Where were you on March 24, 2001?
If you were online, I’d love to hear from you. If you were online AND refreshing the @U2 home page, even better!
On opening night of the Elevation Tour, I was at home here in Tri-Cities, Wash., and somehow ended up in a chat room (or something similar) with my friends Michael and Scott, who were at their homes in California and Oregon, respectively.
BUT … and here’s where the history happens … Michael and Scott each had a friend who was at the show and had a cell phone. (Cell phones were still a rarity in 2001.) These friends called from inside the arena and shared what songs U2 was playing as the show happened. M&S posted each song in our chat and I started posting the setlist live on atu2.com.
I know this never happened during the PopMart tour, so we were doing the first live-posting of a U2 setlist on the internet. I’m aware there’s a chance some other fan site was doing the same from their friends inside the arena, and that’s cool — this isn’t about trying to establish superiority or anything silly like that.
What I want to know, if you remember seeing us do that back on March 24, 2001, is what specifically do you remember? What were you doing? How did you find out that we were posting the set on @U2? Did you tell any of your U2 fan-friends? Did you stay on our site the whole night? Did you refresh a ton?
I’m in touch with Michael and Scott, and we’re trying to remember our “side” of the night as best we can. I’d also love to hear what it was like for you on the other side of the experience. Comments are open below, or email me (matt … at … otrvol25 … dot-com).
Thanks for anything you can remember about that night!
Steve had a brand new phone after going swimming with it in the Atlantic Ocean a few hours before. I don’t know if he was phoning folks or not. I was too short to have seen Bono fall off the stage opening night – I missed that completely. Having the photo/press pass, I also missed the 1st song as I was in the 2nd group of photogs, and I had to re-enter the area after I finished, so I missed the 4th song too. I do remember staying up most of the night with updates aftwr the show, tho 🙂
I’d forgotten about you missing the songs due to there being two groups of photogs! That explains why all your photos are with the arena dark and lights off — you missed “Elevation” with the lights on!
If you or Steve were on the phone with anyone, it wasn’t me. That’s one thing I specifically remember — it was just Scott and Michael on the phone with friends of theirs, and they’d relay stuff to me in our chat.