Another rock band, and another football game?

Well as you can tell this post isn't exactly Summer Part 2. Instead it is about rock n' roll and football, but more than just that. U2 (with Green Day) at the Superdome in New Orleans before a Saint's game. Rewind back to February 3rd 2002 and it was Green Day at the same stadium before the Superbowl (which the Patriots won I hate to admit, even worse I must admit I was cheering for them at that disillusioned stage of my life). This was sort of my first time hearing U2, and anybody who knows me also knows that I am now a mega-U2 nerd. When U2 played at the Halftime show it was a tribute to the September 11th victims which at that time was still very fresh in the minds of everybody. During MLK, a large screen with the names of all the victims was projected on two large screens which resembled the two towers. At the climax of Where The Streets Have No Name, the two sheets came crashing down, a pretty emotional moment that still gives me shivers still when I re-watch it.
So U2 and Greenday playing together 4 years later at the very place U2 played for the Superbowl. But alot has happened to the Superdome in those four years. Last August/September it was a symbol of hopelessness, pain, suffering, just an overall bad scene. The dome was being used to house refugees and it ended up looking like a third world nation inside and outside. So it was pretty amazing to see how they got the place back together and filled with thousands of fans in just under a year. But obviously the work and healing process is long from over. Part of the reason U2 was there was because of Edge's involvement in a program called Music Rising who's main goal is to put instruments back into the hands of New Orleans musicians who lost them in the hurricane.
They played a cover of the Skids song called "The Saints Are Coming" which is appropriate since that is the name of the football team. Bono also did his usual changing lyrics thing to make it fit the situation, and then they played the end of Beautiful Day. I had a tingling sensation in my spine for the whole 10 minutes they played. It was something else.
To watch the show visit http://www.rhapsody.com/musicrising


U2 & Green Day from 2006


U2's Halftime Performance from 2002.