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U2 plays in Santiago!

While the wife is away…. I’ve been off to hear U2 play! I was offered a ticket by a friend at Church and was delighted to take the opportunity to hear my favourite band play live, in the Estadio Nacional Santiago! They were amazing! I was delighted to share the experience with over 80,000 chileans.

There were three stages to the evening… and three “stages” too, as follows:

  • First, those standing, or promenading in the centre of the stadium exchange insults with those sitting in the expensive seats! Their insults were, respectively, “mira las minas” (which I think translates as “you upper class posh gits”), to which those with bank accounts and credit cards replied “los huevones de la cancha” (translated: “you low-life, no-good ******s in the ring”! Nice to know Chileans can humour themselves!
  • Second, to the real stage- Franz Ferdinand were fronting U2 and they appeared in their usual bold attire just in time to remove it (the lead singer wanted to show his scottish chest hair). However, despite everyone in my vicinity telling me they love scottish bands, most chileans appeared to be bored to the point of buying coke at 700 pesos a shot (which is a con) and listening to their personal steros (yeah… at a concert. Clever).
  • Third, the show began. The music was fantastic. The singing of 80,000 chileans wasn’t quite so fantastic. Thankfully, the sound levels were absolutely incredible- I’m sure it could be heard in the mountains around Santiago! However, the entertainment didn’t stop for almost 3 hours- in any moment of quiet euphoria (there were few quiet ones, even when Bono was speaking), the crowd started chanting “chii chii chii, cha cha cha, viva Chile!” which made us laugh and shout even more. The show was made unique by the invitation of a number of lucky chileans to join them on stage to sing or shout. And the band played a local guitar/banjo as part of - the churanga- after former President Lagos challenged them to do so.

    • What a show it was. The stage set of U2 for their Vertigo Tour was incredible. Almost 30m high, and 50m wide, it included two walk-along arms and the creation of a “Golden Circle” in front of the stage, containing 450 sleepless U2 obsessives who had camped at the stadium for the previous night in the hope of getting a ticket! The back wall consisted of a web of giant LED RGB pixels which displayed album graphics and key messages to the stadium during each song.

    These messages included, rather controversially, picturing the new President Michelle Bachelet with former President Pinochet, whose regime resulted in her Father’s death. More encouragingly, it proclaimed a message of “COEXIST” to those who feel Abrahamic faiths won’t or can’t tolerate each other. And the message of Amnesty International, including the 6 articles of the UN Bill of Human Rights were read in full as a song’s conclusion.

    Songs from a range of albums were played, including 6 of my favourites. I’ve listed them below, for any U2 freaks out there, in the order they were played:
    City of Blinding Lights
    Vertigo
    Elevation
    Until the End of the World
    New Year’s Day
    Still Haven’t Found
    Beautiful Day
    The First Time
    Sometimes You Can’t Make it on your Own
    Love and Peace
    Sunday Bloody Sunday
    Bullet The Blue Sky
    Miss Sarajevo
    Pride in the Name of Love
    Where the Streets have no Name
    One
    (1st encore)
    Zoo Station
    The Fly
    Mysterious Ways
    With or Without You
    (2nd encore)
    Mothers of the Disappeared
    Yahweh
    All I Want is You

    For more information about their tour and pictures from the Santiago Concert, see U2.com.

    I’ve got some mobile phone recordings and videos from the concert. I’ll post them soon.

    This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 2:12 am and is filed under Idiomaaaaaasssss!- learning Chilean spanish, News from a long narrow country- Chile 2006, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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