The members of “The Pat McAfee Show” had the opposite of a beautiful day at the U2 concert.
With Super Bowl 2024 in Las Vegas on Sunday, the band took in one of U2’s shows during their residency at the MSG Sphere, James Dolan’s new baby, which is reputed to have an out-of-this-world experience with videography running behind concerts in the circular venue.
“The Sphere is incredible,” producer Ty Schmidt said, as McAfee concurred that the orb venue was “phenomenal” and that “The Sphere is the show.”
Schmidt prefaced his take with hopes of not offending the audience before laying into the band.
“Listen, I don’t want to offend anybody. That’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re not trying to offend people and get people upset when we’ve got the Super Bowl in two days,” Schmidt said.
“But I gotta be honest with you: I thought I was a U2 fan going into last night’s show, just because you get swept up in the pomp and circumstance of everything and I thought it was really cool, but I realized pretty quickly, I’m not a U2 guy. In fact, I’d go so far as to say U2 sucks.”
Schmidt said that they consulted Mike Foss, the ESPN executive who oversees their show, and who is apparently a third-generation U2 fan, and that he admitted the band’s performance this week was a “letdown”.
McAfee then revealed that U2 did not play the hits.
“The setlist was no songs that we knew — for two hours straight,” he said.
Schmidt doubled down, saying he didn’t know a “single word” to any of the band’s roughly 25 songs.
They kept talking about how awesome the Sphere is and McAfee added, “I’m excited to see another band there.”
The next two scheduled residencies at the Sphere are Phish and Dead and Company (members of the Grateful Dead with John Mayer in the Jerry Garcia role).