Coldplay

Last night, Brad and I went to the last Coldplay show in North America (for this tour) and it was GREAT!!! We had a good time. The opening band was Richard Ashcroft, who was the lead singer of the Verve. He was pretty good, but a little bit out there. Coldplay opened with “Square One” and then went into “Politik” and “Yellow.” During Yellow, these huge yellow balloons dropped down from the ceiling. As people were hitting them around, I noticed something floating inside them, and when they popped, gold confetti came out. It looked really cool!! I don’t remember the rest of the order of the songs, but they played most of their big shows.

Chris Martin said he had woken up in New York and was sure he wouldn’t be able to sing, but he went to see some doctor at UPenn who fixed his voice so he was able to perform. They did a little tribute to Johnny Cash, which he said they have done at every show over the past year. He said “We got our style of dress from him, except our shoes, which we got from Venus Williams.” (They were wearing all black (obviously!) with white sneakers. It was quite a look!!) It was really fun! He sang the song that is covered on the X&Y album (I think it’s called “Kingdom Come”) and then they went into “Ring of Fire,” which was so fun!! The crowd loved it. After the Johnny Cash tribute was finished, he said “This keyboard is dead. Just goes to show you, never buy a keyboard from George W Bush.” Hysterical!!

I was just completely amazed by how much energy Chris has. He was running all over the place during the whole show and jumping up on the piano and everything. He’s really fun and he kept asking to make sure everyone was doing ok.

Before Coldplay came out, some enterprising fan (who has a lot of time on their hands) had made “over 9000 signs” to hold up at the end of the show. Some of the said “Thank You” and others said “USA Loves Coldplay.” (The bottom of the sign said “There are over 9000 signs here tonight. Please hold up at the beginning of the first encore to become a part of Coldplay Concert History.) We kind of confused about this, but then when he said it was the last North American show of the tour, it made sense. So, everyone was holding them up during the last song, and then they came out and did three songs as an encore and ended with “Fix You,” which is a great song!

We also saw them in August, at an outdoor arena, which was similar to this show, but I think last night’s was better. They had a lot of energy and seemed very excited to be there. I am sure they were very excited as well because they are taking a couple of months off!!

And thanks to Brad’s friend Jeremy who got us some excellent seats! We were in the lower level on the side about three sections back from the stage, 14 rows back, the last two seats on the end of the row. Perfect!!