U2 - Vertigo Tour 5th leg: The Pacific
2006-11-07: Queensland Sports And Athletics Centre, Brisbane - Queensland
( other U2 shows at this location )
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Review
2006-11-08 - Performance: awesome, Organisation: sucked submitted by NatalieI think the organisation of it all really let the calibre of the concert down. I had A reserve tickets for myself and 2 friends. Buses from the city were pretty good, while the queue was really long it moved quite quickly. We arrived at the venue at around 6.30 ish and wanted to get some merchandise, but each stand we saw was chockers with not many staff. Our gate was 14B in the Western stand, section 6. To get there we had to go through where they were letting all the general admission ticket holders in. It was a bit of a joke, almost needing traffic lights to organise people! It took us ages just to cross the road to get close to our gate, and then we found that there was a merchandise stand near the gate, so I decided to buy a couple of t-shirts. I stood in the no-so-long queue for about 20 minutes (only 4 staff serving) to hear that they'd run out of certain items! Prior to this we'd heard some music blasting out of the stadium, but it wasn't clear whether that was Kanye West at all.
I'd been told SO many conflicting reports from the venue, the transport operators and Ticketmaster as to when Kanye West and U2 were coming on. The first music we heard was at around 7, but that was only one song, and then it sounded like there was a voiceover or something. We lined up for our gate to be told that we couldn't take ANY food or drink (even water bottles!) into the stadium, so everyone had to unpack their bags and scoff their food/drink before getting in (and then buy a bottle of water for $4). Once in, it wasn't so bad - we heard a bit of 'Touch the Sky' by Kanye but once again it didn't sound like the full song. Once we got to our seats Kanye had finished (so we didn't get to see him at all) and where all the general admissions people were standing (on the field), it was only about one-third/half full! It was hard to tell whether Kanye had even been on, or whether they had just played some of his music over the loudspeakers!
But anyway, U2 came on at around 8.30pm. Although I got A reserve tickets Bono was a long long long way off and about 0.5cm tall! Thank God for the screens! I feel really sorry for those in C reserve because the screens where only at the front (near the stage), there were none closer for them to see. It was weird, U2 are one of my favourite bands, but it didn't really feel like we were 'at' the concert, moreso watching other people enjoy it from a mile away. A big highlight for me was Sunday Bloody Sunday with the message about David Hicks, and also Where the Streets have no name. The mosh pit/general ticket area didn't seem quite as energised as I thought they'd be - probably queuing up for hours and hours through the one gate would annoy any of us!
When it was over, the transport back was insane! Sooooo many people all trying to push into one bus bay for the council buses with limited signage made it really difficult. We tried ringing for a taxi but were told they weren't taking bookings, and then we couldn't find the taxi rank. We walked along the main road for about half an hour to Griffith University and ordered a taxi from there but was told it would take an hour (by now it was midnight). We ended up walking further to the Mt Gravatt Busway station and caught a local bus at about 12.15am. I hate to think how long it would have taken us if we'd waited for a council bus back at the venue!
But anyway, regardless of all these negative comments, U2's performance was fantastic - heard pretty much all the songs I love (except for Mysterious Ways, All I Want is You and Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For). I found Bono to be truly inspirational and very thankful to us all for waiting for them to come. He also mentioned that he thanks God that all family members of the band are healthy (I heard the reason the tour was cancelled was due to The Edge's daughter suffering from leukaemia). Two big thumbs up from me! back
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