desert storm

"LAST NIGHT U2 were awesome. The lights were particularly well orchestrated and 'Bullet The Blue Sky' has been transformed into a heavy, undulating dance number the Chemical Brothers wouldn't sneeze at."
The first early review of the PopMart Tour? No - bootleg coverage of rehearsals, courtesy of the Internet, as reported by one of the adventurous fans who have been camping outside the Sam Boyd stadium in Las Vegas throughout the last week. While journos were banned during rehearsals, the fans just drove their cars up outside the stadium and hung out, then filed their impressions in the "Everything About POP" page. You could even look up the set list.
Perhaps the most novel manifestation of the PopMart's painstaking preparations came a few days back, when concerned residents on the outskirts of Las Vegas began phoning-in to the local sheriff after-dark, deeply alarmed at sudden, multiple appearances of UFOs in the area. The police, mystified at first at the frequency and apparent similarity of the reports, ascertained before too long that the desert folk had been disturbed not by monsters from outer space, but by the rehearsals for the mammoth light show that U2 have put together for their world tour.
Strange days indeed.
As my connecting flight from New York lifts off out of Phoenix, Arizona on the morning of April 25th, skies are clear, and the desert winds in the Las Vegas area that had threatened to sabotage the gig have calmed down. Maybe, after reading the U2 production press release's description of the PopMart hard and software, I have computer technology on the brain, but as we head over suburban Phoenix below, with its neat, geometrically designed housing complexes, its perfectly square fields, the freeways curving carefully across it, the valley looks like nothing less than one huge hard-drive, with all the little symmetrical chips glistening in perfect order under the sun, only interrupted here and there by low, craggy hills that push up out of the patterned earth like grunts of indignation. Look what they've done to my soil, ma. Before long, however, the computer card effect peters out and the earth takes over, its wavy dunes and snaking rivulets patterning the lunar wilderness in a much more interesting fashion. For a time, the desert continues silent under the jet, and it looks like humans have been left far behind, until a pale, flat plain comes into sight not long after the Hoover Dam.
In the middle of this an urban growth erupts that looks like a cross between Oz and the Star Wars' Cloud City. You try and remember the theory about perception and reality - because it genuinely does look unreal. Las Vegas, or "Glitter Gulch" as it is wryly referred to by home-towners sometimes, is the Rococo capital of American kitsch.
Everything is in your face - money, sex, greed, power, violence and, of course, bad taste - you can almost smell it in the air as you step off the plane, and as soon as you get through the arrival gates, those slot machines are crashing and dinging in your ears, and you'd better get used to it. Little old ladies that look like your granny are drooling over the diamonds, the plumbs and the lemons, willing them to line up horizontally, grimly silent when they don't. Even when they win, chances are they won't move a muscle, just scoop up their coins and start again. There are slots in the bathrooms. Go to a bar, the video slot screens will be right where you were about to put your drink. Go to a 7-Eleven convenience store, there'll be a section reserved for slot machine junkies.
On the new strip, one Las Vegas corporation in its wisdom has erected a theme hotel entitled "New York, New York", which boasts a full, if somewhat geographically inaccurate rendition of the Big Apple skyline. Across the street a gigantic cross-eyed lion, that looks more silly than regal, forms the entrance to the MGM Grand Hotel. Down the street, an almost black, seamless, sleek, spooky-looking pyramid rises up from the main drag, the Darth Vader of Vegas hoteldom. Creeping out of the pyramid slyly, its snotty, empty-faced sandstone Sphinx makes the MGM Lion look like Sylvester the Pussycat. In this city of the absurd, it is possibly the nearest thing to cool there is. This is where the band are staying.
This week in Vegas there is a biker convention, an insurance convention, a boat enthusiasts convention (yes, in the desert!), and a rock gig. Or should I say, a POP gig. Thus are we treated to the marvellous incongruity of men in suits and their "casually" dressed wives in frilly whites and cleavages, brushing shoulders with both Harley hogs and muso heads, determinedly braving their black leather jackets or PVC pants in the 90 degree heat. You can spot the Paddy contingent here for the gig a mile off, too. They're the ones fiercely sporting a "well-done" broiled effect from over-exposure to cruel Phoebus - considering it an ungrateful act, somehow, to wear sun block.
On the radio all day, U2 are being blasted out - some stations preferring what middle America wish the band would stick to: 'In The Name Of Love' and 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For'. There are fans who feel this way too. You can sense there'll be none of this trip-hop Howie-whatever-his-name-is shit for the four clean-cut youngsters in the red convertible beside us in the traffic jam on the way to the gig. But there's another generation here too: the nose-ring babies with silly trousers swimming around their asses, doubtful that U2 might be able to pull off a dance album, but willing to give them a try.
Inside the stadium Rage Against The Machine have gone down relatively well, considering the obvious perils of opening this show. Howie B has the audience rocking around their seats already, and the lig backstage is hopping, with enough LA celebs to film a blockbuster movie, and enough musicians to provide a heavy-duty soundtrack. Prize for best fun attitude: Michael Stipe, wearing, for reasons best known to himself, a truly ridiculous synthetic purple wig. Prize for best wig-lookalike hair: Tim Burton (with the formerly purple-maned Lisa Marie). Others on the premises include Winona Ryder, Dennis Hopper, Sigourney Weaver, Trent Reznor, Kevin Serbo (Hercules!), Gavin Friday (prize for best hat), Mike Mills, Helena Christiansen, Kylie Minogue, Quincey Jones and the entire cast (apparently) of Friends.
