![]() ![]() They played as if RFK Stadium had been a home concert, not an away game.Īfter opening with a pounding "Zoo Station," the band moved fluidly between new material and classics, the latter not always its own. What the technology never did was obscure U2's natural power, most evident on the martial anguish of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," the spiritual yearning of "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Where the Streets Have No Name," the mournful elegy "One" and its inspirational counterpart, "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and the roiling energy of "Until the End of the World." Over the course of two dozen songs, many drawn from the current "Achtung Baby" album, U2 always managed to fill the space, doing so under a dramatic drizzle that must have reminded the band members of Dublin. ![]() It wasn't necessary to pay attention to Zoo TV it was impossible not to. ![]() On the sinuous "Mysterious Ways," a real dancer vied for attention with dancing graphics, and the distance between image and imagined proved mysterious in its own way. Instead the technology underscored the songs, sometimes brazenly (the bombardment of arty PC slogans and lyrics in "The Fly"), sometimes ironically (a hysterically preening, gold-suited Bono on "Desire"), sometimes subtly (the brooding introspection of "Love Is Blindness"). Yet as impressive as the 110-foot towers, hovering cars, dozens of video monitors, oversize screens and random satellite transmissions were, they never intruded on the music. U2 did this by embracing complex technology and elevating it to partnership status, fusing the technical and human elements of its work in ever-inventive and often humorous ways. For two hours the Irish quartet engaged eyes, ears and minds in the ever-shifting audiovisual layers of its Zoo TV Outside Production tour, proving it's possible for a rock band to dwarf a stadium stage, when the reverse is usually the norm. It was George Bush, on doctored video, who told the full house at RFK Stadium Saturday night that "we will, we will rock you," but it was U2 that kept the promise - and, happily, so much more. ![]()
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