Gee, how time flies! In my late teens and early twenties during the late 80ies and early 90ies listening to rock music was a substantial part of my life. It was only logic that I attended live performances as often as I could afford to. In those hey-days the choice was virtually limitless, at times you had to really make up your mind which band you wanted to see and hear live in action (not least due to financial reasons, altough live perfomances were a lot cheaper those days than they are today). With the emergence of new technologies, the techno and rave movement and the mp3 and DVD revolution the number of attractive perfomers and performances seemed to dwindle from year to year at a fast pace. Since the mid-80ies U2 managed to evolve as one of my all-time favorite bands. Unfortunately I was unable to attend a live perfomance for nearly 2 decades, most notably the 87 Joshua Tree Tour and the 2001 Elevation Tour. Eventually I was excited when the news spread that U2 would perfom live in Zurich on their Vertigo tour. The show sold out in record-breaking 45 minutes, I had the luck to obtain one of these much sought-after tickets from a friend of mine ! Headlined as THE live event of the year I headed to the Letzigrundstadion on July 18th. Unfortunately the weather forecast for this open-air concert was rain and a great chance for severe thunderstorms. The rain took palce, but mainly before the show, but we were spared of the stormy part. The show kicked off with Vertigo,the opening track of U2 new album with a delay of 15 minutes. It was played back-to-back with one of the band's earliest hits " I Will Follow", but it wasn't until the fourth track "Elevation" that the audience, aged 15 to 65, but predominantely Generation X, loosend up its restraint and began to back up with more enthusiasm. Things really took of during the next two tracks, being "Beautiful Day", which cumulated in the first highlight of the evening, the woeful " I still haven't found(what I'm looking for)", arguably one of their best and one my all-time favorite song ever. It preceded "All I want is you", another great classic U2 tune from their 1988 semi-studio,semi-live album "Rattle and Hum". The Band then began to make use of their big screen, when they played a series of newer songs, starting with "City of Blinding Lights", followed by "Miracle Drug", during which Bono praised the Swiss pharmaceutical industry for their achievements, but reminded them of their responsibility to guarantee access to their products for every human being,notably in Africa and finishing the set of with "Sometimes you can't make it of your own", an ode to Bono's deceased father and the impressive "Love and Peace or else". During the latter a graffiti was projected onto the screen stating "coexist", linking the symbols of Jewism, Islam and Christianity in a prayer for peaceful coexistence of all faiths in a time of growing fundamentalism and religious extremism that eventually lead to the devastating effects of terrorism. Suitingly, the next track was "Sunday Bloody Sunday". Sadly, the song couldn't be more actual and contemporary in the light of the recent events in Kusadasi, London and Iraq, even 22 years after it's initial release on the "War" album. Sunday Bloody Sunday simultaneouly faded into "Bullet the Blue Sky", another superb U2 live classic. Few songs in rock history capture the doom of weapons and the ensuing destruction of life emanating from the US government
better than this song. The following rare live track " miss sarajevo" is a tribute to the declaration of human rights, which are projected on screen. But it is during "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "Where the Streets have no Name" that the audience and the show reach their climactic peak. "One" finishes the set. Bono reminds us again of our duties as human beings. An excited crowd ask the band for encores. The first set is a compilations of classics starting with "Zoo Station" (Bono wearing a funnily out-of-this-world-out-of-this-time Russian general hat, reminiscence of the fall of the Berlin wall), followed by "The Fly" and topped by the inevitable "With or Without You". the The second set includes exclusively songs from the new album kicking-off with "All because of you", followed by "Yahweh". A reprise of "Vertigo" concludes this fabulous performance.
Bottomline: A superb live perfomance by one of the most appeling bands ever. Bono shows his political conscience as expected and widely known. The set consists of a good mixture of old and new material, of the 24 songs, 8 are from the new album. Alltough the new material offers some interesting insights in the bands evolution, it's still the classic material, namely the "Joshua Tree" tracks that kicks things off. Time is running, running to stand still.

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