In May of 1981 I got a call from my musician friend Paul Johnson and he wanted my wife and I to travel up to Santa Monica from San Clemente to check out a concert with U2. No tickets, we just bought them at the door when we arrived for less than $10 each. All we knew about them was that they were suppose to be a good band from Ireland with an innovative guitar player. Prior to this we had attended many hundreds of live rock shows, a number of which featured top bands of the previous 20 years. The fact is that we really were not expecting much from this show and to our surprise U2 put on a first rate concert. The sound was good, the band had an exciting stage presence and the guitar player din't use even one conventional rock and roll riff when his solos came up; what a treat. The lead singer had a puffy white shirt with baggy sleeves. His voice was strong for such a young person and he was all over the place and even climbed up on top of some speakers when they were playing I Will Follow. We didn't know any of the songs they were playing, but when I later got the Boy album I recognized that song as the barn burner of the show. Out of Control was another one that went over well with the audience. This was a "no seating" dance style show, so if you wanted to battle the crowd you could go right up to the stage. The musical set was paced very well using slower songs to set off the more high enery material. All in all it was a first class show and I'm real happy we had a chance to see such a great band in this type of small open concert situation.

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