The first time we saw U2 it was 1984 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. Obviously, that was a long time ago: pre-Apple commercials, pre-hanging out with politicians, pre-heavy-handed attempts at irony, pre-blues co-opting, pre-rock n’ roll Messiah complex. Hell, it was even before Bono leapt into the crowd at Wembley at Live Aid. It was and still is the best show we’ve ever seen.

We loved U2. We bought everything they sold, put posters up in our room, taped everything they did on TV. We even slept out for tickets when the Joshua Tree tour kicked off.

But it's been a long, bumpy road since then. Over the years, we developed a love/hate thing with the band. We love when they get all soaring and inspirational and give their songs a sense of grandeur and power that no other band has ever come close to matching. We love the way Bono's voice mixed with the Edge's chiming church-bell guitar sound can sometimes make our hair stand on end and gives us the warm fuzzies. And we love the way they can make every single member of the audience at a concert sing along with every word, every lyric, every note.

But we also hate when they try to be something they're not, like an R&B band or a techno dance band. Or how with Bono there's a fine line between charismatic and megalomaniac, deep-thinker and pompous ass. And we hate how they’ll often go on and on about some cause to the point where you just want to scream out "just f------ play, God damnit!"

Since that first show, we find ourselves constantly swearing them off only to find ourselves listening to "Achtung Baby" over and over and over again. So as we went to the Oakland Coliseum to see them Tuesday night, one question laid in front of us: will we see Good U2 or Bad U2?

Photo of a U2 concert at Madison Square Garden from the U2 Fan Life Blog

In all honesty, we had our concerns. Between all the activism lately and reviews we've read, we were afraid the show would turn into one big, huge "Save Africa" rally. It wasn't. After seeing them over the years in all their various guises-- eager young humble band, rock n’ roll Messiah band, ironic arty band, and really bad ironic arty band-- we saw them in their new guise: rock band. U2 was leaner, meaner, and looser than we've even seen them. It was all squealing guitar and power chords and not so much with the big, epic songs. Bono joked around and tried on some Mick Jagger moves, the Edge hopped around during "Elevation" and Adam even moved around and waved to everyone. Everything was stripped down and loud and they were in a groove. Songs like the first two songs of the first encore, "Zoo Station" (?) and "The Fly" had a heaviness to them that were only hinted at previously. And "All Because of You" was almost punk in its ferocity.

The key to anything with U2, obviously, comes down to Bono. Ahh, Bono, the William Shatner of rock stars. He can either lift the crowd up and turn it into a church revival or have it come crashing down around him. The Bono in 1984 sang "Two Hearts Beat As One" with a woman pulled from the crowd on his shoulders and sang a righteous version of "Amazing Grace" during the middle part of Electric Co. 1988 Bono threw the mic down in the middle of "With or Without You" in a huff over the crowd not respecting the seriousness of the song. And in a concert that otherwise was as good as we've seen, a 2002 Bono so drove us so crazy with references to 9/11 that we wanted to throw something. So, Good Bono or Bad Bono?

It was good Bono. Mainly. Sure the putting on a blindfold and pretending to be a prisoner of war during "Bullet the Blue Sky" was a bit much. And drawing out the intro to "One" to say thanks to every Bay Area celebrity in attendance (and by every celebrity, we mean every celebrity) was a bit of a buzz kill, but he largely kept the speechifying to the minimum. And while most rock singers lose the power of their voice by their 40s, his was as strong as ever, even holding his own in the Pavarotti opera part in the lovely and almost-a-classic "Miss Sarajevo."

The amazing thing was that for a band that was around when SFist was in high school, they are still as vital as they were back then. Sure, the Stones still put on a good show and get your feet moving, but it'll still come off as an echo; a band playing themselves as much as a band being themselves. But not U2. They still sounded like they mean it, man. Even the hoary old "Sunday, Bloody, Sunday" which has often sounded dated, held its relevance. As Bono said, "this is your song now." Of course, the relevance is somewhat dimmed by the fact that Bono's BlackBerry has the personal phone numbers of all the people who can actually lead to their being "no more" but you just have to forget that fact. And the opening to "Where the Streets Have No Name" still holds its epic power, able to turn an entire arena into one single mass of jumping, singing fools singing out to the heavens. We've seen a lot of concerts, both in clubs and arenas and if there isn't a single, better moment to see in concert then when Bono sings the first couple of lines of that song, we don't know what.

If there was a problem to the show it was that in not going after the epic heights that they so often go after, the show was a little too grounded in its way. Lean and mean may be fine if you're seeing Green Day or Judas Priest, but when you see U2, you want the uplift. You want the grand gesture and the grand moment and the grand feeling. We left thinking the concert was much in the same way as "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb": a good collection of well crafted, catchy as hell tunes, but still lacking in that U2 mojo. Just as "Atomic Bomb" lacked something as lush and grand as "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)" or "Where the Streets Have No Name," with the exception of the opening of "Streets," the concert never quite took off like it did when we've seen them before.

But maybe it wasn't them, it was us. Because it's not 1984 anymore and we're not sixteen anymore with huge posters in our room. Just as you can't go home again, you also can't go back again. But this was pretty close. Call it a sort of homecoming.