"...it's called Don't Panic".
Let's get the "not as good"'s out of the way first, cos they bother me. A) The crowd was nowhere near as good tonight in San Jose. It really seemed like they weren't enjoying themselves...a good portion of my section sat down for most of the concert, which I guess is better than B) being either a gross, touchy-feely middle-aged couple who like to grope themselves whilst Yellow is playing or a gross, touchy-feely high school couple who like to sway in time holding each other whilst Clocks is playing. G.R.O.S.S. Period. And that's about it for the not as good's. Off we go then...hey-up (approximate written translation of what Chris Martin shouts before about 3 songs start)!
Naturally, they opened with Square One. It's a great opening song, and I didn't realize that Chris jumps down a level as the song kicks in...plus that giant countdown is enough to make someone piss themselves from excitement, however you feel about Coldplay. Then they launched right into Politik (hey-up song number 1). I really like the lighting on this one. Crazy, crazy flashes going in all sorts of directions during the chorus, and just a single spotlight on Chris at the piano during the first verse, then two spotlights on Chris & Johnny during the second verse, and so on. Have I mentioned how visually impressive these shows are? Even if I was somewhat blah about the music, the visuals alone would be worth the price of admission. OK, so we've done one off of X&Y, one from A Rush of Blood to the Head, so then it was time for Yellow (hey-up song number 2), from Parachutes. I gotta be honest, I've come around 180 degrees on this song, mirroring my general coming-around on Coldplay as a whole. If someone close to me wanted to be enough of an ass to bring it up, I actually mocked the song when I first heard it. Times change, cos now I love it. And the balloons...did I MENTION the balloons? Giant yellow balloons falling from the ceiling as the song is ending...filled with gold glitter. I actually got to hit one tonight, it was fun. Next was Speed of Sound, which I'm gonna have to call my 2nd-to-last favorite track off X&Y. Maybe it's cos it was their first single from the album, and it's been radioed to death or whatever...don't get me wrong, I like it, just not as much as the others. And it's hard to fall in love with any song if it's followed immediately by God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, hands-down one of my 3 favorite songs from any album and easily the best track of AROBTTH. This one, like Yellow, is given away cos Chris comes to the mike with a guitar and starts strumming the music, then stops to chat a sec, then picks the music back up.
Which brings us to our first quote of the evening: "This is actually our first time in San Jose. And, like your first time having sex, it should be fast and special...Although, the first time I had sex, it didn't last an hour and 45 minutes with an encore." HI-larious. Believe it or not, this isn't the funniest thing Chris said all night.
Next came X&Y, which always bugs me cos it's the title track and I really don't care for it. It's just very slow and boring, and there aren't even any fun lyrics to appreciate. I don't really know why they perform it, I can't imagine there are too many fans out there dying to hear it. But that could just be me. Then came The Way You See the World, which wasn't performed at Shoreline, so I heard it for the first time anywhere in Oakland. It's a really good song, and I need to find a copy of it. If you're keeping track, it's the song that prompted Chris' discussion on choreography from the last post. Then we come to the longest quote of the night:
"You know how when you've been in California for like 2 days and your hair gets really dirty? Well, before tonight's show, I washed my hair so it would look good. Then, 5 minutes before we are supposed to go on, our manager comes and looks at me and says that I look like a Bee Gee. And that's not good. Nothing against the music of the Bee Gees, but they are 40 years older than us. So, this song's about when your manager comes up to you 5 minutes before you go on and tells you you look like Barry Gibb...it's called Don't Panic."
Then he starts the chords for Don't Panic, and sings "Well you can tell by the way I use my walk..."...pretty funny moment. Don't Panic always makes me smile cos I think of how it messes with Gibble's mind and she thinks that Coldplay is all of a sudden covering The Shins when they play it. Next up was perhaps the best back-to-back of the whole show, White Shadows (aka The Guitar Song) and The Scientist. I'm especially a fan of White Shadows live cos it allows all present to witness the absolute dorkiness that is Chris Martin dancing. I think I identify with it so much cos I see myself dancing the same way to that song, lots of one-footed hopping and stabbing an arm into the air. This is also the song where they have the cool background, with what I guess you would call negative images on the screen. For example, Chris' black shirt becomes white and Guy's white face becomes a dark shade of grey. Got it? It inspired the black & yellow Hand t-shirt design if anyone gets to a gig on this tour. The Scientist is fantastic cos it's the first British-style, 200,000-people audience type sing-along song. Of course the HP Pavilion at San Jose isn't Wembley, or Hyde Park, but cos it's a song that I file under "triumphant-sounding", it's great for 20,000 people (at the very least) to sing along to. I guess the San Jose people didn't get the memo about that, though...losers. It does feature one of my favorite lyrics, "Questions of sciiiiiience...science and proooo-gress...do not speak as loud as my heaarrrrrrt."
