At U2's Rose Bowl show, you couldn't swing a souvenir glowstick without hitting some kind of aspirational spiritual moment or blatant biblical allusion. "And now for the folk mass," Bono quipped midway through the set, introducing "Until the End of the World," the Judas-and-Jesus dialogue that is arguably the all-time high point in the history of Christian rock. From the placement of the group's worshipful "Magnificent" early in the set to Bono's a cappella rendition of "Amazing Grace" that led into "Where the Streets Have No Name" near the end, this is probably not a show Richard Dawkins would've had a great time at.

Not every attendee was into parsing the concert for its metaphysicality, of course. But even the most secular ticketholder might have had a sense that they were on hand for a religious occasion. If you believe in the power of rock & roll stadium shows, this couldn't help but feel like The Last Supper.

Scoffers might have doubted that any act nowadays could sell 95,000 tickets to an undeniably claustrophobic venue at around $100 a pop. But in retrospect, the instant sell-out feels like a no-brainer. When we used to go see the Stones' stadium shows, it was because we were afraid the band might break up and we'd miss the final tour. When we go see U2 in a stadium, though, it's not because we fear the band's demise (does anyone doubt these guys might stick together for at least another 10 or 20 years?). It's because we know the ritual itself is all but extinct. And its last real practitioners just happen to be incontrovertibly great and, against all odds, still peaking.

The show streamed live on YouTube, of course, and if you missed it, all 2 hours and 21 minutes of it (counting the band's long walk to the stage while Bowie's "Space Oddity" played over the PA) were archived for viewing here: 

Count me in among the contingent who are thrilled, not dismayed, that U2 still consider themselves a vital recording act, and therefore aren't afraid to open the show with three 2009 songs ("Breathe," "GetOn Your Boots," "Magnificent") and close it with another newbie ("Moment of Surrender"). Can you imagine the Stones getting away with that at any point in their career?  Or including a total of seven songs from their latest release—in this instance, No Line on the Horizon—in a 24-song set? There were a few grumblings emanating from other stops along the way to this penultimate North American date. One fellow I know carped from Las Vegas that 14 of the 24 songs were from the ‘00s; apparently, slightly favoring the most recent decade of your career is not a popular move with every breed of fan. U2's older fans break down into two opposing camps: those who only want to hear the oldies, and those who remember the term "oldies act" as an insult, not a selling point.

In any case, schmushed into this new-material sandwich were enough familiar songs for anyone but the most diehard nostalgist. Even songs some of us longtime fans probably figure we could go a lifetime without ever hearing again felt earned in the context of this set list. "Sunday BloodySunday" had a green motif, not a red one, having been recast as an anthem for the protest movement in Iran. "Stuck in a Moment" went from being a soul ballad to an acoustic folk song. The final encore segment, which included "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)" and "With or Without You," brought things back down from celebrative to ruminative, with Bono dressed in a suit of lights—not the old-school Vegas kind, but one that seemed to shoot thin red laser beams from the sleeves, while our spacy-man sang into a glowing steering wheel. It was an oddly but wonderfully intimate close to the kind of show that might more easily be remembered for its more overstated or grandiose moments. But Bono's ability to get personal (and remember, "One" is a relationship song, not a political one) is still the best-kept secret of the world's biggest band.

Did anyone miss "Pride (In the Name of Love)"? Some,certainly, though I was thanking the God Bono prays to and possibly a few others that the band finally felt comfortable retiring that from the set. They played it every night on the European leg of the tour, and even trotted it out at the first show in the U.S., before suddenly dropping it. According to http://www.u2setlists.com/, prior to this leg of the tour, only once before had U2 been brave enough to skip the song for more than two shows in a row since "Pride" was introduced in 1984. The last time they had failed to play it at all was in 2001.

There were some fine tradeoffs for that loss. "The Unforgettable Fire," a staple of this tour, had never been played live since 1990, and "Ultra Violet" hadn't been performed since 1993. At some shows lately—although not, unfortunately, at the Rose Bowl—they'd been playing "Your Blue Room," a 1990s song that had never been performed live before.

For the last few gigs, though, the set had been fairly fixed to what we saw at the Rose Bowl. If you're YouTube-ing it, here's your viewing and listening guide, while you wait for that red progress bar to stretch all the way across the 142-minute span:

If you didn't get tickets this time around and the prospect of streaming or even a forthcoming DVD/Blu-Ray isn't cutting it for you, the band just coincidentally took advantage of all this appetite whetting to announce a round of 2010 dates:

June 6: Anaheim, CA

June 12: Denver, CO

June 16: Oakland, CA

June 23: Edmonton, AB

June 30: East Lansing,MI

July 3: Toronto, ON

July 6: Chicago, IL

July 9: Miami, FL

July 12: Philadelphia,PA

July 16: Montreal, QC

July 19: New York