U2 sucks.
It’s May 26th 2017, and we’re at Dallas Cowboy Stadium with our friends to see the best band Michele has never seen, and the only band that could lure me back to a large arena show. The last time I went to a big concert was The Police reunion tour, and we had seats within spitting range of the band. After 45 minutes I begged Michele to text her sister sitting in the nosebleeds to switch with me, so she could have more fun, and I’d stop getting stink eye from Andy Sumner. It was loud, OK? I don’t like loud. I have hearing problems anyway, and spending two days with ringing in my ears isn’t cool. Also, I’m old and boring.
So here I am at the concert. I don’t like concerts. But Michele loves concerts, and I love her. The best part of my night has been walking Michele’s not-remotely-see-through-enough purse all the way back to the car. So I got my steps. The stadium pretzel was OK. Other than that, this night is not going well. It’s not Bono’s fault. I’m kidding. Of course it’s Bono’s fault. If he hadn’t been so damn compelling in the With or Without you MTV video, I wouldn’t be here, musing on the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound, the speed of video monitors, and the speed of the audience singing along, but we’re not there yet. So 1) everything in my life since 1986 is technically Bono’s fault, and 2) this isn’t a metaphysics lecture, so let’s move along.
This is definitely Michele’s fault. (Because I’m not confident in my ability to write satire properly, and because my wife sometimes only skims my narcissistic writing exercises on FB, because she has to put up with this crap all the time, I’d like to get out front here and say it’s definitely NOT Michele’s fault at all. Having unequivocally stated that it’s NOT Michele’s fault, let’s move along.) It’s Michele’s fault in the way that it’s Charlie Brown’s fault he keeps missing the football. Sure Lucy’’s a gaslighter, but at a certain point, kid, just walk away from the football and get some therapy. And not from Lucy. She’s hardly objective. Also, she only costs a nickel. Save up and get a proper therapist. Now I’ve just analogized myself to Lucy, AND called her (and by the commutative property myself) a gaslighter. And not worth what she costs. So let’s be straight, I told Michele I would accompany her, but she knew the risks. I’m on record as saying the most I can do at a big live-music show is not detract from her good time. And it’s worth it to see U2. She shouldn’t have to do that alone. She wants to share the experience with her husband. So here I am. None of THAT is her fault. That’s my baggage.
What’s her fault is that she bought the tickets. These horrible, horrible tickets. We’re so far to the left that we’re behind the line of the stage. I can see the Edge’s ass. Well, I could, if he wasn’t so far away. We’re also in the fourth row from the top of the stadium. Our friends Vic and Sonya are one row further, but several seats less back stage. Later, they’ll tell me it didn’t make a qualitative difference. These tickets up here in Section Omega, Row ZZZ..ZZQ.784x’click-sound’B. These are her fault, we can all agree.
No, they’re not. She bought bargain tickets, because she had an imaginary, but very lifelike version of me in her head when she was on Tickets-for-Kidneys, or whatever legitimated mafia-scam is in charge of selling tickets in America. The prices were so insane, and she knows I’m so cheap, AND she was buying tickets for Vic and Sonya. She didn’t have the guts to squander all of our retirement plans for seats that didn’t require a safety briefing on fastening our lap belts and how to put on our oxygen masks in the case of sudden cabin depressurization. So here we are where the only ass I can see is the ass of the spot-light operator, who is literally closer to the stage than we are. Up here where we are above and behind the stadium’s speakers, we’re getting sound reflection interference patterns so complex that I can build 3-D maps like a bat. I don’t remember what I did to her to make her so gunshy when she bought these tickets, and neither does she (I checked). So it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just one of those things. Everyone agree? I’m sorry. No time for further questions. Let’s move along.
The opening band is the Lumineer’s, who, in addition to being responsible for the funniest joke in the Parks & Rec TV series, have other qualities. We were very much looking forward to seeing them as well, but since Michele had to wait for me at the front gate while I completed the “why should I have paid attention to where we parked-I wasn’t the driver” half-marathon with her purse, we experience the best of their set through four-hundred million dollars of concrete. As we ascend through layers of now-deserted concourses, their haunting lyrics feel like their inviting us “to come play with us, Danny.” We have not yet realized that this will be the musical highlight of the night, the best the music will sound. For the rest of my life every time I hear the song “Ophelia”, I will want to pay too much for pizza.
By the time U2 comes on stage, we’ve acclimatized to the altitude and have enough energy to stomp and scream with the rest of the stadium for the opening number, which immediately begins a night long struggle between Bono and the audience for vocal supremacy in some bizarre musical anti-tug-of war, for which the best mental analogue is the scene in Scott Pilgrim where Sex-bo-bomb battles the Katayanagi Twins. From our vantage among the weather satellites, we can almost see the high and low pressure waves of sound blasting out from the stage. Answered by the inebriated and overstimulated crowd in floor admission, at times Bono has to physically lean into the noise like he’s reporting live before the hurricane makes landfall.
My poor wife is heartbroken. This is her Moby Dick. She’s been trying to catch a glimpse of this great white band her entire life, and it’s a disaster. At one point she actually cries, but not because MLK has been killed. She’s crying because what we hear is the exact same thing you would get if you pressed play on a boombox containing the Rattle and Hum CD, and placed the whole thing into a metal trash can. We actually leave before the encore. Our friends agree that getting out of the stadium parking lot before it clogs up is the best part of the night.