While Eoghan and I are not the biggest U2 fans, owning hardly any of their music (although maybe there’s a Best of the 90s compilation knocking around on tape somewhere!), as their Croker gigs drew closer we found ourselves really wanting to go along and experience a U2 show; few bands are big enough to put on concerts at that scale, and it’s worth seeing I think.

Gav’s tweets about the building progress of The Claw continued to pique our interest, and lovely lad that he is, he managed to hook us up with a pair of very sweet tickets for their first gig on Friday (Hmm, maybe he should get some sort of kick back for all that Twitter marketing, eh Bono?)

I’m so glad we went. The gig rocked the proverbial casbah, and I found myself really surprised at a) how many songs I could sing along to and b) the emotional tug of some of those songs, like Walk On, One, Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, With or Without You and Stay (Faraway, So Close) (which, by the way, they didn’t play on Friday – I listened to it on the balcony on Monday).

The claw was amazing too. No wonder it took nearly two weeks to set up! Here are some shots from the night.

Still bright as the sun sets

LOADS of people- and lots and lots of Spaniards and Italians in particular.

The video footage being shown on the cool wrap around screen was phenomenal:

So I was really surprised when, as dusk fell, the whole screen did this:

It then turned back into a screen to show their bobby heads (sorry if these next shots are a bit noisy, it was getting late and dark so the ISO was really ramped up):

A few more spaceship-y pics – doesn’t it look like it’s going to take off?

By the way, there are THREE of those claw things floating around – one being pulled down at the band’s last location, one at their current location, and one setting up at their next location. How mad is that?

Our view of the action wasn’t so hot on Monday night:

But that didn’t stop Eoghan and and I dancing on the balcony like teenagers. Fun times.