Advertised for months beforehand and featuring a massive, 90-foot-tall alien warship stage that took several days to set up, the U2 360 tour stop in Raleigh made Carter-Finley Stadium the place to be Saturday night. This was the band’s first ever performance in Raleigh; a 1997 performance was scrapped at the last minute due to technical difficulties. Live Nation selected a younger, up-and-coming but fairly well-respected band to open for  U2 for an eight-city leg of the show. Muse, which has a loyal following and earned itself household name status with its 2005 release Black Holes and Revelations (teeny-boopers will recognize it as “that band that sang that song while they were playing baseball in the Twilight movie”) rocked out with songs old and new, from its latest single “Uprising” to Absolution‘s “Time is Running Out” for the finale. Their soaring, jarring electronic-tinged tones complimented the otherworldly set as well. U2 made its long-awaited debut close to 9 p.m. ”We’ve got old songs, we’ve got new songs. We’ve got new songs we can barely play – and we have a space ship,” Bono announced as the show warmed up, pointing skywards. And a hybrid of old and new it was. The international philanthropists by day, renowned rock stars by night brought everything out of the closet, from 1983’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” to “One” to this year’s “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.” There was a good mix from each decade without any of it sounding tired or rehashed, a testament to this band’s staying power. It wouldn’t have been a U2 concert if it weren’t punctured by Bono and Co.’s lofty political agenda. The music almost seemed like a sideshow to Bono’s musings on peaceful resistance. The band shouted out Agnes Nyamayarwo, a Ugandan nurse and activist close to U2’s ONE organization who is afflicted by AIDS, and Aung San Suu Kyi, an outspoken Burmese activist put under house arrest for six years due to the threats she posed to her country politically. Masks of her face were distributed to those around the stage and the show was dedicated to her. There were mind-blowing thematic elements, most coming from the spaceship-shaped stage with moveable bridges that arched over the crowd and a walkway that circled the main area. The screen disassembled itself and turned into a colorful web midway through the show. Bono disappeared at one point and came back with a suit covered in red lasers that bounced off artificial fog and a suspended microphone that looked like a Mario Kart Wii remote covered in Christmas lights. But the main attractions weren’t high-tech displays. During “City of Blinding Lights,” Bono pulled a young boy up onto the stage, did a lap of it with him at his side, and gave him his signature sunglasses to keep. At another point, he handed his microphone off to an audience member, who belted out several verses.  If there was one complaint to be made about the show, besides the fact that parking for it was unreasonably expensive and the traffic getting out took hours, it was that it was a few songs too long. Concert organizers perhaps wanted to make sure spectators got their money’s work – tickets ranged from $30 to $250 – but the show had more false endings than the final Lord of the Rings movie. All in all, U2’s set lasted over two hours, and they could have gone out on a stronger note. But truth be told, the concert was as “Magnificent” as advertised. Bono and The Edge have not forgotten how to capture, entertain and inspire a crowd over the years and did so to great effect Saturday. U2 allowed both casual and devoted fans to not only enjoy music and a show, but to feel as though they were a part of something bigger than themselves, even if only for one night.