It was a Beautiful Day

I haven't posted in a month, and I'm sorry, Mom! Life has been insane and there is a lot I need to record, so I'll just get to it.
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October 23rd will now be known as U2 Day in our home. That is the day Greg and I went to see them in Vegas and there will never be another concert to top it. Our friends Ken and Katie Craig live in Vegas, so after meeting up with them, we headed to Sam Boyd Stadium. Our new best friend Jason had been waiting in line for all of us since noon. We had general admission tickets, so when the gates finally opened at 6 pm, it was mayhem, everyone running across the field, trying to get the best positions. This is the set up of the stage. Click on it to appreciate how massive it was.

Well, we ended up in the inner circle, about ten rows of people in front of us, and three behind us. On the picture above, see the person on the left side of the screen, inside the circle? We were a little bit closer than that. Perfect!

This is Ken. He and Greg have been friends since their freshman year at BYU. They had seen U2 in Vegas in '92, fresh off their missions; they had a lot of fun rehashing that night and complaining about how old they've gotten.

The Black Eyed Peas opened the show, and they were good. Not really my kind of music, but compared to most opening acts, they didn't suck. That Fergie can sing, even when she is singing about blankets.

The lights went out and the spectacle began. We were treated to songs from their new album, as well as classics. They played for 2 hours and they were amazing. There were two bridges that rotated, allowing the band to reach the outer circle. When the bridge stopped, where were we?

Yes, that is Bono. (It's not the best recording, but you can see how close we were.) The Edge also played a solo on 'End of the World', right above us. We could see the bracelets on his arms, the insane way his hands moved as he played. When we turned around to face the outer circle, you felt like you could reach out and touch them. Larry played bongo drums around the circle and it was great to see him out from behind the drums. Bono's commentary was great and they even incorporated bits of Coldplay and The Killers songs into theirs, as both Chris Martin and Brandon Flowers were there that night. Bono also pulled up a teenager from the audience, running around the circle with him and giving him his sunglasses afterwards. Talk about a memory that kid will have forever! By the end of the night I had no voice, and we couldn't hear properly for three days afterwards.

There are not enough adjectives to describe this show.Two nights afterwards they had their live YouTube show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. It was the same show we saw. If you didn't see it, here is a link to the highlights of that show. (Though they left off some of my fav live ones; Mysterious Ways and Elevation, to name a few.) But it gives you an idea of the scope of it.

http://www.u2.com/news/title/rrrtest#

This pretty much sums it up.

Translation: "I'm so happy!"