So Jeremy managed to acquire tickets to the U2 concert in Charlottesville and last night we went to the concert at the football stadium at UVA, what a great show! The city definitely has getting people into the parking lots down to a science and we arrived just as the lots opened at 5pm (the concert was scheduled to start at 7pm). We were guided to the parking deck next to the basketball stadium and then walked the mile or so to the concert venue with a stop at Foods of All Nations for some tasty sandwiches for dinner.
Our tickets put us at one corner of the endzone and in the center of the field is this giant 4 legged octopus looking thing that is the stage with all the lights and a giant cylindrical video display in the center. We were behind one of the “legs” so our view of the band when they were playing in the center was a bit obstructed, and they were facing away from us, but they were great seats as the ticket office had not sold the 12 rows of seats in front of us (since they were “obstructed views”) so we didn’t have to worry about people standing in front of us and had plenty of room to stretch out. (pics below, more on Flickr)
Muse started off the concert by playing “Knights of Cydonia”, which I only knew from playing it on Guitar Hero but it was great to hear live (and yes, I was playing the Guitar Hero fingerings during the song 😉 ), they played 6 more songs or so and then after a full out lighting switch and a bit of stage rearranging U2 came on to much cheering and flashing lights. They played most of their classics (Beautiful Day, Elevation, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Walk On, Where the Streets Have No Name (and Bono played an acoustic version of Amazing Grace to prelude it which was great)) as well as some songs of their new album. They put on a great show, the stage was amazing and a great time was had by all 🙂
Getting out of the parking garage and back on 64 took longer than it needed to, they were funneling everyone away from the “quick route” to 64 so it was very very backed up and it took us about 30 minutes to get out of downtown but we got back to the bed and breakfast around 1:15 and promptly went to bed, definitely a fun way to spend an evening 🙂
