Saturday, November 19, 2005

The Church Of U2 And Brotherly Love (My experience at the U2 concert in Miami from the Vertigo Tour)

You could feel the love.  You could feel the positive energy from every single person in the arena.  It was an awesome show which made for an awesome night whose energy carried me through the week and will carry me for weeks to come.

We arrived at the American Airlines Arena at around 6:00 p.m. for the Sunday Nov. 13 date of the U2 Vertigo Tour.  We get out and see a line forming so just get in the end of the line.  After about 10 minutes we get to the front only to find out we are in the line for the VIP party.  A fellow fan in line behind us asked if we could get in with her.  Very nice offer but the staff girl working the door said we had to have actual VIP tickets.

We only had to wait about maybe another 15 or 20 minutes before getting in though when they opened the doors at 6:30.  Had plenty of time to kill since the opening act wasn't supposed to come on until 7:30.  So we had time to stop at the bathroom on our way to our seats.  Once we found our seats decided to have a drink and wait for the show to start.

The opening act was Institute which is Gavin Rossdale's new band (lead singer of Bush and married to Gwen Stefani of No Doubt).  I couldn't really understand the words of any of their songs but that music sure did kick ass.  And even the 2 Bush songs I knew I could barely understand.  They played for about 45 minutes.

U2 came on at around 8:30 I believe.  Even before they took the stage the energy of the crowd was near a boil.  At first the lights of the main stage came up revealing the band excluding Bono which caused both the energy level and the decibel level to double.  And then after another minute or two a light comes on at the age of the section of stage in the middle of the crowd revealing Bono which caused the energy and decibel levels to increase at least tenfold.  The energy of the crowd stayed at this level and above through the duration.

It was an awesome, exhilarating feeling which just left me in awe of the power of the human experience.  I didn't want the feeling of those few hours to end.  You could feel the release of a city that had been through so much in the previous few weeks.  From a very intense hurricane to a few weeks without power.  A feeling of just being glad to be alive.

About half way through the show it turned into a short peace rally.  No political party or politician was mentioned but a definite call for peace could be felt.  During Sunday Bloody Sunday and Bullet The Blue Sky you could feel the energy of a country fed up with being led by a group of warmongers.  A desire to find peace in a world of anger and war.

I can't remember every single detail of the show which is probably a good thing or this Blog entry would be a book.  I do remember that they had 2 encores and ended the show with 40.  For those of you who might not know 40 is based on Psalm 40 of the Psalms of David.  Asking "How long must we sing this song?"  Very fitting for the current state of affairs in this country, Iraq, and the world at large.

How long will we go on hating each other when we are all on the same path only calling the path by different names?

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