U2 Pops Out in Mexico

Irish Voice Entertainment

U2 Pops Out in Mexico

October 10, 2007

By Mike Farragher

IT’S hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since U2 toured the globe in a sequined lemon, but the band is commemorating the 10th anniversary of their over-the-top 1997 tour with the DVD PopMart: Live in Mexico City. This has been a widely distributed bootleg tape over the years, with the band releasing an audio CD of the concert to their fan club a few years ago. The DVD is a great piece of live footage with eye popping stage theatrics that, despite some over the top visuals, holds together with the passage of time as a modern day commentary about how consumerism can get out of hand.

It was a pretty nervy move on the band’s part to do a glossy tour like this back in 1997, when grunge rockers decided to parade onstage with flannel shirts. Bono and the boys camped it up with Village People garb in response to the grunge movement, which Edge described as “insufferably boring” at the time.

I saw this tour during stops in Philadelphia and New Jersey, and I remember laughing at the irony of this band trying not to be commercial as they played under a yellow arch that looked like the one you’d see at McDonald’s. It was a joke not lost on the band, and they play the concert with tongue firmly in cheek against the high tech backdrop.

The Popmart DVD captures Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Junior at the For Sol Autodromo in Mexico City on December 3, 1997.

Bono makes his way through the crowd as a prizefighter right before the band kicks into the aggressive electronica of “Mofo.” The song, a highly personal conversation with the singer’s lost mother that is buried in what he calls an “electronic blues death rattle,” tees up “I Will Follow” beautifully.

All the hits show up here, including an emotional “Pride,” “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” a reworked “New Year’s Day,” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Many of the songs have an aggressive electronic sheen added to them, hinting at the digital experimentation that the band was doing in the studio at the time.

It’s a shock to the system, then, when Bono and the Edge strap on acoustic guitars and duet on “Desire” and “Staring at the Sun.” Just when you thought the band lost the core of its soul, they surprise you with songs that sing without the electronic accoutrements.

While the disc is good, I was a little taken aback that the band would want to revive this problematic period of their lives. While they were playing well, the band describes a time when stage and recording commitments were getting beyond them.

“We spent a lot of time on that tour trying to play catch-up,” Adam Clayton explains in the book U2byU2. “We rehearsed whenever we could and we had to go into studios to remix and re-record songs for singles. We worked very hard to turn that around.”

“When that show worked, it was mind-blowing,” says Bono, ever the diplomat. “Its neon nature was a fabulous thing to behold at a time when rock music was so white bread and suburban angst.”

Two versions are available: a single disc with the concert in stereo and surround sound, as well as a limited deluxe edition featuring a bonus disc with seven live performances recorded in Rotterdam and Edmonton, videos, a trivia game, and a few short documentaries from the tour, including one on the band’s legendary performance in war-torn Sarajevo.

Ever the marketers, the band chooses to release this in the last quarter of the year so you can get a jump start on the holiday shopping. Count on U2 to release a killer stocking stuffer each year, and PopMart: Live in Mexico City is no exception.

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