Monday I got a text from a friend Tuesday: “Can you get to Glendale tonight?”. Such an odd text, but this is me and of course I wrote back. “Sure, why?” Turns out a colleague had two tickets to see the U2 360tour with the Black Eyed Peas as the opening act. The wife loves BEP and I dig U2 and respect Fergie’s music and Will.i.am’s politics, so I called her up. On a whim, she agreed.

I bought the tickets for half price, and I was pretty stoked because back in the day I followed U2 beginning with The Joshua Tree before following them on and off for a decade before Zooropa, which came out at midnight where we all stood in line outside the closed record store (remember them?) to get the disc. Saw that show in Pittsburgh probably 15 years ago now, and even though I don’t listen to them daily, you can’t deny that Bono is one of the most talented male vocalists alive today.

The wife thinks Fergie’s the bees knees so she was ready to roll. I picked up the tickets, and as soon as she got home, we dropped Claire off at a friend’s house for a sleepover and hit the highway. Our friend, Liza, said the highway through town was slow so we took the Loop 101 around downtown Phoenix. The difference (for those of you who don’t know the city) is 34 miles through the city or 43 around it to the venue. We chose to go around. We left our neighborhood at 6:00pm for a 7 o’clock show. We got 10 miles into our journey and hit red brake lights, which we thought was just for rush hour or something but it wasn’t. Those lights didn’t stop for the next 30+ miles all the way to the stadium. It took two hours! We got there, parked like a mile away and was in the stadium by 8:00pm. The music was blaring and obviously the Black Eyed Peas were rocking it. Donna had to stop in the bathroom, so I stood and listened to a song before we ran to our seats while they were playing “Boom Boom Pow”. We were rocking out in our seats and they sounded great. After that they thanked U2 and moved into “I Gotta Feeling”, which I hadn’t heard until that day. I love the song now and was grooving and Donna was excited. After it was over, Will.i.am thanked the audience and left stage. WHAT?! We were flummoxed. I know we were an hour late but we didn’t realize we’d missed almost all of the set. They played 7+ songs before we got there, and we just looked at each other.

We shot some photos of the 40million dollar, infamous 360tour stage and waited for U2. Donna knew most of the old stuff, so she was cool with it. She shot several photos while waiting, since she brought her little camera. The rules said no “professional camera or lenses over 6 inches”. I measured my 28-135 and it was way too long, so I left it at home. I brought my 50mm, but I was worried about the whole “no professional cameras” and, by this point, I did NOT want to have to walk back to the car (felt like a mile away). So I left the camera under the car seat. Donna’s pictures turned out pretty well as did some videos she shot (especially the sound!). She shot this one of the whole band, and it’s one of the best she shot.

After U2 took the stage, after four songs, Liza, who was sitting in a different section, texted me the set list from the show before with a note, “looks like they’re playing the same songs”. She was right. By the end of the show, Bono had played all of the songs in the same order as the October 18, 2009 show. These included some old school faves like “With Or Without You”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, and “Where the Streets Have No Name”. They played some standards like “Mysterious Ways” and “Vertigo” and then some Horizon songs, intermixed with some newer, unrecorded songs.

We had a rocking time, and the drive home was only 45 minutes. Of course that was at 12:30am and believe me, my alarm went off way too early the next morning for work.