U2 blues

Today is a sad sad day in my household.

I missed the opportunity to get tickets for one of the U2 Texas concerts this Sept.

The problem being that I didn't even know they'd announced the date, let alone that they'd already put them on sale. Why wasn't someone paying attention to this for me? Huh? Huh?

The first U2 concert I ever attended was the Joshua Tree Tour. Actually, that was my first concert ever. BB King Opened. NOW I know how cool that was, at 13 I spent most of his time on stage going to get some nachos. This is the very concert that they show on Rattle n' Hum.

The lights went dark...a red screen backlit the stage. As the first swell of "Where the Streets Have No Name" came up, you could see the dark silouettes of those Dublin Demigods crossing the stage. I GET it when I see those screeching girls, crying and clutching their hair on old Beatles clips. It felt like my heart was simply too large for my chest.

And I'm not so sure I wouldn't still react that way.

The band has broken my heart a bit over the years. The whole techno thing would have been acceptable music to me, were it some other band. It wasn't BAD music, just hard to reconcile with U2. The fee they charge for "members" to their website...the insanely high ticket prices varying by seat quality (I paid, count 'em $20 for that first concert, and EVERY legally purchased seat in the house cost the same...if you got a great seat, you earned it by standing your happy ass in line for hours upon hours.)

It just wasn't the same when Bono performed his ritualistic beckoning of the audience to sing "I will sing, sing a new song", while wearing ridiculous posturing sun glasses, and 100 foot high screens flashed "POP!" at you.

But I've come to accept that all things must change. I can sing along quite happily to Achtung Baby, though nothing in recent years will ever move me as much as "Bad".

This was the first concert I planned to attend since the early 90's. I was in fact, a little alarmed while watching VH-1's show on their tour, that my heart still fluttered while just watching them on screen. When you get to be an adult, you wonder that you can still feel those stirrings of youth madness. It felt like a whisper of the feeling you got at 16 when the boy-you-torture-yourself-over-night-after-night actually leans in, so close, and you can see the little razor cut on his chin and smell his smell, the whole while disbelieving that it's really, really happening.

How can you not love a band that STILL makes you feel that way after all those years.

They were really my first true love, you know.

Reunion thwarted....sigh...the course of true love....