The Last of “Six Great Nights In Chicago”
Vertigo Chicago, Illinois
21 September 2005
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Disc 1:
1. Wake Up (PA)
2. Everyone (PA)
3. City of Blinding Lights
4. Vertigo
5. Elevation
6. The Electric Co./Bullet With Butterfly Wings/See Me, Feel Me
7. The Ocean
8. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses
9. Beautiful Day/Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/Many Rivers To Cross
10. Miracle Drug/In A Little While
11. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
12. Yahweh
13. Love and Peace or Else
14. Sunday Bloody Sunday
15. Bullet the Blue Sky

Disc 2:
1. Miss Sarajevo/Human Rights Video
2. Pride (In the Name of Love)
3. Where the Streets Have No Name
4. Bono Speaks
5. One
6. Ol’ Man River
7. Bad/The First Time
8. Original of the Species
9. With or Without You/Love Will Tear Us Apart
10. Fast Cars

Source: MK4s > KC5 > Lunatec V3 (16-bit/44.1kHz) > Sony M-1
Location: Gold Circle on Edge's side
Transfer: DAT > Sony R-500 > optical toslink > DAL CardDeluxe > Soundforge > CDWAVE > FLAC > WAV > CDR
Taper: ACE Recordings
 

NOTE: Definitely one of the best recordings from the third leg of the Elevation Tour to surface to this point (30 November 2005).  Sound quality and clarity are both excellent.  Bono's vocals and the band's instruments can all be heard clearly.  The overall mix is pleasing, with The Edge's lead guitar being slightly more prominent than Adam's bass.  Bono's vocals briefly drop back in the mix on a couple occasions and The Edge's guitar is very prominent (and sounds a bit hot) at the end of “One”, but overall the mix is quite solid.  Audience noise is minimal, with individual voices near the taper being audible only during Bono's speech before “Miss Sarajevo”.

Similar to a statement he made in Vancouver on the first leg of the Elevation Tour, Bono jokes “Weddings. Funerals.  We prefer weddings.  Bar mitzvahs.  This band is available.” after “Wild Horses”.

One verse of “In A Little While” is sung as a bridge between “Miracle Drug” and “Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own”.

“Bad”, a relative rarity on the third leg of the Vertigo Tour, is played in an unusual location in the setlist – at the beginning of the encore.  Instead of the usual “snippet” (e.g.  “Ruby Tuesday” or “People Have the Power”) at the end of the song, Bono sings “The First Time” in its entirety between the two guitar solos.  The Edge's soft accompaniment during “The First Time” – he tries to stay true to the both this song and the plucky accompaniment to “Bad” – is much more appealing than the redundant ten notes that he typically strums on his acoustic guitar while playing “The First Time” on its own (as opposed to within “Bad”).  The transition between the two songs is striking.  You can almost feel Larry willing the rest of the band to segue back into “Bad” throughout the second and third verses of “The First Time”.

During the intro to “With or Without You”, Bono says “They won't let me play guitar…for some very good reasons”.  It seems that Bono's guitar tech may have been having some problems getting his guitar to him.  I couldn't hear Bono's guitar during the song – if he is playing it, you can usually hear him strumming away on it near the end of the song.  But then again, isn't there a rumor out there that the sound crew occasionally doesn't plug in his guitar or doesn't include it in the mix that is broadcast over the speakers?