day 74 blog 61 U2 and the history of us

our family (mommy, daddy, sea age 4 and story age 1.5) went to the U2 concert last night at the rose bowl in pasadena. this was story's first concert and sea's second (we took her to see keene when she was just a few months old). there were something like 100 thousand people there and it was broadcast live on youtube (haven't checked it out yet)...definitely an experience...i felt like i was part of something bigger...bono is good about connecting, bringing people together for bigger causes...and they put on quite a show, too...i wanted to post about u2 not only because it was a totally spontaneous decision (we looked for tickets online at 4 p.m. yesterday and were in the car driving to los angeles before 5...there by 7:30ish) but because u2 is probably the most influential and memorable band in the "history of us" and even for myself...

they were my favorite band back starting high school...87ish and manuel was also a huge fan...even made it to the joshua tree tour...i went to the zoo tv concert my second year in college...somewhere in northern california 1992...popmart tour, again, somewhere up north in 1997...

then manuel and i were newly dating (with or without you was "our song"...we would sing it together and then pretended the two guitars playing off each other at the end of the song were us singing to one another...together, in harmony...the song is playing extra loud right now while i type and it still chokes me up...) and we were traveling in europe summer 1997 and realized we could catch them again...so we worked out our itinerary to pass through leipzig, germany, and scalp tickets...difficult speaking little german but we got into the show and then were walking back to the eurorail late at night and we saw a group of kids out in front of a hotel...lots of excitement, signs...sure enough, the band pulled up and got out right in front of us...we were some of the only ones speaking english so we got to talk with the band for awhile...a little 15 year old girl in front of me said something to bono like "i met you last year, remember? we were talking about ..." and instead of making her feel stupid for asking that question he validated her and although didn't say he remembered her, he agreed that he liked the poet she was referring to...he was very down to earth and made you feel like you were old friends...i couldn't believe with all the fans he has all over the world that he would take so much one-on-one time and personally connect with so many...so these photos (me with bono and manuel with adam clayton) are from that europe meeting 12 years ago...
we saw u2 again in 2001 for their elevation tour...thought about inviting them to our wedding in 2003 (not narcissistic enough to think they would come, but just felt like they had been so influential to both of us growing up and in our history together that we felt we "should")...and then the last time we saw them was in april 2005 for the vertigo tour...i was 6 months pregnant with sea so hopefully she was even influenced by them in utero...

i could do several posts on their lyrics and times in my life that they have influenced me but for now i just wanted to say thank you...