Sun 26 Oct – Coldplay, Duffy
I was not a Coldplay fan until I heard their latest album, "Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends." Which, in my mind, was one of the best releases of 2008. I didn't care for their previous release, X&Y, which had a few nice tunes on it but overall was lacking substance. Viva La Vida turned me into a Coldplay fan, and as I listened, I decided to get tickets to their show at the Izod Center in East Rutherford.
I still wasn't a huge Coldplay fan when I bought the tickets but I really enjoyed the new album and I thought I would enjoy it even more to see them live. The concert sold out on Ticketmaster within 10 minutes, so I thought, hey, why not get some of their other albums? I started with rummaging through my CD collection to find my old copy of X&Y, and listened to the two albums for a while. X&Y still had some songs I couldn't get into, but on the whole, I was digging the band.
The summer zoomed by and last week a thought crept in my head: "Holy crap, I'm seeing Coldplay this week. AAAAAAAHHH!!!" Quickly I got the albums "Parachutes" and "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" and put them on heavy repeat. I was ready to go.
PRE-SHOW
Anyone who has been to the Izod Center, Giants Stadium, or the Meadowlands as a whole knows that the parking situation there is comparable to one of those broken car dumps in East Orange. This is why we spent the extra $25 to get "VIP" parking on Deck 23. We ended up stopping, starting, gas, break, ect, ect until we reached Deck 23 and parked. From there it was a quick and easy walk to the entrance. We got in our seats at around 7:40, which were in Section 111, Row 16.
They were really awesome seats. We went out and bought drinks and a bag of Cracker Jacks. There were people of all ages and sizes at the concert: the youngest I saw was a boy who was no older than seven or eight and the oldest was a couple that were probably in their 60s or early 70s. The dominant age group seemed to be men in their early 30s and girls age 15-20.
I was really looking forward to seeing the band, but I was NOT looking forward to spending a night at the Izod Center, which is infamous for its horrible sound system and mediocre acoustics, and it's a pretty old and outdated arena. My thoughts were only confirmed when an electrical fire broke out by the t-shirt stand and people started running (I thought that was it, the Izod Center is finally going down) and then when there was no fire extinguisher to be found, a guard pulled the plug out of the wall which somehow stopped the fire. Fortunately, that was only one of two things that went wrong at the concert.
The second thing that went wrong was the opening act, Duffy. The young, Welsh pop singer bored me to tears. I have her debut CD, and it's not bad (ok for background music) but live, dear god....she had this high pitched bubbly squeaky voice and she kept thanking the audience and asking them to dance (there were MAYBE 500 people in the arena when she was performing). She played about six or seven songs and then left the stage.
By this time it was around 8:35, and there were still extremely few people in the arena. I was getting worried that that's all that were going to show up. For the next 40 minutes, it remained that way, until at around 9:15 when people really started filling in. And at 9:20, the lights went down--people were screaming so loudly I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hear the music.
Coldplay took the stage and played the sprawling opening track from their new album, Life In Technicolor. Fortunately the sound system was decent for the show; the last concert I saw at the Izod Center was Van Halen and it was a complete, utter mess. Coldplay is more acoustic rock and so they had better control over the Izod Center's shitty sound system, so it worked out ok. Whenever the lights splashed onto the audience, my mouth dropped open at how many god damn people were at this concert. It was most definitely sold out, but don't ask me where the hell everyone was before about 9:15.
One thing I had not anticipated was how awesome Coldplay is at performing. Frontman Chris Martin was up to par to such performers as Sting, Bruce Springsteen, and even David Lee Roth. Ok, maybe not David Lee Roth, but he certainly came close. He was constantly dancing, running out towards the crowd, and he is an AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING piano player. Absolutely amazing. He really electrified the audience and the atmosphere in the arena was mindblowing.
They played a brilliant set, consisting of 10 out of 12 songs on their new album, among many old favorites. In addition to the fantastic music, the show was also a visual spectacle, complete with lasers, big colorful hanging orbs, huge explosions of glow-in-the-dark confetti, and massive backdrops. We were sitting to the side of the stage so we couldn't see everything but from what we did see, we were amazed.
