16 April 2003: Earls Court, London, England
From WikiColdplay
Setlist
- Politik
- God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
- Spies
- Daylight
- The Scientist
- One I Love
- A Rush Of Blood To The Head
- Don't Panic
- Everything's Not Lost
- Pour Me
- Yellow
- Trouble
encore - Clocks
- In My Place
- Amsterdam
Fan Reviews
well i just got back so here is the rundown - grade B++ awarded
so here i am at 12.30am typing merrily away to let you know how it all went - im tired so dont be suprised if the english isn't all it should be, but i will do my best to use paragraphs, just don't hold me to punctuation
so, this evening i went to Earls Court to see Coldplay headline with Feeder as the support. I went with two friends and Vicky from this very board (it was great to meet up again) and her son & his father. we got there in reasonable time since we were running late! and got to our seats just before Feeder took to the stage.
well, i have to be honest as i was a bit disappointed. Feeder are a band i like a lot and i think their recent studio material is very promising. however on this outing i thought they were quite poor. they played a selection of hits, mostly the new material but they seemed rather half-hearted and the band setup and sound balance did not seem to do them justice, and the set was only about 7 songs long! - when Coldplay arived later and proved that acoustically they sounded far better perhaps the audio was set for them all along...
a quick break after Feeder and the lights dropped and Politik-intro kicked in. well as usual a cracking opening and the set seemed to speed by with my personal highlights being The Scientist, Poor Me and One I Love. in similar fashion to the Royal Albert Hall gig, by the close of the main set they had rocked the joint and the whole crowd were on their feet throught the encore. i can't deny it was a top set and one that seems to be coming very bread and butter to the lads and they sound all the better for it. with rowsing performances of Rush of Blood and Amsterdam sounding well tuned and nice additions. i just hope that the lads can change direction when they come out of this very long touring period they seem to have entered (i was shocked to see the 40-odd dates for mid 2002 to late 2003 in the tour booklet!) :shock: i really don't want to see them ok computer tour themselves to meltdown!
perhaps my only slight niggle was the venue itself. its not all bad for a stadium type size venue but it does create a feeling of overwhelming space that no matter how hard they try, the bands just can't quite fill, and hence the acoutics arn't really all that. our vantage point was reasonable and we had a nice view of the stage but god only knows how the poor people at the back of the stadium felt.
as a very exciting finish (although i had to cut it slightly short due to threats of having my car locked into the car park!), Vicky had very kindly managed to come by after-show passes to the VIP area. sadly i only had 40mins with them but in that time we managed to see Guy, Will and Johnny and i am hoping that they managed to see Chris too before leaving. other celebs included Kelly Jones of Stereophonics and Mark Owen (wherever i go, he always seems to be there :shock: )
so all in all the Coldplay set gets an A, the Feeder set gets a C, The venue gets a B, the great merchandise and after gig added brucy-bonus extras get a ++, so a B++ it is then (Hicksy's marking scheme TM, no rights reserved)
i hope you've had as much fun reading this as i have had typing it and thank you Vicky for adding to a very enjoyable evening
night night peeps - sleep is much required
[Hicksy]
Media Reviews
“This shows you what the geeks at school can do” says Chris Martin as he looks over the throng of fans. The geeks at school probably aren’t listening to Coldplay though. Let’s hope for the sake of good music they aren’t anyway.
That’s not to say that Martin isn’t good at what he does. He plays the piano, masters the guitar and writes lyrics which make you realise why the cigarette lighter was invented. This it seems is enough to make the band the biggest in the world, bag the frontman a trophy girlfriend and make him the darling of teenage girls across the globe.
It’d be nice to think he really was nervous as he makes his way onto the stage and worries that we think he’s “posh with a receeding hairline.” He’s right on both counts. He is smug and fair enough. But there now seems something false about the lyrics that you imagined him writing to a lost love in a darkened bedroom.
Opening with the ballsy ‘Politik’ with the cry of “Oh, so you don’t hate us after all” maybe he senses the tide is going to turn. Coldplay have made their name with songs about love lost not love found and it’s hard to imagine their audience wanting to hear about someone being happy.
‘God Put A Smile Upon Your Face’ is Coldplay at their best; the band you want them to be. Martin’s sheer joy in performing is evident as he jumps in the inelegant style that only uncoordinated lead singers of multi-million selling albums can pull off. The crowd’s response is magnificent, his energy seeming to rub off on them. For at least one track.
“It’d be really nice if you could just stand up for one song,” says the frontman before the band play ‘Yellow’ which ends with Martin, to his obvious delight, being drowned out by the cheers. There’s no way this band are leaving without an encore and after the briefest of breaks return to play the ever-wailing ‘Clocks’ and ‘In My Place’.
The songs are beautiful, but there’s no real show here and you can’t help feeling that as big as they are Coldplay will never really be showstoppers. Pedestrian, predictable and average. Once you’ve heard one Coldplay track you’ve heard ‘em all.
Vanessa Hodge
http://www.xfm.co.uk/Coldplay-Earls-Court-April-15-2003
