It’s probably fair to say that the couple of hundred people who wandered up to the Union Chapel in Islington last Friday were expecting a fairly low-key affair. Arguably the biggest name at the Little Noise Sessions gig in aid of Mencap was to be the compere, Radio 1’s Jo Whiley, although we accept that a few of the audience may have been a bit excited about US indie rockers We Are Scientists. Not really worth bringing an autograph book along for, though.
So we can only imagine the audience’s surprise when none other than stadium rock uber-deities U2 took the stage as a warm up act. Well, when we say U2, we actually mean a couple of members of the Irish rock band – the gobby one and the probably-balding-slightly-Welsh one (a.k.a. Bono and The Edge). But hey, the wry-smiling one (Adam) was apparently in the audience, even though the widely-fancied-by-men-and-women-alike one (Larry) was nowhere to be seen.
Once they had retrieved their jaws from the floor, the audience were treated to (presumably rhythm-section-free) versions of “Stay”, “Desire”, “Angel of Harlem” and “Wave of Sorrow”. Old skool!
In related news, it would appear that rumours of a U2 residency at the O2 next year are a load of old nonsense. Oh well.
Picture of Bono and The Edge (from a completely different gig) taken from JJ Booth’s Flickr photostream under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 licence.
