Montreal U2

Drove to Montreal from Ottawa on the day of the show, and once again went straight to the venue. This time around, I am working with Oxfam Canada, who head up much of the MPH work here in Quebec. I worked with Oxfam USA on the Coldplay tour and love working on the Make Trade Fair Campaign, so it was awesome to get to work with Canadian Oxfam staffers and volunteers.

And amazing volunteers we did have – these guys were unbelievable! I don’t speak more than four words of French – and they come out very badly – and my version of English tends to be very fast and mumbled, but nonetheless, they took it upon themselves to translate my English volunteer training into French that would make sense to concert goers (and seemed to really enjoy trying to teach me French in the process!) and they rocked! I couldn’t keep up with them, running around and around the venue, checking in to answer questions, help them out and bring them supplies.



Montreal fans are LOUD, almost as loud if not louder than Miami! You can tell the band loves playing here as well – as they should, it’s an amazing city.

The Canadian dates had the added bonus of Arcade Fire. I’ve been listening to Funeral more or less for every day since the album came out and I can’t make myself sick of it. U2 plays Arcade Fire’s Wake Up before they take the stage each night, so I thought it was pretty funny that they would open up with that, knowing that fans would rush in, thinking U2 was taking the stage early. Not that they needed to draw fans in – the arena by the last night in Montreal was PACKED. As in, almost completely full for their set – I’ve never seen a 20,000 person arena that full for the opening band, it was very cool! On the Montreal nights, they did a play on U2’s use of their track as their intro song and played Where the Streets Have No Name before they came on – again causing a rush of U2 fans inside! They also joined U2 onstage doing a cover of Joy Divisions ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart ‘ I was quite impressed with them and Bono’s vocals on the track!



Off on an airplane soon to join up with my crew on the Dave Matthews Band Tour. DMB just went out for a short winter tour – we were with them all summer, and they invited us back out. Arron and Josh are covering it, so I am looking forward to getting a few days in with them, even if it means my 30 something airplane flight in six months…