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Welcome to the Blade blog Culture Shock, a three-times-a-week riff by Pop Culture Editor Kirk Baird on pop culture news, events, and trends. The blog will appear Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings here, with the odd night or off-day posting if something is merited.

It's nearly 2:30 Monday morning and I just finished watching the U2 concert from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., streamed live on YouTube.

As much as I like U2, I didn't feel the need to see the band on this tour; perhaps because I never warmed to the new album, "No Line on the Horizon." (Read my thoughts on that here.)

But the opportunity to see the band and its much-discussed massive concert stage and lights extravaganza was too hard to resist — especially for free in the comfort of my home.

After watching the 2-hour-plus show, I'm glad I didn't pony up to see the band live this go round. The setlist for this night's show, which featured 7 of the 11 tracks from the new album, didn't do much for me; couldn't the band have dropped at least one of the new songs to work in something from "Boy" or "October"? And seriously, no "Pride (In the Name of Love)"?

You can see the concert for yourself here.

The sold-out concert, which started just after 9 p.m. PST, was broadcast via YouTube to five continents. The streaming worked well, even at full screen. A few times toward the end of the show, though, it seemed like the image was frozen on my screen, while the music streamed on. Shrinking the image from full screen, however, remedied the problem.

I was worried about being able to connect to the concert stream, too, if my browser crashed. But, when Firefox inexplicably froze up on me mid-way through the concert, I was able to jump right back on to the broadcast after I restarted my browser.

A live simulcast of a concert on YouTube normally isn't that big of a deal — but this is U2, the biggest band in the world. For a band of its stature to do something like this — a gimmick Bono and the boys certainly don't need to sell tickets or albums — is telling. Clearly, U2 as well as the music industry view online broadcasts of concerts as the future. Perhaps next time, there will be a fee to watch — register and pay on the band's Web site, for example.

Even if that's the case, It's still a cheaper, easier way for the masses to see bands like U2, especially if the group isn't playing a venue nearby. In that sense, I think you have to judge the YouTube broadcast a success. The viewing numbers probably won't be out until later today or tomorrow, but I imagine the U2 concert attracted a sizable audience.

But there's no getting around that watching concerts online is still a poor substitute for the real thing, like eating krab with a k. Watching the U2 gig, I missed the communal aspect of the shared event that comes with a high-energy concert. The cameras zipping around stage didn't help much, either. At times, it felt like I was watching a DVD concert instead of a live event.

Also, having such a massive stage shrunk to fit a laptop screen took away its awe factor. And during some of the concert's slow points, I found it difficult to stay with the show, and would wander off to another Website while the concert continued to play through my speakers. I guess that's the equivalent of getting up for a beer or a bathroom break.

But there was one distinct advantage to watching this concert over the Internet instead of being there. While watching Bono say his final goodnight to the 96,000 or so concertgoers at the Rose Bowl, I thought about all these of people and their hours-long journey ahead of them through crowds of people in the stadium and the massive traffic pileups to get home.

Me? I just stopped the video feed at concert's end, and started writing this blog. Now that I'm finished, I'm off to bed — no doubt while thousands of others are stuck on some L.A. freeway exhausted and desperate to be in bed themselves.

Agree or disagree with a posting? Lemme know. Have a topic or suggestion? Lemme know that, too. Send an e-mail to kbaird@theblade.com or call 419-724-6734.

LINK: For all of Kirk Baird's Culture Shock riffs

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