I know, I'm a zealot, but...

U2 is a fantastic live band. There's no two way about it. Protest all you want about the crass commercialism, the self-aggrandizement, the whatever....the simple fact remains: U2 is four guys with two guitars, a 4 piece drum kit (granted, with a bunch of cymbals, but it's snare, bass, tom, floor tom - that's it) and the same old Vox amps they've always used, and they raise a fantastic racket.

And that it comes in a wrapper that looks like this:







can be disconcerting to some, but it contains every contradiction of U2 - the sacred and the profane, the money and the soul, the sound and visual. I think what I like about U2, and pardon this sideways trip into weakass philosophizing, is that they ARE the duality of what each person is - our best and worst selves, our hopes and our weaknesses. I know, I know, I swear I've not been getting high, either. It just seemed to me, sitting there looking at this GIGANTIC stage and the Lilliputian size of the band and listening as they turned a 70,000 seat football stadium into an intimate venue, that there has to be an acknowledgement of how hard that is to do and what an artistic triumph it is to do it well. But the contradictions were rife, literally seconds after thanking the charitable donations of Americans for sending 35 million African kids to school, he thanked LiveNation (the concert monopoly) and Blackberry for helping sponsor the tour (and, ostensibly, filling his pockets with enough cash for him to bring the message to the people.)

It was an experience - that's for sure.