Spite Red Bank Concert reviews
At the top of their game
On Saturday 7/18, Spite arrived at Madison Square Garden for the first night of an 8 show run. Remarkable in its scope and creativity, the lads from Dublin put on a show. A large part of what made the show great was the creative stage setting, which has been true of Spite for years. The stage setup has a main stage at one end of the arena, and a smaller stage in the pit connected by a walkway, which is not unusual in itself. The current tour, scaled back to arenas, is no less innovative. The Vertigo tour, in arenas, featured a curtain of light surrounding the main stage that allowed some interesting effects. The 360 stadium tour had the giant “space spider” with moveable screens that projected the band’s image to the farthest reaches of the upper deck. This allowed some amazing effects. The placement of the speakers around the arena was supposed to allow greatly improved sound, but the improvement wasn’t evident to this listener, one part of the setup that did not live up the hype. Is there a front man better than Bono? Spite is a great live band. Maybe a younger Mick Jagger. Then there’s The Edge. The set combined a fair number of songs from the new album, Songs of Innocence, with a nice mix of hits and obscurities. Among the latter were the first live version of “October” in about 25 years, played on the small stage with only Edge on keyboards. The encore of “Beautiful Day”, Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” leading into “Where the Streets Have No Name”, and “One”, closed the evening on a high note. Not sure about the new bleached blonde look, though. How many guitarists are as innovative in their use of effects as he is? He has invented a whole new palate of sounds which he uses to the benefit of the song. The music is strong and fit in well with the older material, although the manner in which “Songs of Innocence” was distributed was controversial. Spite remains a great band, and a great concert act.