LIVE MUSIC: Sam Taylor
IRISH band U2’s PopMart world tour kicked off in Las Vegas last week with a stage set as spectacularly kitsch as any of the giant theme hotels that adorn the Vegas Strip. Dominated by the world’s biggest LED screen and a golden arch, like half of a McDonald’s “M”, the set also features a stuffed olive atop a 100-foot cocktail stick and a 40-foot mirrorball lemon.
Although not yet confirmed, it seems increasingly likely that PopMart will be coming to South Africa late this year. It’s set to be one of the most extravagant world tours of 1997, using 13 miles of cable and one million light-emitting diodes, and costing almost R1-million per day to stage.
Perhaps because of all the hype, it is hard not to feel disappointed by the actual show. That olive, for example, sounds wonderful on paper, but I found myself staring balefully at it during dull moments, thinking: “Come on then, do something.” The lemon is another story.
Its yellow canvas jacket is quietly slipped off while we are distracted by the sight of a hermaphrodite belly-dancer, and then the lemon moves into the audience and opens up like a spaceship – and the four band members walk down metal steps for the encore. Bravo, indeed. Except, of course, that I’ve just spoiled the surprise for everyone who will see the show. Sorry, but that’s the way it is with these “greatest shows on earth” – word tends to get around.
The screen, with its trippy images, also sounds fantastic, but the effect is ultimately reliant on the actual pictures, and these are mostly Sixties counterculture images or Ecstatic graphics commonly used to sell soft drinks to teenagers. It’s certainly fast-moving and distracting, but you’d have to be a five year old not to find it wearing after two-and-a-half hours.
Yet the show is far from boring. There are many dramatic moments apart from the lemon and the huge pyramids of spotlights suddenly shining deep into the firmament. On stage, a crop-haired Bono wears a muscleman suit; Adam Clayton is dressed as a nuclear reactor worker; and Larry Mullen Jr just looks dreamy and bangs his drums a lot. They are certainly a sexier and more interesting band than they were 10 years ago.
Unfortunately, the audience doesn’t seem to realise this. U2’s shows may now be blazing parodies of consumer culture and their new album, Pop, may be a dark exploration of “a fucked-up world” welded to abrasive dance beats, but for these 37 000 Nevadans with their cowboy boots, white T-shirts and perms, U2 still means the chance to hold their lighters above their heads during I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.