KEY POINTS:
Anyway, as I was saying before I got interrupted by the Friday-night review deadline, U2 were splendid weren't they?
I was almost tempted to go again on Saturday, given I had missed seeing the last 15 minutes of encores while sprinting towards the laptop to bash out some
hurried thoughts for the next day's paper.
But I decided against it. Probably because I didn't want to ruin the considerable buzz from Friday that I'm still feeling as I write this a few days later. Seeing Bono and co possibly repeat some of the same gestures two nights in a row might well have taken the shine off.
Maybe I just wanted to preserve the memory - I've never been so emotionally affected by a show of that size, of which I've seen quite a few. It's something I didn't have time to put my finger on in that earlier review.
I've been a U2 fan on and off since long before I started writing about music. I bought their first album, Boy, on cassette and still have it somewhere. As a poor student, I tried to get into their first New Zealand show in 1984 using a dodgy crew pass a printer mate had lifted from work - but had it taken off me at the door. I had met Greg Carroll a few times in those days, too. So when they played I Will Follow and One Tree Hill, I found myself holding back a few tears.
But the power of this event wasn't nostalgia. It was about a band that, as gargantuan as they are, still sounded like they meant it.
It was also something to do as much with how the show looked as sounded. U2's staging - with their big screens at the side constantly trained on the four members individually, and the wall of light at the back - seemed designed to project the performance into something bigger and bolder, more than just give those in the cheap seats something to watch.
Unlike the then radical visual presentation of their previous tour here, Zoo TV, this was designed to do more than just be a video art statement.
It magnified the message, the music - and the men making it. So much so that you got the distinct impression that Larry Mullen Jr fella doesn't seem very happy in his work. Not that he's got very complicated bits to play, either.
It was a pity about Kanye West's rain-soaked support slot which at one point had him lifting a sheet of polythene to reveal his DJ heading into one of the song's scratch breaks.
He was great at the St James when U2 were first meant to play here in March on St Patrick's Day. Pity he was relegated to an add-on on Friday night.
Talking of Ireland's national day, the night's best pre-show entertainment came from the local members of the clover community.
Near our seats, there seemed a lot of men in glittery leprechaun hats who looked like they'd been celebrating a second St Patrick's Day, all day. It wasn't only the happy stagger which gave it away, they were about half a stadium behind when the Mexican waves started. One bloke with an Emerald Isle accent spent a good five minutes shouting down his cellphone to the staff at a bar he had left earlier. He had rung to say he had left his tab open and that he was at the U2 concert. Finally he found a staff member who could close the tab before he was bankrupted by the drinking mates he had left behind. No. That wasn't why he rang "No it's all right," he shouted, "leave it open, we're coming back afterwards."
After the big emotional night that U2 delivered, I was tempted to make him my new best friend and join him.