Coldplay also did something I had never seen before at a concert--all four of them took acoustic versions of their instruments and ran to the far side of the arena, climbed up section 103, and played two songs acoustically in the crowd. That was really cool, even though I couldn't see anything from a far and had to watch it on the big screen hanging from above.
I could go on and on about how the band performed, which was better than most of the bands I've seen in my short life (25+ concerts that I've seen), but what mattered most to me was the atmosphere in the crowd. During "Fix You" and "Strawberry Swing," it was as if Chris Martin had cast a spell over everyone. At one moment I felt like everyone was going to start crying because of how beautiful all the lights were, the sweet high chords in Strawberry Swing and the explosive riffs in Fix You, the mesmerizing piano part in Death And All His Friends, everything just came together--and I simply could not believe I was at a concert of a band that most people I know absolutely despise.
The band's final song was Death And All His Friends, and then they played an explosive version of Yellow for their encore, and as they said goodbye, and as people began to file out, seeping in from the sound system ever so softly was the opening to Life In Technicolor. It was as if the magic was about to happen again. But it didn't....I had to go home, go to bed, wake up, and go to school.
Today at school I wore my brand new Coldplay shirt with pride. How many people called me gay and made fun of me? About five or six, sadly. But I didn't care. The concert moved me. Really. Coldplay isn't as original as Radiohead, or as renowned as U2, but still--Coldplay shattered my conceptions at what was possible to see at a concert. After seeing them live, they have become one of my favorite bands, next to Ween and The Beatles.
Buying tickets for this concert as a very casual fan back in June was one of the smartest decisions I've ever made, and I'm already looking forward to their next tour. Thanks for an amazing night, Coldplay.
SETLIST:
Life In Technicolor
Violet Hill
Clocks
In My Place
Speed of Sound
Cemeteries of London
Chinese Sleep Chant
42
Fix You
Strawberry Swing
Talk
The Hardest Part (acoustic)
Viva La Vida
Lost!
The Scientist (acoustic, played in crowd)
Death Will Never Conquer (acoustic, played in crowd)
Politik
Lovers In Japan
Death And All His Friends
ENCORE
Yellow
additional pictures:
I was not a Coldplay fan until I heard their latest album, "Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends." Which, in my mind, was one of the best releases of 2008. I didn't care for their previous release, X&Y, which had a few nice tunes on it but overall was lacking substance. Viva La Vida turned me into a Coldplay fan, and as I listened, I decided to get tickets to their show at the Izod Center in East Rutherford.
I still wasn't a huge Coldplay fan when I bought the tickets but I really enjoyed the new album and I thought I would enjoy it even more to see them live. The concert sold out on Ticketmaster within 10 minutes, so I thought, hey, why not get some of their other albums? I started with rummaging through my CD collection to find my old copy of X&Y, and listened to the two albums for a while. X&Y still had some songs I couldn't get into, but on the whole, I was digging the band.
The summer zoomed by and last week a thought crept in my head: "Holy crap, I'm seeing Coldplay this week. AAAAAAAHHH!!!" Quickly I got the albums "Parachutes" and "A Rush Of Blood To The Head" and put them on heavy repeat. I was ready to go.
PRE-SHOW
Anyone who has been to the Izod Center, Giants Stadium, or the Meadowlands as a whole knows that the parking situation there is comparable to one of those broken car dumps in East Orange. This is why we spent the extra $25 to get "VIP" parking on Deck 23. We ended up stopping, starting, gas, break, ect, ect until we reached Deck 23 and parked. From there it was a quick and easy walk to the entrance. We got in our seats at around 7:40, which were in Section 111, Row 16.
They were really awesome seats. We went out and bought drinks and a bag of Cracker Jacks. There were people of all ages and sizes at the concert: the youngest I saw was a boy who was no older than seven or eight and the oldest was a couple that were probably in their 60s or early 70s. The dominant age group seemed to be men in their early 30s and girls age 15-20.
I was really looking forward to seeing the band, but I was NOT looking forward to spending a night at the Izod Center, which is infamous for its horrible sound system and mediocre acoustics, and it's a pretty old and outdated arena. My thoughts were only confirmed when an electrical fire broke out by the t-shirt stand and people started running (I thought that was it, the Izod Center is finally going down) and then when there was no fire extinguisher to be found, a guard pulled the plug out of the wall which somehow stopped the fire. Fortunately, that was only one of two things that went wrong at the concert.
