As I mentioned yesterday, last night I attended the Coldplay concert here in Raleigh at Alltel Pavillion.
I’ve been a fan of Coldplay for five years at least, and this was the first time I’d had the opportunity to see them live.
Let’s get a few observations out of the way first. The crowd was far larger than I thought it would be, and it was far younger–average age of the audience was under twenty–and women outnumber men by about two to one. Someone in the band is clearly a Beatles fan–they came on stage to “Tomorrow Never Knows,” left the stage to “Goodnight,” and ascribed “Happy Birthday” to the Beatles when they asked the crowd to join in a rousing rendition of the song in celebration of Jon Buckland’s birthday. On another fannish note, I must wonder if Chris Martin is a Doctor Who fan–the backing videos to their performances of “Speed of Sound” and “The Scientist” owed a good bit to the opening titles of the Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy eras, respectively.
Now, for the concert itself.
Coldplay played a brisk set, finishing up in about an hour and a half, and covered most of their major songs off their three albums, plus a cover of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” Except for “The Scientist” (which had to be restarted when a coughing fit put Chris Martin out of synch with the backing video) the music went off without a hitch. The lyrics of “Politik” were updated to reflect the tragic devestation of New Orleans; “Everything’s Not Lost” poked fun at the Backstreet Boys and praised the vast masses on the lawn seats for supporting the band. Other than those lyrical variations, the songs played live were very much identical to their album versions–creativity, live in front of the audience, simply didn’t happen.
Souvenirs! I bought the tour program, which is a very nice photo book with the lyrics from X&Y. I also bought a tee-shirt, which I plan on never wearing.
I had a great time, and I’m glad I went. I looked forward to seeing Coldplay for two months, and they didn’t disappoint.
“The lyrics of “Politik” were updated to reflect the tragic devestation of New Orleans”
That’d be so interesting to hear – I’m going to pass that on to my roommate, both of us are big Coldplay fans. 😀
– Em
I’m not sure how they rhymed into it, but the specific line was “Send your love to New Orleans,” replacing “Give me real, don’t give me fake.” I wish I could remember what the preceding line was.
Hopefully we’ll get an official concert DVD/CD release from this tour. 🙂
I think the preceding line was, “We’ve got the wealth, we’ve got the means.” Wealth is a bit fuzzy though.