live at leeds

“My feeling is, that it is cool f or the people to share ourmusic - as long as no one is making money from the process. We tell the people who come to our concerts that they can tape the show if they want. I think, it is cool that people are so passionate about our music.”

-Bono on bootlegs .

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//U2 Bootlegs

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LIVE AT LEEDS

Manufacturer: Polyder
Catalog: AUG 28 1997
Matrix Disc 1: U11/one
Matrix Disc 2: U11/two
Barcode: None
Complete Show: Yes
Format: 2CD
Released: 1997
Disc 1 : (58:48)
Disc 2 : (69:28)
From: John Joseph Hess, L!MR, Rob de Vree

Source: Original Silver CD>CDEX>WAV>SOFTSOUND>SHN

Disc 1:
1. Pop Muzik Intro
2. Mofo
3. I Will Follow
4. Gone
5. Even Better Then The Real Thing
6. Last Night On Earth
7. Until The End Of The World
8. New Year's Day
9. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
10. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
11. All I Want Is You
12. Staring At The Sun
13. Singing In The Rain (karaoke)

Disc 2:
1. Miami
2. Bullet The Blue Sky
3. Please
4. Where The Streets Have No Name
5. Lemon (Perfecto Mix) Intermission
6. Discotheque
7. If You Wear That Velvet Dress
8. With Or Without You
9. Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
10. Mysterious Ways
11. One
12. Rain

Source:
August 28, 1997. Leeds, England. Roundhay Park.

Sound Quality:
Good to very good audience. See comments.

Comments:
Color cover. Picture CDs. The sound is good for an audience recording, thanks in large part to the powerful PopMart sound system. Bono chats to the audience on various things, most notably former Beatle George Harrison's snotty comments about U2 that summer. Before "Even Better Than The Real Thing," Bono sarcastically tells the fans, "Good people of Yorkshire, you made a terrible mistake- George Harrison says you shouldn't be here. It's all big fucking hats and lemons and air." Bono lets loose a more powerful satiric tear at the ex-Beatle when he includes a snippet of Harrison's most well known Beatles' contribution, "Something," near the end of "Mysterious Ways." A marvelously improvised (or seemingly so) 2 minute version of "Rain" closes the show, probably as much for the Beatles as for the reported rain that night. Bono reminisces with the crowd throughout the night, telling them before "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "We've been coming here for a long time-going right back. Last time was the best- the time we spent here at Roundhay was the best concert of our tour, last year- last time." He then jokingly adds, "Of course, tonight is crap." He digs deeper back than Zooropa: "Going back to Tiffany's...Tiffany's with those fucking palm trees. We brought a few palm trees with us, you'll see a little later- and a 40 foot lemon, of course." Bono's jocularity recurs throughout the night, with statements like, "Anyway, I hope you like all this shit because...you paid for it." At the beginning of "Staring At The Sun," Bono begs Leeds not to laugh at his guitar playing. The highlights of the evening, beyond the George Harrison bashing are Bono's reflections during "Bullet the Blue Sky," when he asks, "How much do you want for your soul?" and the moment when Bono begins singing Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" at the end of "Discotheque" and heavily distorted Edge plows ahead with him, playing the well-known riff. On Track 5, before the encore begins, the audiance begins spontaneously chanting, "How long to sing this song." In all, this is a good show- the band obviously have a good rapport with the audiance. The front cover attractively mimics the Who's classic 'Live At Leeds' album. The back cover has a faint picture of Bono taken from, I believe, a Spin or Rolling Stone article earlier in the year- April or May. The liner notes contain an essay poking fun at the band poking fun at themselves, as well as a complete tour itenerary containing some never performed concerts. The picture CDs are pink and blue (for "Miami," perhaps?) and both include the cartoon of Bono which was included in Rolling Stone's March, 1997 review of Pop. Not a bad bootleg. There is a bit too much clapping in the vicinity of the taper. Not very much bottom end. Certainly not the best recording or performance from the tour, LIVE AT LEEDS should satisfy the hard-core completist but very few others. The best thing about this set is the cover which is attractive only for ist simplicity and novelty. But where The Who's 'Live At Leeds' was one of the best live performances ever recorded, this is not event the best U2 performance - not even close. Disc 1 is purple and white. Disc 2 is blue and white. The sound quality is good, but in many songs the crowd (with talking and hand clapping) overrules the recording equipment that was used. Inside the cover, you'll find the complete PopMart tour dates and the following review of the show from New Musical Express (NME) by Simon Williams called 'Notorious Big Show!'

