Great Drop-Off Laundry
oct 8, 2009 U2, groupes celebres
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Tuesday 29th September 2009. Washington DC. Show day
It seems like I was the last of our touring party to hear the word, but there’s a great drop-off laundry in the very next street to the Hotel Fabulous. And there was much rejoicing. I haven’t managed to do any laundry at all since departing from London, so let your imagination run with that for a minute and you’ll understand my joy.
Today’s project was a commute to Washington DC to do a show at the romantically named Fed Ex Stadium. In truth I have no idea where the stadium actually is, though I know for sure it’s a long way from Washington DC proper. It could be in Maryland. Or I might just have made that up. All I know is that we flew for about an hour, landed in an anonymous airport whose terminal buildings were all matt black in colour and had no windows, which was more than a little creepy. We then drove at ludicrous speed with a police escort, eventually going through a residential neighbourhood with people sitting on their front porches looking strangely at us as we shot past.
Happily, the stadium itself was pretty good as a venue for the 360 show. I really rather enjoyed the show, which I know might sound a bit daft but some nights (perhaps when the pressure’s off) I still see with new eyes this thing we’ve made and relive some of the early joy of just watching it.
The only downer (and I perhaps shouldn’t say this, but it happened with 88,000 witnesses so is hardly a secret) was that when Bono gave a name check to Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house, who was present at the show, a good portion of the audience booed audibly. Apart from the fact of simply being bloody rude, it seemed so symptomatic of the reflex responses that are so tangibly present in this deeply divided country, even on a big night out. By contrast, Bono name-checked the president of Rwanda (also present – it was a big night) and got a big cheer. I’m really not sure what to make of what’s going on here at the moment.
Runner back to New York after the show. We arrived back at the Hotel Fabulous around 2.30am and I was dog tired but somehow it becomes so hard to just go to bed. I guess we’re pretty wired from the day but even so it seems so unreasonably difficult to just get into bed and turn the light off. There’s email to futz with, online things to poke around, eventually getting in to bed but still having to have a last look at the crossword… drives me crazy.
Copyright 2009 U2 France / http://www.u2france.com/actu
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