U2 360 Chicago Sept 12 video playlist

13 full songs from U2′s show in Chicago on September 12. Thanks to Chris for putting these up.

World live premiere of U2′s Your Blue Room

U2 finally, FINALLY, premiered “Your Blue Room” at their second show in Chicago on the 360 tour. The band had been rehearsing this song at soundchecks very early on during the European leg of this tour. (I am pretty sure I heard bits of it during the Paris soundcheck, but there are more certain accounts from later shows.)

Enjoy this video which features the full song, including the spoken word bit by the astronauts of the ISS crew. Too bad Adam – who spoke on the original – didn’t get his big live vocal debut for this.

“Your Blue Room” was written for the Michelangelo Antonioni-Wim Wenders film Beyond the Clouds, and was originally supposed to be the 2nd single off the Passengers (1995) album, but that never came to pass. However, a rare promo disc of the song exists and two years later, the song featured as a B-side on the “Staring at the Sun” single.

For a lot of the Chicago crowd this must have been a WTF moment (a.k.a. ‘toilet break’, a.k.a. ‘beer run’), but it must have been a brilliant experience for connaisseurs. We know who you are.

And we’re not jealous. Not jealous at all.

*gnashes teeth*

Continue for a video from a different angle

Greg Kot’s video review of U2 at Soldier Field

Greg Kot tells you what he thought of U2′s opening night in Chicago, interspersed with some cool footage of the show.

Behind the scenes video at Soldier Field

The Chicago Tribune gets a behind the scenes look at U2360 at Soldier Field with Jake Berry, Paul McGuinness and Mark Fisher. Berry once again mentions the ‘intimacy’ this stage set up provides. For the band, yeah – but for the audience? Not so much – certainly not more, perhaps a little less than on previous tours – at least that’s been my experience at 11 shows on the European leg.

I think the intimacy at U2 gigs is created between band and audience, through the magic of music. Sure the production can help, but it’s not the be all and end all. And focusing on this and giving the tour that ’360′ moniker, perhaps was a bit of a miscalculation – a lot of not so clued in folks got the wrong impression (Some thought the stage would be in the middle of the stadium, or it would rotate, or they complained it wasn’t fully 360, etc.)

That said, it’s a great tour, seems like the band is in a good place, I enjoyed the shows immensely. I hope all of you experience the same on the USA leg about to start. We probably won’t be able to cover this leg the way we did the previous, but there’s a lot of sites out there that will. We’ll try to point you in the right direction.