Mr. Sanguine's Home

If you ever look at my iPod play chart at the bottom of the sidebar, you'd quite often find U2 amongst the playlist. I've been a fan for as long as I can remember and when the opportunity to catch them on their Vertigo tour Down Under came up, I jumped on it immediately. Made a short holiday out of it, Adelaide isn't a place one can spend too much time in. The crowd was surprisingly tame, perhaps due to the fact that quite a number of people around us were strung out on weed. The puff of smoke you see in the image is probably someone blowing out a cloud of happy smoke.



Kanye West was the opening act which we were fortunate enough to miss due to the rather late arrival of my cousin who was holding our tickets. Apparently we didn't miss much, guess I'm just not into the hip hop, r & b, whatever he was playing.



A RAAF P-3C Orion graced the occasion with an impromptu fly by. The aviation buff in me had to take a snap of it though the compact camera I was restricted to using did not really do it justice. I think only myself and 10 others in the crowd of 60,000 noticed when it started flashing its landing lights when directly overhead. This concert was a historic event for Adelaide, apparently it's the largest ever held in South Australia.



The cascading backdrop which dominated the stage was approximately 100 feet high and about 120 feet wide. The 12,000 individual LED spheres reproduce moving images and were a sight to behold, especially when up close, it could literally turn any venue into a city of blinding lights.



I'm not exactly a regular concert goer, my last rock concert I attended was Richard Marx (that was a strange time in my life, don't ask) at the National Stadium back in the 1980s! Was a little apprehensive about our choice of tickets but it worked out pretty good in the end. We had opted for the general admission tickets which let us stand anywhere in the field of the stadium and we ended up only about 50 feet or so from the extended stage, not bad for getting in after the concert started! Here's Bono and The Edge doing their thing.



I thought the Coexist logo was cleverly done, let's see if peace ambassador Bono gets anywhere with it. Interestingly enough, there's some controversy surrounding the use of the symbol.



Like I mentioned earlier, I could only sneak in a compact camera which I had purchased specially for the trip. I wasn't real familiar with the use of it but decided to go ahead and do some short video clips with it. I honestly didn't have any high expectations of the results but was pleasantly surprised when I reviewed the clips. Anyways, this is a short compilation of my experience at the show, please excuse the shaky hands, unlevel horizon and freaky panning, I'm no James Cameron. I spent about 2 hours editing it so the least you could do is hit the play button! Mrs Sanguine can be heard mouthing off the words to With or Without You, the last segment of the clip. I think the new beat the band played destroyed what is probably my favorite U2 song. Enjoy...

Labels: Events, Music, Travel