Reading Festival 2009

by Frank O’Brian

Forum member from u2star.com.

These 4 Dublin messers (as they call themselves) just keep coming up with the live goods again and again.

I have had the pleasure to see them live several times, the first concert was when they were an angry punk band playing in a small irish country town in the early eighties to about a 100 people. The last was a massive music, light and sound experience playing in a football stadium in Barcelona to nearly 100,000 fans recently.

Both concerts were obviously very different but also incredibly alike. The band can transmit a chemistry and feeling in any arena large or small which is hard to describe. Their live music enters people in a special way and their fans young and old just seem to explode. The contagious energy of Bono, the special talent of the Edge, the coolness of Adam C and the power of L Mullen Jr on the drums creates a formidable synergy as the 4 members interact on stage. They have an unmatched ability to get the whole audience to go completely mental for songs like Vertigo and Elevation and then bring them down to earth with a couple of ballads like One or Bad.

Good music is good music whether its played in a small club or a sports stadium, or on and old record player or the latest Ipod shuffle. But what makes good music GREAT is when it is played live and the audience contribute to the whole music experience. What makes U2 great is that they suck all the energy from the audience and reproduce it in their music.

Nobody is there just to listen to the songs, everyone is singinging like Bono or playing their air guitar like the Edge. Nobody is sitting, everyone is jumping around in a crazed frenzy, your legs are aching but you cant stop pongo dancing. I have the same sensation after each of their concerts, a mix of ectasy and exhaustion and by the looks of most people around me they were in the same state.

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