Disc 1:
1. Everyone (PA)
2. City of Blinding Lights
3 Vertigo/Stories for Boys (snippet)
4. Cry/The Electric Co.
5. An Cat Dubh
6. Into the Heart
7. Beautiful Day
8. New Year's Day
9. Miracle Drug
10. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
11. Love and Peace or Else
12. Sunday Bloody Sunday
13. Bullet the Blue Sky/The Hands that Built America (snippet)

Disc 2:
1. Running To Stand Still/Human Rights Video
2. Zoo Station
3. The Fly
4. Elevation
5. Pride (In the Name of Love)
6. Where the Streets Have No Name
7. One
8. All Because of You
9. Yahweh
10. 40

Source: Sound Professional AT933 Hyper Cardioids > Sound Pro Battery Box (Roll off @ 107Hz) > Sony PCM-M1 (@ 44.1khz)
Location: GA (20 feet from Elipse)
Transfer: Sony PCM-M1 > Core-Sounds 7 Pin to Coax > Zoltrix Nightingale Pro 6 > Cool Edit (Normalized and fades) >
                CDWav (for track splitting) > mkw Audio Compression (SHN)
Taper: chrisedge@yahoo.com
 

NOTE: A top shelf recording of the first concert of the Vertigo Tour.  Vocals and music are extremely clear.  There is just enough audience noise to give this recording that concert-like "feel".

The band's performance is quite ragged, as is to be expected on the opening night.   Immediately following the show, fans posting on the various U2 fan sites heaped praise all over Bono and the boys.  After listening to this bootleg, you'll probably come to the same conclusion that I did -- these people were so starved for live U2 that Bono standing in front of them and lip synching would have made them wet their pants.  The Edge's guitar playing is sloppy, Bono forgets the words a couple of times and falls back on speaking the lyrics on too many occasions, transitions between songs are anything but polished, and it's not just the new material that sounds downright odd at times.  Sometimes these things result in a rather cool, rough feel that is what sets shows early in a tour apart from those that are played after the band gets its feet underneath it.   At other times, it just sounds like the band isn't putting forth full effort.

Many of the "classics" are played a bit differently during this show, and it will be interesting to see if this was just the result of the band shaking off four years of rust or if they are trying to "remake" certain songs, like they did with "The Fly" during the Elevation Tour.  That older songs are changed a bit doesn't bother me at all.  In fact, this is the sort of spontaneity that most U2 fans have been clamoring for over the past decade.  Examples of songs that are played somewhat differently than in the past on this night include "Running To Stand Still" (Bono and The Edge sing an extended "Hallelujah" bit at the end), "Elevation" (Bono seems to begin the song too early, as The Edge is still playing the intro....which he continues through the end of the first verse, at which point Larry and Adam jump in), and "One" (again Bono and The Edge add chanting-like vocals at the end).  During The Edge's guitar intro to "Streets", Bono seems to be doing his best tribal chanting imitation.

The setlist is awesome.  Songs that nobody could have guessed would be played -- unless you read reports from the band's practice sessions in Vancouver or saw the setlist from the dress rehearsal in Los Angeles two days before -- were dusted off and played for the first time in many, many years.  "An Cat Dubh", for example, hadn't been played since the Unforgettable Fire Tour twenty-one years ago.  If I'm not mistaken, "Cry/The Electric Co." had been in retirement since The Joshua Tree Tour.  Everyone who thought that "Zoo Station" wasn't a just song that would only be played on the tours supporting its album please raise your hand.  And closing out the show with "40", played as it was during the 1980s, made many fans very happy.