Twenty years of U2

My mom sent me an e-mail to complain yesterday because she was patiently waiting for my love letter to Tristan, and she got a post on Tim Hortons instead. (I tell ya!) Sorry, Mom, but you're going to have to wait another day, because I won't write that post to Tristan until I can do it properly.

But I can dash off a really quick post to say that I heard on the radio this morning that today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of U2's Joshua Tree album.

Twenty years!!

So much of my life has a U2 soundtrack in the background. Pride (In the Name of Love) reminds me of my fifteen year old self, too geeky to be goth but with a painful crush on a guy who wore a black trench coat and occasionally painted his fingernails black. He loved U2, so I did too.

And then in 1987, I went to see the U2 Joshua Tree tour in Toronto at Exhibition Stadium. I was in Grade 12, and my friend's mother would only let her go if we 'let' her get us a hotel room at the Royal York. I can't even remember how many people we crammed into that hotel room. A dozen, probably. Remember, Fryman? My then-boyfriend (and now ex-husband) drove down from Sudbury, we drove in from London, and we actually managed to find each other in the crowd of 100,000 fans.

That concert was truly one of the best I have ever seen. We still talk about the near-religious experience of being part of a chorus of 100,000 voices all singing "how long, how long must we sing this song" as we poured out of the stadium and down Front Street - no cheering, no talking, only singing.

That was twenty years ago. Twenty years. Yikes!

What's your favourite concert memory?