Artist: U2

Date: 1985-03-07

Location: San Francisco, CA - Cow Palace

Medium: SHN

Equipment / Source: unk

Infofile:

U2
Unforgettable Fire
Cow Palace
San Francisco, California
March 7, 1985

Attendance: 29,000 (sellout, two nights total)
Support: Red Rockers

Disc 1 (43:19)

1. 4th of July (PA)
2. 11 O'Clock Tick Tock
3. I Will Follow
4. Seconds
5. MLK
6. The Unforgettable Fire
7. Wire
8. Sunday Bloody Sunday
9. Electric Co.
10. A Sort of Homecoming

Disc 2 (44:26)

1. Bad
2. October
3. New Year's Day
4. Pride
5. Knocking on Heaven's Door
6. Gloria
7. 40

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Pimm's comments:

"Seconds is powerfully played, with Bono announcing over the opening chords, 'This is a message to the President; a message to Ronald Ray-gun. We make enough noise here, you can hear us in the White House in Washington. This is a song called Seconds. You see, Ronald, it takes a second to say goodbye..." After the song Bono urges those in front to look after themselves. Cow Palace is general admission, whereas at all the other shows chairs have been placed on the floor, as is common practice in America. Because of the heavy pushing, many who are short of breath or claustrophobic have to be pulled out of the audience.

It is flowers in L.A., but something else in San Francisco: 'Everybody keeps throwing their shoes up on stage. I mean, what is this? There's no business like shoe-business?' To introduce Bad, Bono tells the audience, 'You know, we come from Dublin City. Dublin is not always a fair city. This song is written about one particular person, but it's probably written about many, many more, it's probably even written about myself. This song is inspired -- on the street where I live a lot of people...you know, I joined a rock and roll band, they joined the dole queue, and some of them didn't even get as far as the dole queue. This is for them, this is for those of them that fell in love with a very dangerous lover -- that lover was the drug heroin, and this is the song Bad.

'Throughout the entire tour Bad has been one of the emotional highlights of the show, sung intensely, often desperately and always unpredictably. The end, drawn out, includes snippets of other artists' songs. Here Norwegian Wood, Ruby Tuesday, and also Waiting for the Man get thier turn, followed by Sympathy for the Devil ('Pleased to meet you...I hope you guess my name.')

'Another high point is Knocking on Heaven's Door, which Bono introduces: "You know, it doesn't seem long ago that we were 16 and 17 and we were just playing to one person or maybe 10 people. It's just great to play to so many thousands of people now. There's probably a lot of young bands out there, garagebands from garageland. If you're playing for one person or two people, you give them as much as you give to anybody here. We don't need stadiums and large PA's and fancy equipment -- you don't need that. It has taken me seven years to learn all that you need is maybe three or four chords and you can write a song, a song like this man wrote. This song gives us a lot of strength, I dedicate it to the man who wrote it.' The song is recognized from the first notes Bono strums on his guitar, and is performed in a lengthy, passionate version with another guest appearance from a rock-star-to-be from the crowd."

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Justin's site suggests that my source is the same as his, based upon the presence of a slight gap towards the end of Sunday Bloody Sunday, and Amazing Grace is added to the middle of the Electric Co. Other than this information, nothing further is known about taper, equipment, lineage.

Quality? Probably worth calling this 3/5, definitely more audience than one would like...but again, I suspect many collectors will need this one, as suggested by the fact that there is no cover art to be found.

Let me repeat...no cover art.

That is a hint.

cdr (obtained in trade, lossless, ?source/lineage) > EAC to wav > FLAC Frontend 1.7.1 to FLAC Level 6

Comment:

Archived on ICY1.





No cover available for this show.