Anoeta 2010 (Godfather Record GR 608/609)
Estadio Anoeta, San Sebastian, Spain – September 26th, 2010
Disc 1 (69:49): Intro Space Oddity, Return of the Stingray Guitar, Beautiful Day, I Will Follow, Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Mysterious Ways, Elevation, Until the End of the World / Anthem, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Spanish Eyes, Mercy, In A Little While, Miss Sarajevo, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo / Show Me the Way
Disc 2 (77:58): I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (remix) – Relax, Sunday Bloody Sunday, MLK, Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone, One, Amazing Grace / Where the Streets Have No Name, Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me, With or Without You, Moment of Surrender. Etihad Stadium, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia – December 1st, 2010: Bad, Sunday Bloody Sunday / Get Up Stand Up (featuring Jay-Z), Scarlet, Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone
U2’s show in San Sebastian, Spain was their third in the city over their career, following previous shows on ZooTV on May 14th, 1992 and the Vertigo tour on August 9th, 2005. Anoeta 2010 captures the entire performance utilizing a matrix between an IEM (“in-ear-monitor” for the hearing impaired) and an excellent audience recording. It is a useful and, some would argue, necessary edit. The IEM source, while very clear and distinct, isn’t meant to give a good live sound to the overall concert. The audience tape contains the echo and audience reactions to the music which gives it atmosphere and overall enjoyability.
The editing job between the two sources is seemless and organic sounding. Most of the time one isn’t even aware of the two sources since they work so well together.
A review on EITB reported about this show: “At 22:00 on Sunday night, Irish band U2 announced their return to the Gipuzkoa capital (Basque Country) with one of the last concerts in their ‘U2 360 Tour’.
“After opening the set with one of their unreleased tracks (‘The return of the stingray guitar’ which the band are presenting during the second leg of their tour) Bono greeted his fans with a single ‘Qué pasa!’ (‘What’s up!’) followed by a performance of ‘Beautiful Day’.
“No sooner had the lead singer spoken the words ‘Kaixo, we know that we are in the mystical San Sebastian!’ than he had the audience eating out of his hand.
“For two hours, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, Jr performed new songs from their latest album No Line on the Horizon, as well as classics from their 30-year career (‘Walk On’, ‘Get on your boots’, ‘MLK’, ‘Where the streets have no name’, ‘One’ and ‘Spanish Eyes’).
“Bono built up a close rapport with his audience and invited several fans up on the stage to sing with him. The band played more than 20 songs on a spectacular set, the last two of which were ‘With or without you’ and ‘Moment of surrender’.
“This was their second concert in the Gipuzkoa capital in 5 years. The Irish band last visited the Anoeta stadium in August 2005, when 40,000 fans attended the event. After analyzing various technical details of the stadium, it was decided it could cope with more fans, allowing the capacity to increase from 40,000 to 50,000.
“The U2 360º Tour kicked off in Barcelona last June. Since then, U2 have been traveling around the world playing to crowded stadiums. Another gig is planned for Seville on September 30th.”
“Spanish Eyes” makes its tour debut. It was last played on August 8th, 2001 in Barcelona and it’s only the third time it was played live since the Joshua Tree Tour in 1987. Also “I Will Follow,” “Mercy” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” were restored to the set after being dropped in the second Brussels concert. Bono closes the show by mentioning that yesterday was the 34th anniversary of U2’s first meeting in Larry’s parents’ house in Dublin.
The bonus tracks come from an excellent audience tape from the December 1st, 2010 show in Melbourne, Australia. “Bad” is played for only the third time in 2010 and Jay-Z, who opened the show, joins them onstage for “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” They even include a bit of “Get Up, Stand Up.”
Godfather are big U2 fans and they have been keeping up with the frenetic pace of the 360° tour with a series of great releases. Anoeta 2010 is certainly one of their better U2 releases since it has such wonderful sound quality.
1 Comment
Great show well worth picking up the sound is superb.U2 must have a copy.