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I have seen U2 four previous times ranging from stadium shows like PopMart tour at the Cotton Bowl and their bigger-than-life stage at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman to arena shows like the Vertigo Tour at American Airlines and the Elevation tour at Reunion when we rented limousines and Damon threw his shirt at Bono. But what I never experienced was watching the band perform my favorite album, Joshua Tree, which I absolutely wore the casette tape out as a teenager - initially for the hits on Side A, but moving towards preferring the back side for their iconic stories like "One Tree Hill", "Running to Stand Still" and the one that hit close to home, "Red Hills Mining Town". U2 decided to tour the album 30 years later and for the first time on a stage in Dallas, TX filling AT&T Stadium, opting for their own behemoth screen over Jerry's.

U2 started the show after the Lumineers in the middle of a long runway shaped like a giant Joshua Tree with a few of their biggest hits not on Joshua Tree including "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "New Years Day", "Pride" and one that I enjoyed singing along with, "Bad", before returning back to their long stage to start the album from start to finish. The screens behind the band were mostly static shots of canyons or highways, often silhoutted by Bono, Adam, Larry or The Edge as they made their way through the Side A hits before settling in to the juicy part of the album. The highlight of the show for me was Bono singing a very stripped-down basic version of my favorite song, letting the screen show the raw emotion as he yearned to "cry withoug weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising his voice" and then letting the crowd of 80,000 sing along the melodic "ah la la la de day" chant before he brought the song to its climax before quoting the title line, "she's running to stand still". Their encore finished with the operatic Miss Sarajevo and a tribute to many inspirational woman, including a few from texas in Ultraviolet (baby, baby, baby light my way) before letting the crowd sing along with them on "One" with videos of those being helped by the Red effort for AIDS victims in Africa. Beautiful show and one I will not soon forget.