U2 / Kosovo Stadium, Sarajevo, Sept. 23, 1997

U2
Stadion Koševo  (Kosovo Stadium)
Sarajevo
September 23, 1997
Maxell MX-S 100 master cassettes
recorded from KFOG-FM

01 John Grappone - KFOG-FM Intro
02 J.J. Jackson - WW1 Intro
03 U2 - Mofo
04 U2 - I Will Follow
05 U2 - Gone
06 U2 - Even Better Than The Real Thing
07 U2 - Last Night On Earth
08 U2 - Until The End Of The World
09 U2 - New Years Day
10 J.J. Jackson - Break
11 U2 - Pride (In the Name of Love)
12 U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
13 U2 - All I Want Is You
14 U2 - Staring At The Sun
15 J.J. Jackson - Break
16 U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday
17 U2 - Bullet The Blue Sky
18 U2 - Please
19 U2 - Where The Streets Have No Name
20 J.J. Jackson - Segment Intro
21 U2 - Discothèque
22 U2 - If You Wear That Velvet Dress
23 U2 - With Or Without You
24 J.J. Jackson - Break
25 U2 - Miss Sarajevo
26 J.J. Jackson - Break
27 U2 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
28 U2 - Mysterious Ways
29 U2 - One
30 U2 - Unchained Melody
31 J.J. Jackson - Outro
32 Linda McInnes - KFOG-FM Outro

This is a transfer off of my metal MX-S 100 cassettes, which have sat in a box since I recorded them back in 1997.  I've never been a big fan of U2, and to be blunt, recording on expensive metal cassettes probably wasn't necessary because I never listened to the show more than once or twice.  The stadium sound is muddy, instruments are poorly defined, and Bono is in poor voice.

  
That being said... it was an historic concert.  Spin Magazine ranked it as 7th on their list of the 35 Greatest Concerts of the last 35 Years in 2020.  

The collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991 led to armed conflict between the multitude of ethnicities, nationalisms, religions, languages, and ideologies.  It may be apocryphal, but Otto von Bismark's comment "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans" came to mind.  

As the conflicts wound down, U2 became the first major act to play a concert in Sarajevo in several years.  The concert was carried world-wide by satellite.  This version is from San Francisco's KFOG-FM, with the starting and ending of the show handled by the local radio personalities, and the Westwood One portions by in-house personality J.J. Jackson.

There are several bootlegs of this show.  Westwood One also syndicated a rebroadcast of an edited version on April 6, 1998, as In Concert #98-15 show, also tracks appeared on December 19, 1998 as In Concert #98-51 (combined with Hammersmith Palais 1982), and just the 1997 tracks again as #00-35 on August 26, 2000.  

The Superstar Concert Series produced a 3-cd set as #97-39.  Discogs has this as "released on Sep 23, 1997" which is impossible as that's the date of the concert itself. The cue sheet does not show a broadcast window.  The Hammersmith/Sarajevo compilation was broadcast again as 02-09 on March 2, 2002.

In keeping with my new policy of giving Our Beloved Audience a big pile of junk to wade through (or delete), there's a bunch of press coverage in the artwork file about the concert, and a sad note about the death of West Coast disc jockey Linda McInnes.

On McInnes... one thing to note about radio here is that disk jockeys often moved between the L.A./San Diego and Bay Area radio markets.  Air fare was inexpensive, the flight time is short (about 70 minutes of flight time).  As there were "network" stations in both markets, if they needed a disk jockey to fill a slot they would have one fly in to cover shifts for a week or two.  McInnes was a regular on Bay Area radio...but also in the San Diego and Los Angeles markets.

https://mega.nz/file/2VBlxA4b#YJX1cgZqkK5-1nwDHDSClaBwuM0V9a9dNKSPScdjpwk