Around 9 o'clock, just as the sky is darkening, the ever-thrilling first stirrings rustle the empty stage, there are a few premature cheers from around the crowd, and then - suddenly - your entire field of vision is overtaken by the massive screen, the letters "POP" blazoned across the centre, a tiny world revolving within the "O", to the fast-moving 'Pop Music'.
The four band members emerge onto the catwalk and down towards the main stage, with the crowd roaring and the screen now depicting close-ups of their arrival. The screen is vivid, lime-green, the central image being rapid shots of Bono, hooded like a medieval monk, dancing spastically up towards the stage, his white overcoat flapping: the music has already evolved into 'Mofo'. Joe O'Herlihy's prophecy of perfect sound was accurate - the thunderous, rapid-fire beat reaches into the audience at every position in the venue.
The effect of the screen is unmistakable. In a stadium, with 35,000 punters, four small men in the distance are making noise. But if Zoo TV was on-stage anarchy, PopMart is much more focused. It's like U2 are moving back to the idea of direct performance. There can be multiple images running, but they are not so layered as before, and they are much more directly related to the music.
Segueing, surprisingly, into 'I Will Follow', the fabled arch comes into its own, glowing scarily as if it's a thermo-nuclear core about to blow. "Woke up this morning to the New York skyline," quips Bono. "This is the only town in the US where there's not going to be a reaction to a 40-foot lemon."
Pop - pouring out of a can - accompanies 'Even Better Than The Real Thing', with typical tongue-in-cheek disposableness. More images: a woman shopping, replaced by an ape crawling, who metamorphoses in stages into an upright homo-sapiens, who in turn morphs into a shopping cart. It's entertaining stuff, but one wonders how much it will mean to the woman standing near the Herald's Eamon Carr, who remarks, "You know, I like U2, but I don't know about this new stage set thing - it really reminds me of McDonalds!" Well, it's meant to, honey.
For 'Do You Feel Loved' three blossoming flowers fill the screen, constantly changing in turn, from peony to chrysanthemum, orchid and lily. Then there's three Adams, three Bonos, etc. Bono's face dominates the screen for 'In The Name Of Love', and then 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For', and as he asks the crowd to sing along, they do. A mischievous cartoon of two little women shopping fills the screen, the arch has a collection of dots circulating around its edges, and if you weren't on drugs when you came in, you sure feel like you are now. During 'End Of The World', some of the visuals look like what you see when you get a scan at the gynaecologist!
The finale of a wonderful 'If God Will Send His Angels' sees the band heading down to a smaller, plexiglass stage at the end of the catwalk, a routine they have used down the years. The audience are thrilled as Bono picks up a guitar - and the four start off into 'Staring At The Sun'. At least, they try to. To put it bluntly, what comes out is pretty arseways. Larry is at one tempo, Bono another. Edge is trying to fit in, Adam just looks confused. They reach the chorus, but instead of singing, Bono stops them. There is a half-hearted, confused cheer from the audience, and he offers: "Talk amongst yourselves, we're just having a little family row . . ." They do engage in a brief conversation before continuing. This is nothing if not endearing, and it strikes me that only a band that is extremely confident with both themselves, their music and their audience would ever get away with this - which is basically what happens.
They never win the song back, but they do win the crowd, who are completely enthralled when The Edge announces that he wants to sing his "favourite Bob Dylan song", and launches into 'Daydream Believer'. Since the words are up on the screen, a good many of the 35,000 here tonight sing along dutifully. At this point, I am in the toilets, and it certainly sounds bizarre to have a whole line of women queuing up to pee apparently break spontaneously into a perfect girlie rendition of this - and that's without the on-screen lyric prompts!
Bono adopts a Brechtian/Beckettian character for 'Miami', swaggering across the stage and catwalk Gavin-style, wearing a battered hat and brandishing a backwards, raggy umbrella bearing the pattern of the stars and stripes. Behind him on the screen, a desert-island silhouetted against a blue sky turns into a fighter-jet sequence courtesy of Roy Lichtenstein, for 'Bullet The Blue Sky'. Our Internet buddy quoted above was right: it now has a heavy, powerful dance beat. Between the screen and a real, small airplane which passes overhead (there have been constant choppers criss-crossing over us since the gig's kick-off) the song is rendered even more chilling. Before you have time to say, "fuck me, it's a decade since The Joshua Tree", 'Please' is up, with a barrage of more spectacular images.
'Where The Streets Have No Name', traditionally a song where lighting has been a key factor in its performance, is accompanied by an astonishing, 2001-style trip into the heart of a swirling, psychedelic tunnel that sucks the audience in towards a horizontal monolith, seemingly far in the distance. The crowd are going nuts, and as a number of peace-doves take over the screen for the finale, there is a tangible emotional buzz in the air. It gets even better as several massively powered beams of light shoot up into the sky, converging way above us, echoing the "arch" over the stage, but in effect turning the entire stadium into a UFO landing site - no wonder those locals got nervous. If I saw what looks convincingly like flying saucer "landing beams" like these from five miles down the road on a dark night, I'd have been spooked too.
