I wandered off to Murray's tonight for a bit of caffeine and sanity (as much sanity as Murray allows, anyway) and to borrow some new DVDs. He say's "oooh, I've got loads more since you were here, have a look at this..." and off we went picking movies to watch and discussing others in passing. You know, ordinary shit. So, after we've done that, I notice this fancy display-boxed DVD sitting on the table just next to me and the cover looked very unfamiliar. I tend to remember covers, cos, they're pictoors and I love pictoors.

Anyway, I sez to him "oooh, what's this then?" and he sez "yeah, I picked that up and I haven't even looked at it yet". So I sez, can I borrow it then?"

And I did. This is what it is (and no, I don't expect you to go into paroxyms of agreement on how interesting it is, I already KNOW it's good).



It's not just live concert video, it's documentary and computer multimedia as well. And it's very, very cool.



U2 Go Home - Live from Slane Castle.

It's got some excellent high energy live concert footage and what a setting!



And of course it takes me back to November 1989 when U2 played at Western Springs and we took the bus. That was back in the days BC (Before Children/Before Cancer, take your pick) when David and I could be generally civil to each other. He could be quite pleasant, back then and so could I.

Anyway, we blew the budget and bought tickets to U2. We spent the bus ride to the venue toilet-hopping up the Hauraki Plains as the kids onboard drank too much beer and needed frequent relief, and then the mandatory bog-stop at The Red Fox at Maramarua, and by then the motorway into Auckland was chokka from out nearly to the Bombays and the last bit of the trip ground to a crawl. Finally, finally we got to the bus park and raced across Western Springs (being very late by this time) to finally enter the stadium just as the opening act finished. It was Jon Stevens and Noiseworks and boy was I royally pissed off we had missed it. It's not the same listening to it whilst standing in a queue longer than a long thing, you know.

Anyway, at least we were in time for the main event and what an awesome event it was. We had good seats (as good as any cheap seats are at Western Springs) and so did the throng of people partying at the house on top of the hill; you know, that one whose back yard has a birds-eye (if distant) view of the stage.

I wonder how much that property is worth...

U2 came out and did their thing, and what a thing it was they did. It was brilliant. And then BB King came out and did his thing, and when it was getting close to the end of the concert, we left the stadium and went out into the park. There were 10 or so people already out there under the trees listening to the concert and from out there the acoustics were just amazing.

So was the amount of weed being passed around; we added to the haze ourselves in the foggy dark, in the park, and getting stoned with this amazing concert going on became one of those "memory" moments; it was too good to go back inside. "Running To Stand Still" could never be the same after that. Another mega-memory from that night is waking up on the bus, in the Karangahake Gorge and seeing the moonlight shining off the rapids in the river.

That was way cool, too.

And here is my ticket stub...



How much cooler can it get?