Gig Catch Up - U2 & Jay-Z

When I arrived at work last week I found an email saying, spend $40 at the local shopping centre and get U2 and Jay-Z tickets. Whoohoo! Love a free gig and I love Jay-Z! I think he is one of the best rappers of our time and a dam good producer. U2.... well they have made a lot of great songs, but I don't find them very exciting.

Never mind that it was a Tuesday night, I gathered a group from work and off we went to the massive U2 360° Tour at ANZ Stadium. With over 80,000 sets, I'm not surprised they had a few thousand spare tickets. Our sets were so high that everyone looked like ants below... you could barely make out what was happening on the massive big screen.

The absolutely massive tour won U2 the Billboard Touring Award for highest grossing tour in 2009 and again in 2010. With the thousands of seats (quite a few of the empty at 8pm) surrounding the massive four-legged stage setup "The Claw" which has even set a world record for the largest concert stage structure! And with a supporting act like Jay-Z I had high expectations...

Jay-Z set started around 8pm to a pretty poor crowd turn out. Most of the songs were set to backing tracks, which is not a problem, except when you could not hear a word he said.... it was bad. You know if is bad when you start thinking "can you please stop rapping so I can hear Alicia Keys". I was really sad that he did not do 'Death of Autotune' but then again, he may have... I just didn't hear it.

After Jay-Z people started turning up, especially the oldies. U2 then graced the stage in a spectacular fashion. It was obvious that the show was all for them, when the claw was lit up it looked amazing, and they actually sounded good :)

They did heaps of big hits and they sounds great. It was a great performace but having seats so far away made me wish you were watching it at home on DVD. I had to leave before the end and unfortunately missed out on what was apparently a memorable appearance from Jay-Z during “Sunday Bloody Sunday”.