You can tell they're about to sing Kingdom Come cos someone brings out two stools, and they all huddle together in the middle of the stage like they belong on a porch in Tennessee or Kentucky. The fact that a harmonica features prominently in the song doesn't hurt the image, either. Plus it's tons of fun cos it allows them to launch right into Ring of Fire, cos they wrote Kingdom Come for Johnny Cash (ask Gibble about the hi-larious story they told at Shoreline), and that means a fun quote between songs from Chris Martin: "We wrote that song cos we love Johnny Cash. And June wrote this song cos she loved Johnny Cash." What a perfect little transition between songs. It's funny to hear Chris put on a twang to sing ROF, it's really the only time he changes his normal voice, cos the Britishness seeps through on basically every song they sing. OK, one more thing about the crowd's lameness and I'll stop. Chris said the quote about June, and I can understand that not everyone knows that June wrote Ring of Fire, but then they played the first chords from it, and people STILL did not realize what the song was! They were all mumbling, and when Chris started to sing, they applauded, albeit mildly. Lameasses.
Then came Trouble, a lesser track off of Parachutes. Their really slow songs are quite hit-or-miss now that I think about it. Luckily for every X&Y and Trouble, there's a A Rush of Blood to the Head or Sparks to make up for it. Clocks (hey-up song number 3) might just be the most in-your-face song they perform. It starts off with swirling rainbow lights and just a bum-bum-bum-bum of a bass line, and then a drum roll. When I first heard it in Oakland, I didn't know where they were going with it, but by tonight I was an old pro, just waiting for the opening piano. I'll toss in here that it is Clocks that I have to thank for getting me to where I am today, Coldplay-fan wise. Heard it at the end of a particularly excellent ER episode, and the rest as they say is history. So, don't say that TV is all bad. And if you need any evidence of the awesome crossover appeal that Coldplay has, I point out that Brandon - by no stretch of the imagination a potential Coldplay fan in waiting - had Clocks as his ring tone for a good long while 4th year. They do a particularly amazing thing at the end, where Chris counts down from 8 (what's up with them & countdowns, huh?) and the music gets progressively faster at each number, so by the time he screams zero! and they stop, the crowd just erupts. I think this is where our final quote came in, and if not I'm sticking it here cos it's great:
"You really have some lovely girls here in California, d'you know that? I probably shouldn'tve said that out loud, should I?...I was just trying to be charming, now I'm coming off as infidelious (what a great word, never heard it before tonight, and it sounds totally made up). That's gonna have Gwyneth smashing down my door, probably." He mentioned Gwynny! How great is that?! I think it's great. They fake-closed the show with Talk, which has prolly had the greatest overall increase in my enjoyment of it out of any track on X&Y. Plus, another fantastic opportunity to witness Chris Martin's singular brand of dancing. I forgot to mention in the Oakland post, but whilst singing Talk at the Arena, he reached down into the front row, TOOK SOMEONE'S CELL PHONE AND STARTED SINGING INTO IT. So, for future reference, if you ever get a phone call with a lot of loud noise, and a British-sounding guy loudly alternating between normal and falsettos singing, you know what's what. And that BEAR...Gibble & my mom know, don't worry.
