A weekend in Minnesota

For almost 2 years I have been waiting to watch my favorite band and one of the greatest of all time play a concert at the new TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Last summer they had to cancel their world wide tour due to emergency back surgery that their lead singer needed to have. Well almost 2 years was well worth the wait. On Saturday night I went to the concert of a life-time, the legendary U2 did not disappoint.

I was attending the concert with a group of 12, which I soon found was a tough number to keep together at the concert, or even getting to the concert. The opening band stopped playing around 8, that was also the time that we entered the arena. I had hoped to get there a bit earlier to get nice and close to the stage, so at this point we were going to try and get as close as possible. We wondered up to the right hand side of the stage and got about 10-15 rows back from the catwalk type stage that extended and formed a circle around the main stage.



I looked to the right and noticed people filing in to another area. I realized that these people were going to be inside of that "catwalk". I went over and ended up knowing the guy that was counting people that were allowed into this area. I asked him how he was doing and then asked how you got to be one of the people to get in that area. He told me that anyone could go but that he was allowed to let 400 go and he only had a few spots left. I told him that I was with a group of 9 people, he shrugged and said I can only let 4 more people through, there are x number of spots around the stadium and each spot can let 400 through. I looked at him for a second and begged, I've got 9 could you let us through? To which he replied, hurry up and get them. I later realized that I had mis-counted our group, there were 12, but we all made it through. And ended up about 5 rows back from the main stage. And had the concert event of our lives. We spend the first 15 minutes in complete awe, really just shocked, and so excited. The 4 band members entered the stage area at about 9pm and the place exploded. They calmly, stoically, almost without emotion strolled out, they know how cool they are. As the began their concert with 3 tunes from an album they released in 1991 we began to sing our hearts out for the next 2 plus hours. Once the concert started I did not check the time until 10:40pm.

This is a look up at the "claw" from where we ended up



A look up at Bono from our viewpoint



< Even amidst weather short of a torrential downpour we sang, jumped, and danced the entire time. The band never even hesitated in the weather. They went along as I'm sure they planned, light up jackets and all. At one point Bono was on the stage with an American flag umbrella and sang "Rain" by the Beatles and several times sang "Singin in the rain". One of the highlights of the night was when they played Beautiful Day, Elevation, and Pride (In the name of love) in a row. Especially the intro to Beautful Day which was recorded but given by astronaut and husband of Gabrielle Gifford.

As the band left the stage we ran over to where they would walk of the stage and were about 10 feet away as we waved and screamed an they looked in our direction and letf the stage area. What a night. We left completely drenched after the steady rain all night. But we were too excited to care. As we walked to find a taxi back to our hotel a few of us were quite sore from all the excitement and movement during the show.

Overall a great weekend and great show.