Go ahead, click on the link, but don’t be disappointed if the only date that comes up is the March 28 show in San Diego. We expect to have the entire listing momentarily. So, if you don’t see the list now, keep checking back. Okay?

That’s because U2’s home office promised us that they’d send the list of shows as soon as possible. Which is an improvement over past U2 tours when they’d make us jump through an unlimited number of hoops just to list the first leg. For unlike other tours, where slipping a few bucks to the road manager, or maybe sending a couple of bottles of Boone’s Farm to the booking agent would ensure access to the official itinerary, U2 has always called the tune regarding their concert routing.

For instance, there was that U2 tour back in the early 1990s. In hopes of getting a scoop on the competition, we went down to the local U2 drive-thru office located in our home town of Fresno, California, and offered the cashier an extra ten bucks and a gift certificate for a six-month subscription to Rolling Stone that somebody gave us for Christmas back in 1985. Oh, sure, they kept the money, but for six months they keep throwing the latest RS issue through our front window. Tied to a rock.

So when they toured in the mid `90s, we didn’t bother with the local office. Instead, we went straight to the regional U2 branch in Sacramento, where we delivered a case of Guinness to all of the band’s clerical employees working the night shift. Okay, so it wasn’t real Guinness. Instead, we purchased a case of Miller Lite and then poured it into empty Guinness bottles we found out back in our box office editor’s personal Dumpster. But did we get the dates before everybody else? Heck no. We didn’t even get the empty Guinness cans back so that we could take them to the recycler.

But this time is going to be different. That’s because, for U2’s latest tour, we didn’t bother with the local, regional, or even U2’s statewide office. Oh, no. Instead, we started laying the groundwork for a U2 tour-dates scoop over two weeks ago when we flew out to New York to catch the band during their Saturday Night Live appearance. We hung out by the stage door, and when the boys walked out of NBC we managed to grab their attention. Don’t ask us how, and please don’t ask us when, but soon, dear friends, soon, we’ll be posting the U2 tour. And to think all it took was to plead our case to the band itself.

That, and knocking Bono over the head, tying him up and then stuffing him into the trunk of our car, after which, we whisked him off to a hunter’s cabin located deep in the woods. And that’s where he’ll stay until U2’s management coughs up the dates. In fact, they should be calling at any moment. Or at least, that’s what they said the last time we talked to them. Ten hours ago.

Hmmm… Maybe we would have gotten quicker results if we had snagged Edge instead. Oh, well, you know what they say about hindsight being 20/20.