My first U2 show was Popmart in Dallas, Tx at the Cotton Bowl (to my eternal regret I narrowly missed getting to see Zoo TV at Reunion Arena in 1992 due to being unable to convince my mom that her precious little 14 year old would be fine traveling out of state with a couple of 16 year olds she barely knew... Damn it).
It was only the sixth or seventh show on the opening leg. Rage Against the Machine opened for them. It was a really incredible experience.
I remember seeing the olive on the toothpick from outside the stadium and getting crazy excited!
The show was rough... nothing like the Popmart Mexico recorded toward the end of the tour.
(They were still trying to play a full band version of Staring at the Sun and were still hoping to figure out Miami... with lots of starts and stops and Bono visibly getting angry yet playing to the crowd the whole time.)
I loved it!
Looking back it was cool to see U2 wrestle with big songs and big ideas and at times fail and then pick up the pieces and keep going.
Some of my best memories!
To bring it full circle I got to see them again at the Alamodome in San Antonio just two shows before the Mexico City tapings. U2 were hitting on all cylinders. Michael Hutchins had been lost just the night before and Bono injected snippets of the INXS songs for the first time and became quite emotional. All of it was equally powerful and beautiful to that first show just in different ways.
All that being said... Can NOT believe that 20 years have flown by!
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