"...It isn't called PopMart any more. No sirree. For us Blighty bleeders who don't, like, comprehend the whole bally Yankee supermart/ market concept, U2 have craftily updated their whole touring promotion and, according to the legion of posters smeared across the derelict pubs and shops lining the route to Roundhay Park, rechristened it PopSport. Oh, and there's a bloody big football on the posters as well, just in case we haven't noticed just how adroitly they've transferred their cultural allegiances from the US of A to the U of, uh, K. So there's this huge lemon, right. And the yellow skin peels away to reveal a sort of vast silver citrus-shaped disco ball. And then the ball trundles along this catwalk into the audience and then it stops and the top half sort of slowly lifts off and U2 are standing there and this metal ladder appears and the band walk down and all this equipment has suddenly appeared at the end of the catwalk and the band sort of launch into 'Discotheque', like, in the middle of the crowd and it's just the start of the encores and, no ociffer, I'm pot nissed, it really, really did happen... As did many other things tonight, not all of them quite so jaw-droppingly amazing, but still pretty damn saucy. See, from the moment they dramatically appear stage-right and stride along an alleyway through the sodding audience to a final, carefree version of 'Rain' just over two hours later, U2 pretty much blow every conception of live performances and their alleged limitations out of the water. Light years ago, their cursed Red Rocks farrago (remember the white flags? The mullets? The manic bleat preaching?! Lawks!) catapulted the freaky foursome into the shameful realm of the rawk arena. Over a decade on, we have our own new generation of big stage bastardos, with Oasis, Blur, Radiohead and The Charlatans already booked into suddenly credible binocular-friendly venues before Crimbo. And rest assured that none of them will provide entertainment on a scale anywhere near as staggering as this. The plot is pretty simple: for the old crowd pleasers (see 'I Will Follow', '(Pride) In The Name Of Love', 'New Year's Day') the theme is stripped down and euphoric; for the later efforts (see the majority of the quite literally tune-unfriendly 'Pop' album) the spectacle is all and, more often than not, utterly spectacular. And here's the rub. U2 used to be more substance than style Now they're more style than substance and represent older men getting to grips with younger people's dance-dazzled sounds. Somewhere in the middle you'll find PopSport in all its awesome, gizmo-grinning glory. "George Harrison says you shouldn't be here!" yells Bono, a man who obviously snorts the tabloids. "It's all big fucking hats and lemons!" It is, too, courtesy of The Edge's camp cowboy attire and one large bright yellow bugger stage-left, but when U2's retort is the gentlest of touches of 'My Sweet Lord' at the close of 'Mysterious Ways' you realise just how much they're enjoying this whole supposedly hard-nosed corporate touring fandango. The highlights, then: Bono doing his traditional dance-with-a-girlie- from-the-audience act during a bionic 'Miami', and offering her a cigar; the cloud-bursting lasers for 'Bullet The Blue Sky'; the way in which Bono subverts all the Big Rock bollocks by dragging the crowd down into a 'Radio Ga Ga'-style mass clapalong; a stack of screamingly familiar songs which we haven't got time to detail because our minds are too busy being boggled by the cheeky, funky things in U2's life. And oh yeah, one other small-but-rather significant bit: somewhere in the middle of the set Bono and The Edge are at the far end of the catwalk with their acoustic guitars, duetting on 'Staring At The Sun'. Bono has already beamingly ordered the crowd not to laugh at his fretboard, uh, dexterity. In a few minutes The Edge will be striding solo on that same catwalk, bellowing 'Singing In The Rain'. Throughout the entire experience fans will be waving flowers. Dads will be shouting along. Geezers will be hugging each other. Mothers will be clapping. Small girls will be quivering. And small boys? Hey, we all know about small boys and their jiving, jumpers for goalposts, right? Yes. U2, then. Loaded, daft, dizzy, and, quite literally, Pop sports for all..."
This is the original pressing on this label.