As the band seem to slip away from sight, a solo belly dancer continues moving on the screen, the face veiled, and prompts a heated gender-bending guessing game when - in the wide shot - it appears to be a she-male figure, but pixel-challenged, since we do not have a totally sharp view of the crotch. Interesting to see what the parents against filth brigade will think of that one!
For 'Discothhque', the 40-foot lemon, which has been lurking conspicuously for the whole show, is relieved of its yellow canvas cover, amidst a cloud of dry ice, revealing itself as a glittering, twinkling dance-hall ball, moving downstage and a silver staircase that pops up out of the catwalk, and - voil` - the lemon splits in two, to reveal the fab four within it, Trojan Horse pips. Ah, Elvis lives, surely, in the very sparkle of that lemon.
The show continues with the very sexy 'If You Wear That Velvet Dress;' and then 'With Or Without You', which features Warhol's Marilyn, repeated in a blond triptych across the screen, changing colours - I want her to turn into one of the flowers we saw during 'Do You Feel Loved', but she doesn't.
For their second encore, the Macphisto Batman logo comes up, and the 'Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me' theme swells, bouncing quickly into 'Mysterious Ways'. Bono mutters something about "alright, so we fucked up, well . . ." before launching into 'One', which is beautifully played, to the images of Keith Herring's famous red hearts.
All told, it's been some extravaganza. For me, the screen doesn't overwhelm the performers, but taken within the context of the massive venue, serves rather to enhance the event. This is not to say that many people won't have a problem with the idea. In some ways, Larry's Zoo-TV quip about "if you think you've come to a live gig to watch television . . . you are" is even more pertinent here. Some will consider it a distraction, but for others, who are in tune with contemporary technology in which imagery is so much more sophisticated and interactive, the fact that they can actually see the artists clearly as they perform, and enjoy a further aspect of their work via the accompanying images serves to re-define stadium rock in a splendid new way.
Of course, stadium rock has been accompanied by large-screen technology for many years, but the ambitiousness of the approach, and the spectacular execution of it here by the U2 team, has taken it to a new and unsurpassed level. Despite the less than flawless gig - they did fuck up 'Staring At The Sun', and delivered a few other wobbly ones as well - PopMart's first night delivered the punch of potential rather than the winning hook, and there's no doubt that the performances will only improve as the tour continues on its way over the coming months.
Hopefully, if the legal procedures come out clement to the band we may even get to see them in what is undoubtedly Ireland's most appropriate venue for a spectacle of this power and dimension - The Phoenix Park. But that surely is another story for another day. n

POP: State of the Mart Technology
APART FROM the now infamous litany of technological facts and figures associated with the PopMart road monster, its single most distinctive techno/artistic miracle is the gargantuan LED screen, and its ceaseless, computer-controlled onscreen animation and imagery.
"Finding a balance between the performance and the visuals is the key to making the stadium show an emotional experience and an unforgettable event," says show designer/director Willie Williams. This is a particularly delicate operation, however, because while the multiple-screened Zoo TV show had the effect of slam-banging the punter with a furious and delightfully wild barrage of distractions in a kind of sensory overkill, PopMart is more of a gamble by virtue of its subtlety. While PopMart's vibe may appear trashy and trite, it is in fact presenting some very serious substance in terms of visual and multimedia art.
Its exceptional quality and balance is due in large part to the talents of Catherine Owens, the acclaimed artist who has divided her time over the past 15 years between New York and Dublin. Catherine has always been close to U2, but began working with them creatively on the Zoo TV tour. There, her Trabant cars involved the colourful and mischievous aspect to the tour. This time around, she is "Screen Imagery Curator", which means that working along with the band, Williams and master Poptician Gavin Friday (his POP sleevenotes title), she has researched, compiled and co-ordinated the fabulous stream of onscreen artwork that distinguishes PopMart's live performances.
"I came in with a lot of imagery, having heard the album, knowing the band, and the way they think," she says. "My approach was that they needed to go away out on another edge - much more emotional, less text-based - to get some of that sensual stuff they have out there, and make it do something."
The most recognisable images in the show are those of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Keith Haring. Material comes from a variety of other artists, however, including Howard Finster and Run Wrake. Lara Croft, synthetic star of the popular computer game Tomb Raider, also makes an appearance, as does the Bliss screensaver programme created by Californian artist Greg Jalbert. Brian Eno has created "generative art", which generates real-time computer animation performance images live. Many more younger talents appear, and to Owens' pride, most of the work of the artists who were asked to contribute has ended up on the nightly screen.
"The most difficult part of the whole thing was getting permission from the Marilyn Monroe Foundation to use Warhol's image of her," she confides, "only because our deadline didn't coincide with their monthly meetings schedule. But for the most part, everybody was incredibly willing and generous, and the band were totally open to all the ideas, which I think is ultimately the key to success."