U2'S CITY OF BLINDING LIGHTS

摘要

Pan across derelict concrete runway at dawn, somewhere in the American Southwest: Someone's unpacked the whole convoy of semis that haul the equipment for U2's Vertigo//2005 tour. Unpacked the lights and the behemoth speakers and the Wi-Fi cart for the backstage offices and spread it here, on the outskirts of some city from a '50s horror film where distance plays tricks on the eye. Every last piece of cargo has been set out, part of an angular, bilaterally symmetrical Rorschach blot - a hard-edged Mothra, inducing a faint deja vu. The flat, interlocking plates of the stage are laid out like a game of solitaire. Now the gear field ... stirs. Scraping across oil-stained concrete, it bunches up anthropomorphically. Heaving up, Transformer-like, it comes alive, its shoulders the housings of giant speaker arrays, trailing epaulets of LED lighting. Its eyes are clusters of surveillance cameras.