U2 - 
Irving Plaza NY 
12/5/2000 - 

1. Intro
2. Beautiful Day
3. Elevation 
4. Stuck in a Moment 
5. I Remember You (The Ramones) 
6. New York 
7. I Will Follow
8. Desire 
9. The Ground Beneath Her Feet 
10. Mysterious Ways - Sexual Healing 
11. One - Walk On
12. All I Want is You
13. Bad - Ruby Tuesday 
14. "40" (Sung by crowd) 
15. 11 O'clock Tick Tock 
16. Won't Get Fooled Again (The Who) 



Rock'n'roll ain't dead. Tonight, in front of a mere 1000 people, 
the most famous Irish export outside of Guinness get back to their 
roots with some old-fashioned bare-bones rock'n'roll. The 
Dublin-boys-turned-stadium-rockers banish the days of oversized 
lemons and irony with an hour's worth of honest, no-gimmick songs. 

The set's heavy on tracks from the new album 'All That You Can't Leave Behind', 
opening with the bold 'Beautiful Day' and then 'Elevation', with a sample of 
The Monkees' 'Steppin' Stone' tacked on the end. Before going into another 
new track, 'Stuck In a Moment (You Can't Get Out Of)', Bono says, "This is 
a song about friendship. It's about a good friend of mine - Michael 
Hutchence." During the song he teeters above the front row on monitors, 
almost as if in tribute to the Aussie rocker who once scaled rafters in 
his performances. 

Continuing in the vein of tributes, Bono praises the city of the evening. 
"New York City - that's where we got started on the poetry and punk rock," 
he remembers aloud. "But more than any other band when I was 15 or 16 - 
actually I was 14 - was the Ramones. So I'm gonna sing this for Joey 
Ramone." The band then go into back-to-back tracks paying tribute to 
the city of lights, 'I Remember You' and their new track 'New York'. 

After taking the audience on a serious nostalgia trip with a tight 
rendition of 'I Will Follow', complete with the Edge's pitch-perfect 
guitars, Bono gets historical: "We've been a band longer than we haven't," 
he says. "People think it's like being in a gang, but it's more like a 
priesthood. You're in a band 'til the day you die." He then mentions 
the presence of Zach de la Rocha and Billy Corgan in the crowd and his 
sadness about the demise of both of their bands, before introducing his 
own three famed cohorts - "the musical conscience" bassist Adam Clayton, 
"a man so handsome he'll never be let to sing", drummer Larry Mullens, Jr.,
 and the "card-carrying genius" guitarist the Edge. 

He and the band then deliver an old guilty pleasure - after picking up 
his "red guitar on fire" - with an incredibly energetic version of 
'Desire'. Next is the moving 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet' dedicated 
to the man who composed its lyrics, Salman Rushdie, before another 
crowd-pleaser, 'Mysterious Ways'. And those aren't the only tributes 
to past greats. After Bono delivers a snippet of Marvin Gaye's 'Sexual 
Healing', the guys deliver two of their classic tear-jerking ballads, 
'One' and 'All I Want Is You' (known to most as the sappy song from the 
'Reality Bites' soundtrack). And then after 'Bad', Bono gives us a beautiful 
few lines of 'Ruby Tuesday' before saying goodnight and disappearing. 

The audience begin chanting "How long/Sing their song" and the boys came 
back out for a three-song encore. The first is '11 O'Clock Tick Tock' of 
which Bono jokes, "This is a song we haven't played for most of your lives!" 
And then, giving us a reality check of how rare this small-club event is, he 
adds, "We used to play it in small clubs like this." And then they close with 
'Won't Get Fooled Again' and leave us thirsty for more with one last little 
tribute as Bono sings, "Your generation/The Pepsi Generation". 


Liza Ghorbani