around trying to find it!!

    Staring at the Sun was a bit of a disaster, and IGWSHA sounds like it was performed by a teenage band fucking around in a garage, I don't know why they couldn't figure out a good arrangement for that song. DYFL was starting to really come together by the Phoenix show, but maybe they just figured that was 1 new song they could afford to drop while they were tinkering with the flow of the show.


  4. I think about that often. The show in San Diego is nearly as bad as Las Vegas, I think. How would you feel if you were a casual fan who turned up in San Diego because all your friends were going. The stadium is half full, and U2 played quite poorly, despite having the world's most expensive, extravagant production. I would've been quite confused!
  5. Originally posted by WideAwakeBadBoy:[..]

    It was for the first few shows I think? Surely the earliest it ever was in a setlist on those first few shows until JT17 (bar one Elevation show in Boston I believe when it was second)
    Because of the sound of that guitar I thought for a while it was studio tuning (B). So in the end it's the same tuning as always (up until that point).

    I guess he was struggling a bit more because it was so early in the set (and wasn't carried by the crowd).

    Other than that, he did have some of that raw "screaming" power back to some extent during that first 2 legs, something that on ZooTV wasn't really there.
  6. Originally posted by podiumboy:[..]


    I think about that often. The show in San Diego is nearly as bad as Las Vegas, I think. How would you feel if you were a casual fan who turned up in San Diego because all your friends were going. The stadium is half full, and U2 played quite poorly, despite having the world's most expensive, extravagant production. I would've been quite confused!
    I thought you were exaggerating on the "half full" stadium thing, but yikes those early Leg 1 attendance numbers were atrocious. Forget San Diego, I want to know what it felt like to be at the Jacksonville show.

    Edit: I found video of Jacksonville. Holy moly the whole upper decks and entire third of the seats directly across the stage is empty.
  7. Tampa also.

    I know the second North American leg of PopMart was announced at the start but there wasn't demand.

    Europe and Latin America were the homes of PopMart.
  8. The Popmart show I attended in Columbus had 43,000+ people, so it was actually one of the better attended US shows. I can’t believe places like Denver, San Diego, Atlanta, Houston etc performed so much worse!
  9. Well, they better! We are screwing up the Americans this time just so people from the Eastern parts of the world can tune in
  10. Originally posted by superchuk5:[..]
    I thought you were exaggerating on the "half full" stadium thing, but yikes those early Leg 1 attendance numbers were atrocious. Forget San Diego, I want to know what it felt like to be at the Jacksonville show.

    Edit: I found video of Jacksonville. Holy moly the whole upper decks and entire third of the seats directly across the stage is empty.
    Jacksonville and Tampa were the true debacles. We've posted the "Money shot" of Streets from both shows plenty of times


  11. Why did these shows sell poorly? Was there just no interest in U2/POP at the time? Kinda hard to believe after the success of AB that the tour directly after would have these kind of attendances.
  12. Originally posted by SJKamal:Why did these shows sell poorly? Was there just no interest in U2/POP at the time? Kinda hard to believe after the success of AB that the tour directly after would have these kind of attendances.
    Outside Broadcast didn't nearly sell out all gigs in the US, don't get fooled. It was a mindblowing creative success, sure, but some of the gigs were abysmal in attendance, almost Popmart-level; speaking from the top of my head, Iowa, Alabama and Kansas were less than 60% full. Apart from the original JT tour when everybody was ready to jump on the U2 train/trend, they've always struggled with American stadiums.