Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Offtopic: I (heart) YouTube

Great news for me - I found U2's Letterman performances on YouTube. Monday night's outing of "Breathe" was fantastic to watch.

For the first half of the song, things seemed to be going just ok - as a U2 nut, I was enjoying it immensely, but it didn't seem like they quite had "it" going, and the crowd wasn't connecting as much as I've seen during other performances, especially on Saturday Night Live. Bono seemed to sense this, too, and with about two minutes left he starts pointing at the crowd, challenging them, hopping back and forth with his fists up like a boxer, and you start to hear the crowd noise go up considerably, and then all of a sudden he kicks into the song's conclusive verse:

"We are people born of sound / The songs are in our eyes / Gonna wear them like a crown / Whoa-oh-oh / Walk out, into the snowy street! / Sing your heart out, New York, sing your heart out New York! / I've found grace inside a sound / I've found grace, it's all I've found... / Spirit, breathe / Breathe, now..."

And it's just one of those magical U2 moments, moments I've experienced so many times during live performances, usually at the United Center in Chicago, and sometimes on television, and sometimes, if I'm really lucky, on YouTube with my headphones on in the darkened lobby of a hotel in the middle of Mexico.

Watch the performance of "Breathe" here.

2 comments:

From Chicago with Love said...

We'll you're in for another treat then because I enjoyed even more there offering of MAGNIFICENT from last night!!! I am not as mature of a fan as you, but they have me in tears/goosebumps/etc. as you get a real sense of how much the messege of (Lutheran!?) faith and shear power of music means to them! It's on late...but it's great! Can't wait for tonight!

Matt Keadle said...

Magnificent is my favorite song on the new album. It is going to be incredible, just incredible when they do it live. I get goosebumps just thinking about it!!!

Speaking of Lutheran, did you notice the lyrics are "Justified you and I will magnify, oh-oh the magnificent..." And here I didn't think it was possible to use any conjugation of "justification" as a song lyric...