The second thing that went wrong was the opening act, Duffy. The young, Welsh pop singer bored me to tears. I have her debut CD, and it's not bad (ok for background music) but live, dear god....she had this high pitched bubbly squeaky voice and she kept thanking the audience and asking them to dance (there were MAYBE 500 people in the arena when she was performing). She played about six or seven songs and then left the stage.
By this time it was around 8:35, and there were still extremely few people in the arena. I was getting worried that that's all that were going to show up. For the next 40 minutes, it remained that way, until at around 9:15 when people really started filling in. And at 9:20, the lights went down--people were screaming so loudly I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hear the music.
Coldplay took the stage and played the sprawling opening track from their new album, Life In Technicolor. Fortunately the sound system was decent for the show; the last concert I saw at the Izod Center was Van Halen and it was a complete, utter mess. Coldplay is more acoustic rock and so they had better control over the Izod Center's shitty sound system, so it worked out ok. Whenever the lights splashed onto the audience, my mouth dropped open at how many god damn people were at this concert. It was most definitely sold out, but don't ask me where the hell everyone was before about 9:15.
One thing I had not anticipated was how awesome Coldplay is at performing. Frontman Chris Martin was up to par to such performers as Sting, Bruce Springsteen, and even David Lee Roth. Ok, maybe not David Lee Roth, but he certainly came close. He was constantly dancing, running out towards the crowd, and he is an AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING piano player. Absolutely amazing. He really electrified the audience and the atmosphere in the arena was mindblowing.
They played a brilliant set, consisting of 10 out of 12 songs on their new album, among many old favorites. In addition to the fantastic music, the show was also a visual spectacle, complete with lasers, big colorful hanging orbs, huge explosions of glow-in-the-dark confetti, and massive backdrops. We were sitting to the side of the stage so we couldn't see everything but from what we did see, we were amazed.
Coldplay also did something I had never seen before at a concert--all four of them took acoustic versions of their instruments and ran to the far side of the arena, climbed up section 103, and played two songs acoustically in the crowd. That was really cool, even though I couldn't see anything from a far and had to watch it on the big screen hanging from above.
I could go on and on about how the band performed, which was better than most of the bands I've seen in my short life (25+ concerts that I've seen), but what mattered most to me was the atmosphere in the crowd. During "Fix You" and "Strawberry Swing," it was as if Chris Martin had cast a spell over everyone. At one moment I felt like everyone was going to start crying because of how beautiful all the lights were, the sweet high chords in Strawberry Swing and the explosive riffs in Fix You, the mesmerizing piano part in Death And All His Friends, everything just came together--and I simply could not believe I was at a concert of a band that most people I know absolutely despise.
The band's final song was Death And All His Friends, and then they played an explosive version of Yellow for their encore, and as they said goodbye, and as people began to file out, seeping in from the sound system ever so softly was the opening to Life In Technicolor. It was as if the magic was about to happen again. But it didn't....I had to go home, go to bed, wake up, and go to school.
Today at school I wore my brand new Coldplay shirt with pride. How many people called me gay and made fun of me? About five or six, sadly. But I didn't care. The concert moved me. Really. Coldplay isn't as original as Radiohead, or as renowned as U2, but still--Coldplay shattered my conceptions at what was possible to see at a concert. After seeing them live, they have become one of my favorite bands, next to Ween and The Beatles.
Buying tickets for this concert as a very casual fan back in June was one of the smartest decisions I've ever made, and I'm already looking forward to their next tour. Thanks for an amazing night, Coldplay.
SETLIST:
Life In Technicolor
Violet Hill
Clocks
In My Place
Speed of Sound
Cemeteries of London
Chinese Sleep Chant
42
Fix You
Strawberry Swing
Talk
The Hardest Part (acoustic)
Viva La Vida
Lost!
The Scientist (acoustic, played in crowd)
Death Will Never Conquer (acoustic, played in crowd)
Politik
Lovers In Japan
Death And All His Friends
ENCORE
Yellow
additional pictures:
