2009-10-03

Carter-Finley Stadium, Raleigh, NC, USA

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

"Breathe"
"Get On Your Boots"
"Mysterious Ways"
"Beautiful Day"
"No Line on the Horizon"
"Magnificent"
"Elevation"
"In a Little While"
"New Year's Day"
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
"Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"
"The Unforgettable Fire"
"City Of Blinding Lights"
"Vertigo"
"I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
"MLK"
"Walk On"

Encore One:

"One"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"

Encore Two:

"Ultra Violet (Light My Way)"
"With or Without You"
"Moment of Surrender"

Additional Music

Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "Space Oddity" - David Bowie
Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "Soon" - U2
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "Rocket Man" - Elton John

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

Carousel

Show Details:

U2 play their first show ever in Raleigh, NC. They had been scheduled to play on the PopMart tour in 1997, but that show had been cancelled. Tickets for the general sale went on sale on April 17, and Muse was the support act.

Traffic is a mess. Some people are stuck for three or four hours in traffic, and some fans miss the concert completely due to the traffic. At one point traffic is said to stretch for six miles. Some fans even abandoned their cars at the side of the road and walked to the venue. People who made it to the venue were being told that no parking was available upon arrival, further complicating the evening for fans that left it late in the evening to attend.

The moon is full and directly overhead and Bono can see it from the stage. During “Beautiful Day” Bono adds in a snippet from “C Moon” singing about the moon in front of him.

“Magnificent” gets a roar as it’s been used extensively at University of South Carolina football games this year and is well known to those who attend. It doesn’t go unnoticed by Bono who shares, “Magnificent Larry Mullen Junior, magnificent The Edge, magnificent occasion.”

The band debut “In A Little While” for the first time on this leg of the tour. It is the first time that the song has been performed since the July 25 show in Dublin.

During “City of Blinding Lights” Bono invited a young boy to walk, and then run around the stage with him before handing off his glasses at the end of the song and waving goodbye as he was returned to his family in the audience.

During “Sunday Bloody Sunday” Bono spots a flag in the front row of the audience and asks to see it so he can read it. The flag is asking for “People Get Ready”. Unlike other nights, the guy holding is not invited to the stage, and Bono throws his microphone down to the guy instead. U2 stop performing briefly while the audience member sings a verse, and then Bono takes the microphone back to sign a bit more of “People Get Ready” as U2 restart the song. While the audience member is singing, he’s seen on the large screen above the stage.

During the show Bono gives shout outs to Senators John Edwards and the late Jesse Helms, who he credited with supporting the One Campaign. Jesse Helms’ widow Dot Helms is at the show, and Bono meets with her before the show begins.

Other snippets throughout the show include “Stand By Me” at the end of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, “Mofo” as part of “City of Blinding Lights”, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” as part of “I’ll Go Crazy”. “Rock the Casbah” is heard in “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is used during “Walk On” and “Amazing Grace” is heard during “Where the Streets Have No Name”. Bono also includes the extra “Hear Us Coming” verse during “One”.

FITSNews reported “If finding a decent melody was his objective on this cool October eve, U2’s Bono found plenty of them – and plenty of company to share them with – as his Irish mega-band alternately wowed and wooed a crowd of over 60,000 at Carter-Finley Stadium. With a harvest moon shining just above the tree line and the band’s massive 164-foot-tall stage – dubbed “The Claw” – perched like some alien spacecraft inside this suddenly-undersized venue, U2 blazed through a blinding, blistering rock spectacle the likes of which the Carolinas may never see again.

In the Raleigh News and Observer David Menconi wrote, “For all the band’s pretensions, U2 is ultimately just so likable that it’s almost impossible not to be won over. When they went roaring into the encore version of ‘Where the Streets Have No Name,’ that guitar riff pealing like a church bell, it was a perfect moment of blissful big-rock grandeur that you just don’t see much of anymore. We shall not see U2’s like again, I don’t believe.”

Present at the show was Anthony DeCurtis from Rolling Stone magazine, Agnes Nyamayarwo, an Ugandan anti-AIDS activist who has collaborated with Bono in the past, and Dik Evans, brother of the Edge and former Virgin Prune.

Those who were at the venue early could hear a soundcheck which included a bunch of material the band is working on for a Gavin Friday event in New York City. The songs include David Bowie’s “Jean Genie”, Gavin Friday’s “King of Trash” and “I Want to Live”, “Breathe” is played twice, and “In a Little While” is also sound checked ahead of its addition to the show tonight.

Officially Released Tracks