Here’s the report from @U2 staff inside the LA Sports Arena tonight. Major, major spoilers ahead……

Setlist

City of Blinding Lights
The Electric Co.
An Cat Dubh / Into the Heart
Beautiful Day
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Elevation
Stuck in a Moment…
Yahweh
Bullet the Blue Sky
Running to Stand Still

(break for human rights video)

Zoo Station
The Fly
Vertigo

(break)

Pride
Where the Streets Have No Name
One
All Because of You
40

Song notes:

• Larry plays keyboards during “Yahweh”
• during “Love and Peace or Else”, Larry is at the edge of the egg when the song starts, playing drums there; during the middle of the song, he goes back to the main stage and drums from there, while Bono drums at the edge of the egg
• during “Zoo Station”, Edge is using a “Vertigo” guitar — black with the red circles on it
• “Streets” does not have a red-colored background; flags of the countries on the African continent are shown behind the band instead
• “40″ is performed as it was 20 years ago — each band member leaves the stage one-at-a-time, and Larry ends the show with a brief drum solo

Stage notes:

• very simple stage, clean - just Larry’s drums, Edge’s stuff, keyboards, and lots of room for Bono to move around
• 3-level video screen
• main stage is shaped like the “Vertigo” spirals
• the “egg” extends further out onto the floor than the Elevation “heart” did
• there’s no b-stage at the far end of the egg, but there is enough room for the band to play, just like on the Elevation Tour

And as expected, they’re still messing with portions of the show. That’s a good sign - variety is the spice of life, and all that. Here’s what two sources list was Friday night’s rehearsal.

(spoiler coming soon)

Okay.

City of Blinding Lights
The Electric Co.
An Cat Dubh
Into the Heart
Beautiful Day
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Elevation
Stuck in a Moment…
Yahweh

(here’s where it starts to change)

Bullet the Blue Sky
Running to Stand Still
Zoo Station
The Fly
Vertigo
Where the Streets Have No Name
One
Gloria
All Because of You
40

Please stop reading here if you don’t want an educated preview/prediction of the setlist U2 is preparing for the kickoff of the Vertigo Tour next week in San Diego.

This is the current “word on the street” (as we’ve heard it from our folks in L.A.) regarding the expected setlist U2 will be playing. As always, things can change before showtime.

(spoiler alert - last chance to leave)

Okay.

City of Blinding Lights
The Electric Co.
An Cat dubh
Into the Heart
Beautiful Day
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Elevation
Stuck in a Moment…
Yahweh
Gloria
One
Where the Streets Have No Name
Running to Stand Still
Zoo Station
The Fly
Vertigo
All Because of You
Sunday Bloody Sunday
40

Brian Bennett wins U2 dress rehearsal contest
Originally uploaded by mattmcgee.

Congrats to everyone who’s won radio contests this week to see the Vertigo Tour dress rehearsal Saturday in Los Angeles — enjoy the event and be sure to tell us all about it afterward.

Most folks won their tickets by being the lucky caller, but not Brian Bennett of Salt Lake City. Brian instead had to stand for almost 5 hours without taking his hands off a radio personality from 107.5 The End. The radio station web site has the story and a few pix. Well done, Brian!

Vertigo tour doggie
Originally uploaded by oktobergirl.

The U2 tour crew has been in Los Angeles this week setting up at the LA Sports Arena for more band rehearsals, including the big dress rehearsal Saturday night. One of today’s projects was a “load test” of the text messaging system that will be used as U2 performs “One.”

Julie C, “wildambition”, and a few more @U2 friends will be keeping an eye on things this week and letting us know what’s happening.

So far it looks a lot like Vancouver a couple weeks ago, only much warmer! Lots of red trucks, a big concrete building … oh, and this cute little “Vertigo doggie” who apparently wants to get inside and see what the heck is going on, too.

More reports to come, but in the meantime be sure to check out the first batch of photos in @U2 Flickr group.

Thanks to Julie C and wildambition!

Since it’s de rigeur for blogs to take part in the blogosphere (I hate that word), we should mention here that the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper has started a Vertigo 2005 Tour blog. Still new, but I’ll be curious to see what kind of stuff gets posted there next week when U2 finally gets to their wonderful city.

And by the way, those of you who do live in San Diego have no business also getting the world tour to start there — just living in SD is blessing enough. You lucky, lucky people….

About this blog: It really needs a redesign, doesn’t it? The biggest problem from a functional standpoint is that the left-side column is too thin - look down under “Prior Posts” at how the titles of each post are all jumbled together because they wrap across several lines. I’m thinking we can fix that, change the blog design a bit and still matching the @U2 “brand”.

Opinions, please: Should we change the design here a bit?