A Night to Remember

So, on Sunday evening, Heather and I drove down to Irvine to see Coldplay. The show was really, really good despite the rubish we got for seats. Even though I logged onto the ticketing source the second that the tickets went on sale, we still ended up with tier 3 seating! The seating went as follows (in order from best to worst): Orchestra , Lodge, Terrace, and upper grass field. We happened to be seated in the upper, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay left section of the terrace. This made the sound really muffled and unclear; we were unable to see the drummer at all; and the huge video screen behind them was totally blocked. During their opening song (Square One) we wised up and went towards the center of the stadium and stood behind the last row in the terrace. The sound was insanely better, we could see the entire band, and the video screen behind them. This video screen, by the way, was amazing. It was showing clips of each member of the band with crazy video filters on it as they played their songs.

Coldplay was brilliant musically, playing longer cuts of their songs where, at the end, there were 3 solid minutes of sweet sounding "ooooooh's" from Chris Martin as he softly stroked the keys of his piano. Several times he asked the 12,000 people in the audience to sing the "ooooooh's" along with him, creating a wall of sound that was beautifully moving. They played a couple of songs accoustically, among them was their new song dedicated to Johnny Cash "Kingdom Come" and a cover of Johnny Cash's song "Ring of Fire". At the end, Chris Martin ran out to the center of the crowd (between the Orchestra and Lodge seating) and stood on the sound board as he seranaded the people in the less fortunate seating with more of his oooooooh's. After a couple minutes of clapping and shouting, the foursome came back on stage and played 3 more tunes, the last to be their newest single "Fix You".

Coldplay was amazing in concert. I can't wait to see them again...hopefully with better seats.

posted by Ryan @ 8/23/2005 03:38:00 PM