Hmmmm - I'm not sure about all the new U2 hype swirling about the new tour and album. Afterall - I haven't bought a new U2 album since Joshua Tree, but I decided to go back to their shows starting in April 2001 at Pepsi Center. I had a photo pass and stayed for the duration. AND - a well-connected friend hooked me up with a house mix CD of the first 80 minutes of that show....amazing! The show last Wednesday at Pepsi was very good. I don't go to arena shows, but what I'm getting around to saying is that U2 brings it everynight. They are just so good. No backup musicians. Different sets each night. Bono doesn't take a night off onstage. It was nice to hear the 'old' songs last week......

The old songs, having been released over 20 years ago, are what was so special about U2 when I was in high school. I grew up in south east Denver and saw U2 first on MTV when I was a volunteer at United Cable Television, the local cable provider. The first video was a live version of I Will Follow followed soon after by the single version of Gloria. It's so weird to think about watching those vids then wondering who the hell these guys were and where they were from. But when I heard they would be playing at the Rainbow Music Hall - my friends and I had to go. I guess growing up in the suburbs had one advantage - we got cable before U2 came to Denver the first time. The Rainbow was general admission and we lined up early in the morning to get close. Sometime during the wait Adam Clayton drove by the line of concert-goers in his rental. He stopped and shook hands and signed a few autographs. He asked why we were lined up 5 hours before the show. His fingernails were painted black and he had that huge cauliflower hairdo and glasses....

The Red Rocks show a year later was different in that a. it was not indoors b. it rained c. it was cold. The word on the radio was that the show was a rainout but the lights for the film were on and I guess we just lined up after a while as we had nothing better to do. We got in and were told the Alarm and Divinyls would not play - which was of particular interest to me - since I hated them both. Barry Fey came out and said something about some rainy Bob Dylan concert and then introduced the band. Oh if Bono could see Barry now. The U2 stage, massive even back then, was above the cameras and audience so Bono could look down on us and the cameras could look up. There was a camera on a dolly covered in a tarp in front of us that kept driving back and forth all afternoon - whenever Edge sat at the piano - and it was a bit of a nuisance. But I figured the footage would be pretty good, and besides, we would get to see them the next night again, only this time indoors, at the CU Events Center. I vividly remember steam rising from Bono's head and arms as a bright light backlit him when he walked out to the center stage. He brought out a white flag and planted it in the crowd. Eventually the flag started to wave back and forth - and Bono - wanting none of this in his film - reached out and steadied it. I don't think anyone has set bonofires on the outposts at Red Rocks since. The set list (which I still have) reads:
Control
Twilight
Cat Dubh
Into The Heart
Surrender
Two Hearts
Seconds
Sunday
Electric Co.
Fall Down
October
New Years Day
Brick
Day
Gloria
------------
P Girl
11 Oclock
Follo
40 40 40

I hope you read Mr. Asakawa's review as well....he's a Pulitzer prize winner, too!!

Jim Hucks, Boulder CO

This article (see below link) describes the concert and the memoories of those who were there. DVD is to be released soon.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/music/article/0,1299,DRMN_54_3704098,00.html

It's hard to believe it's been over 20 years since "Blood Red Sky" was filmed. As a couple of other people have posted who were there, it was an amazing event. It felt historic even at the time.

Although the weather is exactly why it's so dramatic with the fog and steam, the entire show was very nearly cancelled because of the conditions. Like one guy mentioned, it was about 35 degrees out at Red Rocks that night, after a full day of cold drizzling rain.

I was the music editor of the local alt.weekly paper at the time, and had been in on some meetings announcing the filming. Barry Fey, the concert's promoter, had been a very early supporter of U2 and booked them into a small 1400-seat theater in Denver when they first toured the US for "Boy." So they liked Fey and wanted to work with him for this Red Rocks gig.

Unfortunately it got cold in the days before the concert. They actually did officially cancel it -- both The Alarm and U2 agreed to play a second, make-up concert the next day in a local arena (DU, I think, or maybe Regis University). But they decided to do the Red Rocks performance anyway because they'd invested so many thousands of dollars for the shoot -- the pyrotchnics (there are normally no fires atop the dramatic sandstone rocks around the stage!), the camera equipment, the technicians.

I'm sure if the filming hadn't been planned, the performance would have been cancelled in a second. I don't remember if the show as sold out (I kind of doubt it), but in the 9,000-seat amphitheater, only about 3,000 people showed up for the filming. The movie does a great job of making it seem like a full house.

It's to Bono and U2's credit that they came out roaring, and to all music fans' benefit that this performance was caught on camera.

I alternated between the 5th row in the middle and the 2nd row over to stage left, and was in awe of what was going on on the stage. U2 simply took it over and made it their own showcase gig, as if they were playing an audition for entrance into heaven. Everything was (I'm sure) unscripted, including the bit with the flag and bringing the girl on stage. It was all natural, just like the setting.

This was just at the point, as some writers have mentioned, where the band was evolving from cult status to superstardom, and they were just hitting their stride.

One thing, though: their performance was hot, but not hot enough to help you forget the cold -- I froze my butt off that night!

As for why no DVD, I wonder how much of it is because of licensing and ownership rights. I don't even know if TTS, the Denver-based production company that managed the shoot, exists anymore. So I wonder who owns the rights to the film.

Perhaps U2, and maybe they don't want it on DVD ultimately because of the made-for-TV audio and video quality.

I happened to stumble on this series of reviews and I'm glad I stopped to read everyone's comments. It brought back a lot of memories, and made me want to root around my basement for my promotional copy of the film from TTS!

The venue, Red Rocks, Colorado, a concert capturing the end of the "hungry years" for U2. Date:Jun 5. 1983.

Opening act: The Alarm, who cancelled their part of the show due to the bad weather.

The concert itself is roughly about an hour on the video. The CD that was released around the time has 8 songs, the video 12, keeping it at a length suitable for a TV show.

The actual concert had 18-20(!), so hopefully they will put the full concert out.

Keep in mind that this was shot for TV in the 80s and not film, so the video quality is not the greatest, and because this is on videotape, the sound quality is better left to listening to it on CD.

But the songs, performance, and setting lead to a concert that is brimming with energy that keeps your attention through the performance, and there are enough performances on video (Rattle and Hum, ZooTV, PopMart, Elevation, Go Home) that you have a nice chronicle of how they've progressed over the years.

The first 3 songs come running out of the gate, with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" being the highlight of the show. "October" slows things down, and they rev it back up through "New Years Day", "I Threw a Brick", "Gloria" the singalong "Party Girl", and winding it up with the still great "I Will Follow", ending with the anthemic "40".

Depending on what setlist you look at, I did think that "Out of Control", "An Cat Dubh", "Into The Heart", "Twilight", "I Fall Down", and "Two Hearts Beat As One" should not have been left off because all of them were very worthy of being on the video. Just a few days previous to this show, they were also filmed for the legendary "US" Festival, something that should be put out as well...

I would love to see more of the early U2 performances they did for TV, a lot of it exists out there (they are one of the most bootlegged bands ever) and it would be great if they put some of it out because a lot of people either haven't seen them in years or never have.

I would like to see "Under a Blood Red Sky" become a combo CD/DVD in Surround and uncut. It's definitely the best out of the "early years" of how they were in concert.

A suburb concert by a phenominal band. This is U2 walking through the threshold of greatness! A must have for a U2 fan.