U2, the Prime Minister and me

This is as close to political as my blog will ever get.

So apparently, the Prime Minister of Canada has been hard at work these days. He's having a hard time getting George W Bush to return his calls, but apparently he's not having the same trouble with U2's lead singer Bono. (Editorial aside: all things considered, I'd much rather talk to Bono any day.)

After being prompted to do so by local radio station BOB-FM and a petition from a couple of thousand local residents, the PM has personally asked Bono to add a stop in Ottawa to the band's upcoming tour -- and it worked! Tickets go on sale March 19 for a concert on November 25. There's no info on the capital tickets Web site yet, but I imagine that with a second mortgage I should be able to afford a couple of tickets -- if, that is, I manage to get through in the nano-second before all the tickets are snapped up.

I went to see U2 in 1987 at the Exhibition grounds in Toronto, and it was easily one of the best shows I have ever seen. They closed the encore with the song '40', and as the crowd sang along, each member of the band dropped out and walked off stage until only the bass drum kept time to thousands of voices singing, "How long, how long must we sing this song..." in unison. The drum beat stopped, but the voices kept singing. Even as we filtered out of the stadium and walked up Front Street, nobody was talking, nobody was cheering, we just sang the refrain over and over again. Despite 14 years of Catholic school, it was the closest my 17 year old self ever came to having a religious experience.