The Devil's Music
Pairc Ui Chaoimh
Cork, Ireland.
24 - August - 1993.
Attendance: 39.000 (capacity: 40.000) - Support: Engine Alley, Utah Saints
Disc 1 (63:42)
01. TV: The Drug of the Nation (PA) / Drumming Boys (PA)
02. Zoo Station
03. The Fly
04. Even Better than the Real Thing
05. Mysterious Ways
06. One
07. Unchained Melody
08. Until the End of the World
09. New Year's Day
10. Numb
11. Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World
12. Angel of Harlem
13. Stay (Faraway, so Close!)
14. Satellite of Love
Disc 2 (57:22)
01. Bad
02. The First Time (snippet)
03. Bullet the Blue Sky
04. Running to Stand Still
05. Where the Streets Have No Name
06. Pride (In the Name of Love)
07. - ZooTV Videoconfessionals -
08. Desire
09. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
10. With or Without You
11. Love is Blindness
12. Can't Help Falling in Love
Recording Equipment - History
WM-D3 + mini mics > Analog 1st > CDR-1
Taper: Minerva Velasquez
Comments
Despite of being in Ireland, the show did not sell out, with a thousand tickets remaining and 39.000 people in attendance. Controversy happened before the show, and book U2 Live, written by Pimm Jal de la Parra (and Caroline Van Oosten de Boer), and published by Omnibus Press (2003), picks it up very well. Quoting it:
--Sales for Cork are initially slow, but pick up in the last few weeks and sell out but for a thousand. The Cork show is preceded by another controversy, when Cork County secretary Frank Murphy of the highly conservative Gaelic Athletics Association, who own the stadium, bans the sale of U2's 'Achtung Baby' condoms from their merchandise stands. U2 manager Paul McGuinness reacts by handing out handfuls of condoms for free to an eagerly accepting crowd. His action is criticised by the Lord Mayor of Cork, who is upset "because there were also 13-year olds in the audience". Of course, Bono uses his McPhisto character to take a sneer at Frank Murphy's decision. "Civilisation is crumbling, who can take it back from the the brink? The GAA, that's who! We're their guests tonight, so there'll be no sale of condoms, no rubber Johnnies". The crowd laugh as he continues to ridicule Murphy: "We don't want the young people carried away on a sea of seed and desire, now we do? They'll be at it like rabbits, slaves to the devil's monument, delivered to the gates of the hell in latex jackets! Contraception, safe sex, AIDS: it's not their problem. No homo's, junkies or Haitians here tonight; just castrated, abstemious, happy families! Fine and dandy, not a willie in sight. And we got the GAA to thank for that". McPhisto delivers a brief rendition of an old Eurovision Song Contest entry, Dana's All Kinds of Everything, when he calls Frank Murphy, but nobody picks up. Murphy is in the stadium watching the show.--
This is a hard to find item, transferred from a first gen cassette by Dana Fletcher. The concert is complete, although it contains some small edits. Sound quality is very good, with all instruments well audible as they come through pretty clear. The major inconvenience here is that crowd noise is quite loud, with some singing and hard clapping near the taper, conversations, and a bunch of girls screaming hysterically here and there, that can be annoying. Hadn't it been for the crowd noise, this tape would have been rated as a bright "VG audience", as when people calm down, both music and vocals sound very solid.
A few small edits occur before Numb, at the end of Running to Stand to Still, after Pride, and after the 'ZooTV Videoconfessionals', but none of them bring major issues.