I literally didn't stop clapping during the entire pre-encore trickery, which is why I think I was rewarded with a performance of The Hardest Part. Granted, it had to come at the expense of Swallowed in the Sea, but it's such a delightfully happy song that I didn't mind at all. Then came In My Place, which will go down forever until the end of time as one of the single greatest performances I have ever witnessed. Remember how last night in Oakland Chris ran around the outside of the floor seats, and mom & I went crazy enough to get within spitting distance of Chris? Well, I knew for damn sure that he was gonna do the running-around thing again tonight, and I was on the opposite side of the arena from our seats in Oakland. As soon as I saw him leap off stage, I made a bee line for the floor. I was the only one who knew what was up, so the two security people had no time forming a wall to prevent me from, let's face the facts here, tackling Chris Martin as he ran by. As it was, I lunged over Security Guy's shoulder, and was able to grope/swipe the top of Chris' torso as he ran by. And, yes, it was just as stalkery as it looks in print. But you know what, it was just as awesome as it could've been. Well, I guess he COULD'VE high fived me. Oh well, he was in a hurry. And, let me add in my defense, he was way more molested by the pre-teens he sang to in finishing the song. Every time I hear In My Place, or it's brought up, I always have to drop in my dorky lil bit of trivia that they wrote that song right after they were gonna break up. They were burnt out, ready to part ways, then went into the studio, toughed it out, and wrote In My Place. It sounds like a victory song you'd write after realizing your band isn't breaking up. And it's most definitely in 200,000-people sing-along territory. They closed with Fix You, which I still stand by only fully enjoying once it gets into the happier part. I love that they've brought the hanging light bulb in for these shows, cos it makes me think of how mindnumbingly fantastic the end of the music video is. There was a great moment tonight, when the crowd finally redeemed itself. Chris is singing the last bit of the song, and does "Lights will guide you home", and everyone is singing along so loudly that he stops right there, and let's us sing the rest, all while he's smiling like a big goofball on stage. Great stuff.
I've seen them on back-to-back nights, but I'm still right where Gibb and I were after Shoreline, where all you wanna do is see them again RIGHT THEN. If I knew for sure I could get non-rip off scalper tickets, I'd be jetting down to LA to catch them at the Forum Thursday night. Oh well. I'll wrap this up with a great non-sequiter story. I was wearing my England 10 track jacket tonight, and the back was facing the aisle, and this highly inebriated Irishman comes up behind me, taps me on the shoulder, and says, "Mate, we are gonna beat your fuckin ass on Saturday, man!" Firstly, how great was it that he worked "mate" and "man" into the same phrase? Secondly, are Ireland and England even playing anything on Saturday??? Who knows, but the Irishman and his alcohol-fueled patriotism (misdirected, of course) fit right into the fantabulous evening.
I'd like to thank my cell phone, for storing the song order in one-word-per-song form as a continuously updated text message (Gibb gets lucky at her concerts, and swipes set lists). And thanks of course to Chris, Guy, Johnny, and Will for two fantastic evenings of being rocked proper.
Naturally, they opened with Square One. It's a great opening song, and I didn't realize that Chris jumps down a level as the song kicks in...plus that giant countdown is enough to make someone piss themselves from excitement, however you feel about Coldplay. Then they launched right into Politik (hey-up song number 1). I really like the lighting on this one. Crazy, crazy flashes going in all sorts of directions during the chorus, and just a single spotlight on Chris at the piano during the first verse, then two spotlights on Chris & Johnny during the second verse, and so on. Have I mentioned how visually impressive these shows are? Even if I was somewhat blah about the music, the visuals alone would be worth the price of admission. OK, so we've done one off of X&Y, one from A Rush of Blood to the Head, so then it was time for Yellow (hey-up song number 2), from Parachutes. I gotta be honest, I've come around 180 degrees on this song, mirroring my general coming-around on Coldplay as a whole. If someone close to me wanted to be enough of an ass to bring it up, I actually mocked the song when I first heard it. Times change, cos now I love it. And the balloons...did I MENTION the balloons? Giant yellow balloons falling from the ceiling as the song is ending...filled with gold glitter. I actually got to hit one tonight, it was fun. Next was Speed of Sound, which I'm gonna have to call my 2nd-to-last favorite track off X&Y. Maybe it's cos it was their first single from the album, and it's been radioed to death or whatever...don't get me wrong, I like it, just not as much as the others. And it's hard to fall in love with any song if it's followed immediately by God Put a Smile Upon Your Face, hands-down one of my 3 favorite songs from any album and easily the best track of AROBTTH. This one, like Yellow, is given away cos Chris comes to the mike with a guitar and starts strumming the music, then stops to chat a sec, then picks the music back up.
Which brings us to our first quote of the evening: "This is actually our first time in San Jose. And, like your first time having sex, it should be fast and special...Although, the first time I had sex, it didn't last an hour and 45 minutes with an encore." HI-larious. Believe it or not, this isn't the funniest thing Chris said all night.
