ZOOTV

My mom let me take the only family car, drive from VA to PA and I camped out for three days! People I met got me a ticket and it was AMAZING! It was also Edge's birthday. I still have my shirt!

I posted this review years ago on a fan site Imagine, U2 spending a week in your hometown. Hard to decide what you would do. Would you take a week off work and spend every minute of every day trying to meet the only band that you have ever cared about? Or would you give them their space to prepare for what was going to go down as the greatest tour in rock history? I won’t bore you with the stories of friends getting arrested trying to sneak a peek from rooftops. Or stories of female friends sitting in a hotel bar waiting for a chance to meet any one of them (only to have Bono walk in and sit two feet behind them for a hour as they sat and said nothing). So let me break the week down. They came. They practiced. They were seen doing various things around the greater Harrisburg / Hershey area. Thursday they announced that they wanted to have a rehearsal concert the next day. I sent my 60 something year old retired father to stand in line for tickets. They put on a show that will never be forgotten by any person who was lucky enough to be there. You can find many people in this town that will tell you that they were dragged by friends to this show and all they keep saying is “It’s like a religious experience”. I was lucky enough to see them two more times in the month to follow and all I can say is that the Hershey show was different. Not better, just different. Maybe it was the seats 10 feet from the stage. Maybe it was more relaxed. Or maybe it was the fact that for one week U2 turned our town into their town.

The "rehearsal" show was excellent. It started with two songs and did not start with the typical Zoo Station entry. That concert turned me into a huge U2 fan. I still have the two tickets I had for that show. My first ticket stated "Obstructed" because the seats were behind some equipment for the production; however, the U2 people passed out free tickets in that section so that people could get closer and have a better view of the stage. I ended up in the GA section. The energy was great that night. The band stayed in a hotel in Harrisburg. Many of my friends were able to see the band coming and going from the hotel. A great show and surprise concert that created my intense admiration for the band. Mike

My friends and I had moved to Hershey in April of 1992. At the time, I was not a U2 fan so I was unaware of what the band was doing. I recall getting ready to go out one night in August and hearing loud music, which I thought was coming from a neighboring apartment. When I realized that this music was actually U2 rehearsing in the stadium, I was very shocked. My friends and I periodically went down to Hersheypark that week to listen. At the end of the week, I was supposed to go on a date with a young man I had just met. When my friends told me they got a ticket to the concert U2 announced, I told them it was good enough that I heard them throughout the week and that I would rather go on the date (which was and is a rare thing). My date stood me up, and I went to the concert to make my friends happy and also because I had nothing better to do. To this day, I am grateful for three things: that my friends were so persistent, that the man decided not to go out with me, and most of all that U2 came to Hershey. That night marked a major turning point in my life. The concert inspired me beyond belief. After experiencing U2 live I suddenly had the courage to start performing myself, and my usual negative attitude was replaced with a very hopeful one. I had no clue that night that I would walk out of that concert as a die-hard fan, but 18 years have gone by and nothing has changed!