By: Alfredo Tellez/Edith Morales

U2 played Qualcomm Stadium last night.

Larry Mullen came out first, walked out all the way to his drum set that was set up in the extension of the stage out with the public. Adam Clayton and The Edge followed. And “Sunday Bloody Sunday” promptly started.

And in a way maybe it should’ve stayed that way and just done instrumentals of all the songs, or maybe just bring out Bono for the Joshua Tree album performance.

The band (sans Bono) was great. Really rehearsed, but then again how hard can it be to go out and play 30 year old songs (again), I mean those same songs have been played for the last 7 tours at leeast.

The screen was impressive, but that’s mostly because it was very hi def and it was massive. Some of the picture stills were good but forgettable. The one song with a horn section was reduced to the band playing live and having “the horn section” on screen as playback. Yawn. Some of the live footage shown was reminiscent of those screensavers of about 20 years ago, which as about how long ago the band released a good album.

The sound was horrible at the beginning, it got better when they took the stage for the album performance, then slowly it started getting worse again and at one point it almost sounded as if the speakers, or some of them might blow because of the over saturation of sound the engineer tried to pour out.

Bono. His voice sounded tired and off. There was almost no passion or feeling delivered, yes the preaching was there, but now it mostly felt like a job than a desire. It felt like he was just cashing in on the nostalgia and the majority of fans there didn’t or don’t seem to care.

Hearing an album like the Joshua Tree played live in its entirety and in order is special and there were some great moments, (Bad, In God’s Country, Bullet the Blue Sky, and all of side B from the album). But in all honesty it might not be worth the price of admission.