"U2 Vertigo//2005" is without doubt the hottest tour of the year!! Ticket demand has been phenomenal and by the end of 2005 U2 will have played to 3.25 million people! "Vertigo//2005, U2 Live From Chicago" the DVD captures this unique experience. The DVD features 23 electric performances, with songs drawn from across the bands entire career - from first album fan favorites such as "Electric Co," through U2 classics such as "Pride...," "New Years Day" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" and right up to date with "Vertigo" the smash hit that launched this years #1 studio album "How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb."
Directed by Hamish Hamilton
DVD TRACK LISTING
1. City of Blinding Lights
2. Vertigo
3. Elevation
4. Cry/Electric Co.
5. An Cat Dubh/Into The Heart
6. Beautiful Day
7. New Year’s Day
8. Miracle Drug
9. Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
10. Love and Peace or Else
11. Sunday Bloody Sunday
12. Bullet The Blue Sky
13. Running To Standstill
14. Pride In The Name Of Love
15. Where The Streets Have No Name
16. One
17. Zoo Station
18. The Fly
19. Mysterious Ways
20. All Because Of You
21. Original Of The Species
22. Yahweh
23. 40
***This Limited Edition Double Disc Set comes in special packaging and includes a bonus second disc featuring a ‘behind-the-scenes’ documentary as well as other exclusive unseen performance elements.***
When he isn't rubbing shoulders with the likes of Kofi Annan and George W. Bush, the activist Bono has a side project he likes to call "U2." U2: Vertigo - Live From Chicago captures the band on two nights during their tour to support How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Once known for taking the most technologically extravagant shows on the road, the boys from Dublin have settled into a comfortable role of rock elder statesmen, placing emphasis on the anthems and weepers of their considerable body of work rather than gigantic lemons that descend from the rafters. Always a band that reflects the zeitgeist, this concert film finds them at their earnest best, with comparatively stripped-down stage production and superbly recorded sound. To call U2's more rocking songs "anthems" borders on understatement, and it is their anthems that ring most exuberantly in Chicago's United Center. Bono understandably looks heavier and wearier than in days past, perhaps due to the weight of the world he has hoisted onto his shoulders. While the icon roams the circular stage around the Metallica-style "snakepit," The Edge, drummer Larry Mullen Jr., and bassist Adam Clayton pin the songs to the floorboards and take them to the heavens. How can these guys not play fantastically together? Standouts include hits both classic and newly minted, among them "Beautiful Day," "New Year's Day," "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and "Sunday Bloody Sunday." Late in the concert Bono makes his appeal to the leaders of the world to end extreme poverty, invoking the imagination of a country that put a man on the moon. Ingeniously, he asks the crowd to take out their cell phones and text-message an account that operates as a petition to end world hunger. With the stadium aglow in LED screens, the band smoothly glides into "One." Elsewhere, Bono invokes religion, donning a headband decorated with Islamic, Jewish, and Christian symbols, assuming the appearance of a grizzled No Nukes protester circa 1975. (Perhaps this is a new persona akin to The Fly?) Kidding aside, these may be days in which we need the uplift and passion of U2 more than the 1990s, when they dressed up as the Village People and occasionally performed at K-Mart. Not suitable for those who don't wish to save the world. --Ryan Boudinot