Help the Aged

Telstra Olympic Stadium, Sydney

A day waiting – First thing in the morning, I got to wait for 40minutes for a bus that never showed up, I had to walk into the nearest town to catch a trip to work making me an hour late – something about a union dispute with the buses. Despite being an hour shorter than most other days, work ticked by at it’s usual slow pace, though I was anticipating the U2 show that evening at one of the main sites I’d yet to get to in Sydney.

At 5 o clock I made my way to Central to catch a train to Olympic Park. I was made to wait again as the ATMs had huge queues - I got sick of the waiting and walked around to the Olympic Aquatic centre where I got cash instantly. Then it was time to play drinking catch up with Decca and his friends in the short time left before entering the gig.

Down at pitch level, I walked in to the arena with Kanye West bangin’ out some tunes, he was pretty good in fairness – mixing his rap hits with some dance mixes to keep the performance flowing with flare.

A drinks break between West and the main feature, and then the ageing rockers finally made it from the retirement home to the stage. Hyper on Jack and Coke, the first few numbers were up tempo and got the best response from the crowd all night. A little way in they slowed the show to their own comfortable pace which was nice while they performed classics like “With or Without You” & “One” but with the show lasting 2½ hours, this neutral fan was getting a bit bored. The band made several 3 song encores before finally leaving the Sydney Stage for the final time of the weekend.

It was a good show, don’t get me wrong, but compared to the last time I saw the band 10 years ago at Wembley, they just didn’t have enough mojo to keep me interested in the stage… though maybe because this time they didn’t have a huge lemon on stage – aside from Bono – just jokin’ of course. Thank goodness for Pies, Jack Daniels and Kanye West – and good company more over…


All was left was to stand behind about 45,000 people lining up to get into the train station… Home at 1.30am on a school night… I could see work being a bag of fun the following day.