My first stadium gig : U2 + Audioweb

On the morning of August 9th, 1997 I woke up to a phone call. I'd been sleeping late because it was Saturday. My mother informed me she'd spent a deal of our very tight monthly budget on a ticket to that evening's U2 gig.. and that ticket was for me. I couldn't believe it, I had to go on repeating "Really ? No... I mean, seriously for reall! ?"

I'd been liking U2 since I watched Bono do his Fly character during the Zoo Station tour, I'd seen some of those videos on MTV. I didn't have the money to buy the latest album which had just come out, the controversial POP, but I liked the promo videos for it. I only had the album 'Boy' on vinyl.

All day long I got more and more nervous as I waited for the show. I lay on my bed trembling, it seemed so surreal to be seeing those people in person. Finally the time came for me to leave for the show. I wore my only skirt, and a worn out t-shirt, along with dancing shoes and I felt really out of place. I'd recently gotten into psychedelic rock and tried to emulate this sort of sixties look, haha.

The size of the venue got me by surprise. It was huge. A sea of faces and hands everywhere... it was bordering on scary and exciting. I found out my seat was about as far from the stage as it possibly could and to top things off, a very posh couple was sitting on my numbered seat, which was more like a section of a long concrete bench of sorts. I showed them my ticket and said it was my seat but they wouldn't budge nor show their tickets to me. I was upset and pissed off and saught out a guy who stood by the nearest entrance, I said these people were sitting on my place but he just shrugged and ignored me. I walked back to the couple and looked at the numbers painted near the seats. I noticed there were two sorts of numbers there, some faded and others brand new. Apparently this couple had looked up the old numbers, which were no longer in use. I sat down on a tiny edge at the end of the row, as I'd given up trying to fight for my seat.

By then there was loud music booming from the speakers, and I later learned that these were songs picked out by the bandmembers themselves. One particular song grabbed me by the lapels, so to speak. A male voice sang with the most sexual voice I had ever heard in my young life. The music reminded me of early T. Rex and as it echoed around the stadium I fell in love with it. But I had no idea what the song was.

For some reason U2 had chosen Audioweb as their support act. It was the worst thing I've ever seen onstage. The whole thing seemed to last for less than half an hour and it was very incoherent. Screaming and noise. I'd rather gone without it.

It took ages for U2 to get on stage. But finally I spotted some restless movement in the front section of the crowd, it was Bono dressed up as a boxer. The other guys came onstage too but I can't remember if they arrived from the crowd or from backstage. The show started and what I liked the most about it, was the huge video screens, which allowed me to see everything. They played most of the hits but not my favorite song, "Lemon", despite the huge disco ball lemon that they used as a part of their stage show. Even the songs that I wasn't familiar with sounded great, almost like I'd known them from before. I'm not saying U2 songs are predictable, though. But thery were good to groove to.

The seat invading couple luckily left at the beginning of the encore so I reclaimed my place, but didn't need it for that long, as I stood up to dance. Most people around me did. And this was the farthest corner of the stadium. The music and atmosphere were just too good to ignore. I was embarrassed to dance in public so all I did was some swaying back and forth, like some kind of a seaweed.

Ok, so that was that, my first big stadium gig. Now someone might be wondering why the hell did I choose Grant Lee Buffalo's song "Fuzzy" as the song to accompany this post ? Well, here's why : Fast forward to the year 2001. I was working as an animator in a tiny studio, building dolls and stuff. There was this older dude who always brought great mixtapes along. One day this one particular song came on while I was listening to his tapes and I nearly fell from my seat. It was the song I'd heard while I sat in the audience waiting for the U2 gig to begin. I asked him what it was and he told me all about Grant Lee Buffalo and took me shopping for records after work.

Perhaps's it's a bit ironic that the song that reminds me of my first big gig wasn't by the band that I went to see.