Next came X&Y, which always bugs me cos it's the title track and I really don't care for it. It's just very slow and boring, and there aren't even any fun lyrics to appreciate. I don't really know why they perform it, I can't imagine there are too many fans out there dying to hear it. But that could just be me. Then came The Way You See the World, which wasn't performed at Shoreline, so I heard it for the first time anywhere in Oakland. It's a really good song, and I need to find a copy of it. If you're keeping track, it's the song that prompted Chris' discussion on choreography from the last post. Then we come to the longest quote of the night:
"You know how when you've been in California for like 2 days and your hair gets really dirty? Well, before tonight's show, I washed my hair so it would look good. Then, 5 minutes before we are supposed to go on, our manager comes and looks at me and says that I look like a Bee Gee. And that's not good. Nothing against the music of the Bee Gees, but they are 40 years older than us. So, this song's about when your manager comes up to you 5 minutes before you go on and tells you you look like Barry Gibb...it's called Don't Panic."
Then he starts the chords for Don't Panic, and sings "Well you can tell by the way I use my walk..."...pretty funny moment. Don't Panic always makes me smile cos I think of how it messes with Gibble's mind and she thinks that Coldplay is all of a sudden covering The Shins when they play it. Next up was perhaps the best back-to-back of the whole show, White Shadows (aka The Guitar Song) and The Scientist. I'm especially a fan of White Shadows live cos it allows all present to witness the absolute dorkiness that is Chris Martin dancing. I think I identify with it so much cos I see myself dancing the same way to that song, lots of one-footed hopping and stabbing an arm into the air. This is also the song where they have the cool background, with what I guess you would call negative images on the screen. For example, Chris' black shirt becomes white and Guy's white face becomes a dark shade of grey. Got it? It inspired the black & yellow Hand t-shirt design if anyone gets to a gig on this tour. The Scientist is fantastic cos it's the first British-style, 200,000-people audience type sing-along song. Of course the HP Pavilion at San Jose isn't Wembley, or Hyde Park, but cos it's a song that I file under "triumphant-sounding", it's great for 20,000 people (at the very least) to sing along to. I guess the San Jose people didn't get the memo about that, though...losers. It does feature one of my favorite lyrics, "Questions of sciiiiiience...science and proooo-gress...do not speak as loud as my heaarrrrrrt."
You can tell they're about to sing Kingdom Come cos someone brings out two stools, and they all huddle together in the middle of the stage like they belong on a porch in Tennessee or Kentucky. The fact that a harmonica features prominently in the song doesn't hurt the image, either. Plus it's tons of fun cos it allows them to launch right into Ring of Fire, cos they wrote Kingdom Come for Johnny Cash (ask Gibble about the hi-larious story they told at Shoreline), and that means a fun quote between songs from Chris Martin: "We wrote that song cos we love Johnny Cash. And June wrote this song cos she loved Johnny Cash." What a perfect little transition between songs. It's funny to hear Chris put on a twang to sing ROF, it's really the only time he changes his normal voice, cos the Britishness seeps through on basically every song they sing. OK, one more thing about the crowd's lameness and I'll stop. Chris said the quote about June, and I can understand that not everyone knows that June wrote Ring of Fire, but then they played the first chords from it, and people STILL did not realize what the song was! They were all mumbling, and when Chris started to sing, they applauded, albeit mildly. Lameasses.
