U2360° TOUR Leg 2: 2010

Buenos Aires - Sao Paulo. Travel day.

This was what is known in the trade as one Long Ass Day. First on the agenda was to get ourselves from Buenos Aires to Sao Paulo, both cities being famed for the staggering density of their traffic.  We had a charter plane for the flight, but the actual air time was a mere nothing in comparison to the seemingly endless hours sitting in traffic at both ends. The members of U2 also travelled today but went via Brasilia at the invitation of the President so we were travelling without them. Muse came with us though, so we weren’t entirely devoid of rock stars, which is always a comfort. I sat behind the very lovely (and very pregnant) Kate Hudson on the flight.  Funny, I watched Almost Famous again just before coming away on this leg of the tour. I love that movie as it really does capture something of the atmosphere of being on tour, in a way that very few ‘rock’ movies ever have. Kate Hudson is great in the film and I smiled to think that she’s now living her own version of the movie role.

On arrival in Sao Paulo most of us headed straight for the Morumbi stadium as the band (our band) had decided to sound check and do a spot of rehearsing tonight, instead of tomorrow. The shanty town of punters camped out waiting for the show was enormous (whatever do they do with all their tents once they get inside the gig, we wonder?) The main proposal for the evening was to have a crack at playing Zooropa. We’d decided that, however it went, we wouldn't put it in the opening night show here. It was amazing to get Even Better Than the Real Thing into the show at such short notice but Zooropa is a vastly more complex proposition so we didn't want to add any pressure. Besides, sometimes it’s nice to save a big surprise for night two.

The band rehearsed with the P.A. turned off for the first hour or so, but then decided to give it a go at full tilt. It sounded very promising and I'm sure the punters outside the stadium practically had a heart attack. I'd thrown something together by way of a visual element though clearly, if this song goes the distance, it will take a good deal more time to do it justice. The idea though, is that this could be a song to be played from inside the fully opened video screen, so once the band was comfortable on stage we had two or three run-throughs of the song, complete with screen moves.

Courtesy of some punters who had managed to get into the building, within the hour there was a video of the rehearsal up on You Tube accompanied by much tweeting, (OMG! OMFG!!, etc.) so it seems our secret it out. I hope they won't be too disappointed that it's not in there tomorrow.

I stayed after school to do some more work on programming the lighting, video and screen moves.  It's still very much a sketch, but it’ll help us figure out where we need to go with this. It wasn’t an early night but we did eventually get to our beds in the wee small hours. Long Ass Day.