Song of the Day (9/10/06)

U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name (1987)

It was January 2000. I was back in Tempe, Az. after a relaxing and freezing Christmas break in Alaska and was set to begin my second semester of college at Arizona State University.

I walk into my early morning Media & Society class that first day back and sit down in the 200-seat auditorium.

Class begins and, rather than saying hello and introducing himself, the professor quietly walks over to his multi-media equipment and pushes a button.

On the projection screen behind him, it reads:

Sun Devil Stadium

Tempe, Arizona

The words fade to black and are followed by this:

(You'll have to excuse the subtitles. This was the best I could find.)



I remember hearing absolute silence from the class as they were fixated on the performance. Maybe they weren't U2 fans per say. Maybe the group of mostly freshmen were just taken back that a concert of such a grand scale took place on their very own campus 12 years and 1 month beforehand (the 12/20/87 concert in front of a packed house of around 70,000 was the closing show of the band's Joshua Tree tour).

The song ended, the lights came back on, and the professor - certain that he had our full attention - introduced himself.

I would later learn the performance came from the band's 1988 concert film Rattle & Hum.

I liked U2 long before that day and the Joshua Tree album was already in my CD collection. But I think watching that performance that morning is what set me on the path to regard the band as one of my all-time favorite acts.