04 September 2002: Paramount Theater, Seattle, USA
From WikiColdplay
Setlist
- Politik
- Shiver
- Spies
- Daylight
- Trouble
- One I Love
- Don’t Panic
- Everything’s Not Lost
- Green Eyes
- A Whisper
- God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
- Yellow
- The Scientist
Encore - Clocks
- In My Place
- Life Is For Living
Fan Reviews
Have you ever just melted at the sound or sight of something? That's Coldplay for me.
I was lucky enough to attend their opening show for the “A Rush of Blood to the Head” tour in Seattle - at the beautiful Paramount Theater. This wasn't the first time I have seen them play, and hopefully not the last. However, this was the first time I have seen Chris Martin perform with so much enthusiasm and spunk.
The last two shows here didn't have festival (standing) seating, and I think that made the difference for the crowd. Coldplay is often so moving that it can just suck you in so it is easy to sit and enjoy them- but there are definitely tracks that you want to be able to move around to.
With the show opening up with Politik, and moving right into Shiver - it was off to a great start. The lights were perfect and the screens were just the right touch. I don't think there was a bad seat in the house, but being able to see the band up on the screens was definitely a plus. I am not very tall, and am slightly claustrophobic - so I stood towards the back of the crowd on the floor and still could see just fine.
Chris didn't talk too much in between songs. I have seen him a little more social with the crowd - but I felt like it was a good even amount of interaction. At the end of Green Eyes, he added a lovely addition that sang something along the lines of “Jonny Buckland is the greatest guitarist in the world” and then Jonny gave Chris a peck on the cheek.
All in all, the entire set was amazing. There was a pretty even balance between the two albums as far as songs performed. Yellow was fabulous - especially with the yellow lights on the crowd. Really, it was all yellow. But by far, The Scientist was my favorite of the night. That has got to be one of the most romantically benevolent songs I have ever heard.
For those of you with tickets to see Coldplay, you are in for a blow out time. Chris Martin will shake the room with his melodic ballads. This is not a show to be missed.
[Elly Higginbottom]
I have a confession. My only familiarity with Coldplay was their radio hits, and a proxy knowledge of them, because my sister - who has been a fan of theirs for three years - kept telling me that Yellow was not, by any means, their best song. While I often heard Parachutes, I had not really absorbed it, or fully given consideration to how brilliant a band they are. So if you’ll excuse me sounding like a poseur, and grant me clemency based on my newfound admiration, then you can read this without becoming irate about how you have been into Coldplay all along.
A month ago, my sister came into some tickets to attend their Seattle show at the Paramount Theater. The Paramount Theater is always a wonderful place to attend a show, because it’s one of the most strikingly beautiful theaters in Seattle. Architecturally, the opulent decor and posh chandeliers and gilded trim makes it like no other performance space in the Emerald City. The show was sold out, so I started a fierce bidding war on Ebay for someone’s spare ticket. So on the afternoon of September 4th, my sister and I drove to Seattle to indulge our senses in what would go down in my records as one of the best live shows I’ve ever attended.
With General Admission tickets, we were able to work our way down within five or ten feet of the stage. Ash came on, and I had relatively high hopes for their set, because one of my good friends, a fellow rock-critic, just raves about them. Ash played a tight set, with a lot of energy. Charlotte Hatherley chick-guitarist antics were right-on. The Chrissie Hynde hair-cut with the long bangs, and her attitude assured that she was meant for rockstardom.
However, the audience participation was tame, at best, at least in comparison to how they later reacted to Coldplay. Save for a handful of people in the audience that were familiar with Ash, it became clear that everyone was there to see Coldplay, and Ash was just another obstacle in their way.
After a thirty or forty minute set strike, and almost as many roadies in their prerequisite black shirts, the lights were dimmed, and Coldplay finally came out on stage to the roar of the crowd. I’m by no means an expert on their music, or band history, or what songs were best performed, so I’d rather focus on my overall impression.
The first song they performed was Politik, and it blew my mind. Strobes shooting flashes of light in time to the beat made for a thunderstorm inside the Paramount. There is something fairly "arena rock" to have a light show, but in this case, it just made the whole show that much more impressive. Another visually engaging touch was the video screens on the back wall, that intermittently had live camera feed from strategically placed cameras for each musician.