Then came Trouble, a lesser track off of Parachutes. Their really slow songs are quite hit-or-miss now that I think about it. Luckily for every X&Y and Trouble, there's a A Rush of Blood to the Head or Sparks to make up for it. Clocks (hey-up song number 3) might just be the most in-your-face song they perform. It starts off with swirling rainbow lights and just a bum-bum-bum-bum of a bass line, and then a drum roll. When I first heard it in Oakland, I didn't know where they were going with it, but by tonight I was an old pro, just waiting for the opening piano. I'll toss in here that it is Clocks that I have to thank for getting me to where I am today, Coldplay-fan wise. Heard it at the end of a particularly excellent ER episode, and the rest as they say is history. So, don't say that TV is all bad. And if you need any evidence of the awesome crossover appeal that Coldplay has, I point out that Brandon - by no stretch of the imagination a potential Coldplay fan in waiting - had Clocks as his ring tone for a good long while 4th year. They do a particularly amazing thing at the end, where Chris counts down from 8 (what's up with them & countdowns, huh?) and the music gets progressively faster at each number, so by the time he screams zero! and they stop, the crowd just erupts. I think this is where our final quote came in, and if not I'm sticking it here cos it's great:
"You really have some lovely girls here in California, d'you know that? I probably shouldn'tve said that out loud, should I?...I was just trying to be charming, now I'm coming off as infidelious (what a great word, never heard it before tonight, and it sounds totally made up). That's gonna have Gwyneth smashing down my door, probably." He mentioned Gwynny! How great is that?! I think it's great. They fake-closed the show with Talk, which has prolly had the greatest overall increase in my enjoyment of it out of any track on X&Y. Plus, another fantastic opportunity to witness Chris Martin's singular brand of dancing. I forgot to mention in the Oakland post, but whilst singing Talk at the Arena, he reached down into the front row, TOOK SOMEONE'S CELL PHONE AND STARTED SINGING INTO IT. So, for future reference, if you ever get a phone call with a lot of loud noise, and a British-sounding guy loudly alternating between normal and falsettos singing, you know what's what. And that BEAR...Gibble & my mom know, don't worry.
I literally didn't stop clapping during the entire pre-encore trickery, which is why I think I was rewarded with a performance of The Hardest Part. Granted, it had to come at the expense of Swallowed in the Sea, but it's such a delightfully happy song that I didn't mind at all. Then came In My Place, which will go down forever until the end of time as one of the single greatest performances I have ever witnessed. Remember how last night in Oakland Chris ran around the outside of the floor seats, and mom & I went crazy enough to get within spitting distance of Chris? Well, I knew for damn sure that he was gonna do the running-around thing again tonight, and I was on the opposite side of the arena from our seats in Oakland. As soon as I saw him leap off stage, I made a bee line for the floor. I was the only one who knew what was up, so the two security people had no time forming a wall to prevent me from, let's face the facts here, tackling Chris Martin as he ran by. As it was, I lunged over Security Guy's shoulder, and was able to grope/swipe the top of Chris' torso as he ran by. And, yes, it was just as stalkery as it looks in print. But you know what, it was just as awesome as it could've been. Well, I guess he COULD'VE high fived me. Oh well, he was in a hurry. And, let me add in my defense, he was way more molested by the pre-teens he sang to in finishing the song. Every time I hear In My Place, or it's brought up, I always have to drop in my dorky lil bit of trivia that they wrote that song right after they were gonna break up. They were burnt out, ready to part ways, then went into the studio, toughed it out, and wrote In My Place. It sounds like a victory song you'd write after realizing your band isn't breaking up. And it's most definitely in 200,000-people sing-along territory. They closed with Fix You, which I still stand by only fully enjoying once it gets into the happier part. I love that they've brought the hanging light bulb in for these shows, cos it makes me think of how mindnumbingly fantastic the end of the music video is. There was a great moment tonight, when the crowd finally redeemed itself. Chris is singing the last bit of the song, and does "Lights will guide you home", and everyone is singing along so loudly that he stops right there, and let's us sing the rest, all while he's smiling like a big goofball on stage. Great stuff.
I've seen them on back-to-back nights, but I'm still right where Gibb and I were after Shoreline, where all you wanna do is see them again RIGHT THEN. If I knew for sure I could get non-rip off scalper tickets, I'd be jetting down to LA to catch them at the Forum Thursday night. Oh well. I'll wrap this up with a great non-sequiter story. I was wearing my England 10 track jacket tonight, and the back was facing the aisle, and this highly inebriated Irishman comes up behind me, taps me on the shoulder, and says, "Mate, we are gonna beat your fuckin ass on Saturday, man!" Firstly, how great was it that he worked "mate" and "man" into the same phrase? Secondly, are Ireland and England even playing anything on Saturday??? Who knows, but the Irishman and his alcohol-fueled patriotism (misdirected, of course) fit right into the fantabulous evening.
I'd like to thank my cell phone, for storing the song order in one-word-per-song form as a continuously updated text message (Gibb gets lucky at her concerts, and swipes set lists). And thanks of course to Chris, Guy, Johnny, and Will for two fantastic evenings of being rocked proper.