iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour 2015

A Night At The Roxy

After two nights of a five night stand at the Forum, the band went back in time last night, returning to their club roots to play the 500 capacity Roxy, their first show in such an intimate L.A. area venue in decades.

If the U2ie Tour  has been reinventing the arena show as an intimate tour de force, this scrappy, charged club gig for a few hundred lucky KROQ contest winners packed a stadium's worth of energy - from crowd and band alike - into a club the size of the first L.A. venue the band ever played.

Like that show, way back in 1981, the setlist at The Roxy shared five songs with  the U.S. Boy Tour setlist.

The show opened with The Ocean as the band did so often back in those days, likewise careening into a furious 11 O'Clock Tick Tock reappearing for the first time since 2001.

I Will Follow conjured the magic of the days when the
band first heard the news that the song was in heavy rotation on KROQ
before it made a dent in the charts in their own hometown.

'The Electric Co.' segued into 'Beautiful Day', which Bono sang while embracing a young fan, ending with customary refrain of 'I Remember You' by the Ramones - in the venue where the Ramones live set from Rock n Roll High School was filmed.

Elevation was played live for the first time since the close of the
360 tour in 2011 and while Bono suggested he wasn't certain if the band could remember how to play the next track, they didn't let us down with a beautiful, singalong  'Stuck In A Moment (That You Can't Get Out Of)'. 

'Can't believe the news today...' A fired up classic original version of 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' was dedicated to Dennis Sheehan who 'had the dignity that our music aspires to' and 'Out of Control', taking us all the way back to 1981, closed the main set.

First time around in clubs like this, '11 O'Clock Tick Tock' and 'I  Will Follow' would have been played again but the band have a few more songs now. Vertigo opened up the encore, with Bono falling backward into the arms of fans at the front of the stage.' That was worth coming for' while  'Song For Someone' went out to two special fans in the house tonight, 'Two beautiful strands of DNA... almost as beautiful as their mother.'

To close this special show, Bono recounted  the days when the band first visited this part of the world and went in search of Brian Wilson's house, the perfect way to introduce 'California (There Is No End To Love)' replete with a
snippet of 'God Only Knows'.

A magical night. We'll have more reports on the show coming up from some of the U2.com competition winners who were lucky enough to see it...

After the show, post your own reviews and your own comments below.