Coldplay was charming, dynamic, and personable. Chris Martin really commanded attention, and the audience was quite eager to give it to him. He often incorporated a lot of funny ad-lib bits into his songs. In the middle of Everything’s Not Lost during the "Oh yeah, come on... yeah" part, he segued into Nelly’s It’s Getting Hot in Here, and then went seamlessly back into the Coldplay song, and then just to amuse the audience and pay tribute to the city that heralded Grunge Rock, he suddenly turned Eddie Vedder with a rousing rendition of "I-i-i-i...I'm still aaaaaalive, yeaaaah........."
Of course, sitting by the piano, with this slightly different vocal take and inflection, it all seemed quite different and clever. At the end of a particularly moving and hushed vocal part, scolded some idiots in the audience that felt the need to shout out "Woooooooo!!!" Chris looked up with a sort of amused, yet stern look, and says "Don't holler during this bit right here!" He played two or three more bars on the piano and wrapped up the song, and looked back out at the sea of people and said "Okay, now you can holler."
During Yellow all the overhead lights were a bright canary, but instead of illuminating the band only, they turned toward the audience, and for the first entire verse, he just turned the mic out toward us. The audience sang along; Chris rocked back and forth absorbing the audience interaction. It was, for lack of a better word, magical. I know that sounds sappy, especially coming from such a new fan as myself. But that magic is what sold me on Coldplay.
After a full set, with so many excellent songs and lively moments, they ended with The Scientist. The applause never seemed to die down, until they came out for encores, and played Clocks, In My Place, and Life is For Living. Given that I knew very little about them prior to September 4th, and considering that I didn't know all their songs by heart or have an "I (heart) Chris Martin" t-shirt on, they played a show unlike any other I've seen before. Yeah, I guess I'm going to be raving about this one for a while.
[L. Jeanette Strole]
Media Reviews
Concert Review: Coldplay's star is shining even brighter
When Coldplay sold out Benaroya Hall last year, it was a fledgling band with a runaway hit.
With its new album, "A Rush of Blood to the Head," debuting at No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200, the London quartet not only proves its staying power, but is poised for superstardom.
Opening a new tour Thursday night to a sold-out Paramount crowd, the band members showed tremendous growth as writers and performers.
The crowd went wild as the band walked onto the unlit stage to an organ accompaniment. The opening song, "Politik," from the new album, was awash in slashing rhythms accented by strobe lights. This was indeed a new, more confident Coldplay, no longer limited to melancholic introspection and sorrowful melodies.
Alternating between piano and guitar, singer Chris Martin connected with his fans as both a rock star and a regular guy. Dedicating "Trouble" to "the fish market down the road," he mentioned that if anyone wanted to score an autograph, they could usually catch him jogging along the waterfront. "Watch this," he said, pointing to three vertical rectangles as they lit up with a black-and white-video feed.
Seattle marked the first public performance of "Green Eyes," performed on two acoustic guitars with Jon Buckland. It was a lovely ballad written about a girl Martin met in New York last year while taping "Saturday Night Live." He improvised a final verse extolling Buckland as the greatest guitar player on Earth, perhaps because the guitarist was feeling ill from indigestion and needed a boost.
Despite the abundance of great new songs that sounded even better live than the studio versions, many in the crowd were there to hear "Yellow," the megahit with the distinctive falsetto blips that have become one of the most imitated vocal mannerisms in today's alternative rock.
With the entire theater bathed in yellow light, the audience sang the first verse before Martin joined in. It was a great communal experience, and many started leaving when the song ended.
This was too bad, because the following song, "The Scientist," was so much better. Martin sang the first verse of this gorgeously sad lament accompanied only by his piano. While the entrance of the band added volume to the song, it shattered the intimacy of the simple melody that carried the stark and rueful lyric about the unbearable difficulty of ending a relationship.
Encores included "In My Place," the first single from the new album.
Ash, a power-punk pop band from Northern Ireland, opened with a fun and energetic set featuring songs from last year's "Free All Angels." Although Ash has recorded some lovely ballads, it kept to the rockers in a 40-minute set, choosing not to compete with the headliners for the emotional loyalty of the audience.
Bill White
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/85756_coldplayq.shtml
