U2 Deliver in Magnetic Hill

So, I took a small break from creating art for a couple of weeks. I got behind in life stuff and being behind in that spilled over into everything else. Then, I had the U2 concert at Magnetic Hill in Moncton, NB last Saturday.

There aren’t words that can properly describe how awesome that show was. So emotional, so heavy, so intimate. It was the last show of their 360° tour. The tour went on for over two years, and we saw the very last show of it, the 110th show. I found it interesting that 110 was also our hotel room number.

There seem to be two camps of people who saw the show: those who absolutely loved it, and those who felt it was subdued. It’s pretty apparent in reading reviews that those in the “subdued” camp are the ones who wanted a wild, crazy romp of a time with only U2’s most popular songs, and those in the “loved it” camp wanted a more intimate, candle-lit dinner-type feel with songs that true long-term fans would appreciate.

As with any fans of any band, there are two types: A-side fans and B-side fans. A-side fans tend to only like the singles, the songs they hear on the radio that everyone knows. B-side fans intimately know a band’s entire catalog, read articles and stories, and know details about the band that A-side fans don’t find out because they don’t go too far below the surface. B-side fans go deep.

U2 Magnetic Hill was a B-side fan’s dream show. I’m happy I’m in that camp. I’ve been to shows that were performances, almost like the band members emotions don’t leave the stage, and I’ve been to shows that were more like a dialog between the band and the concert-goer. The latter are way better. I wasn’t too far away from the stage, but I wasn’t in the inner circle either, but I still felt like the boys were singing and playing specifically to me. That’s the hallmark of a great band to me: the ability to bring people 80K+ people together into a single living entity all experiencing the same thing, sharing a moment.

U2 sure as hell know how to deliver.