16 August 2005: White River Amphitheater, Seattle, WA, USA
From WikiColdplay
Setlist
- Square One
- Politik
- Yellow
- God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
- Speed Of Sound
- Low
- A Rush Of Blood To The Head
- Everything’s Not Lost
- White Shadows
- The Scientist
- ’Til Kingdom Come
- Ring Of Fire (Johnny Cash Cover)
- Don’t Panic
- Clocks
- Talk
Encore - Swallowed In The Sea
- In My Place
- Fix You
Reviews
At Seattle’s White River Amphitheatre on Tuesday, August 16 Let me hip you to a little secret. If you ever find yourself on a traffic-snarled back road in Auburn, Washington, en route to a concert at the White River Amphitheatre, just breathe easy, stay loose, and hope that you left good and early. With congestion beginning around 5 in the afternoon and lasting way past this event’s 8 p.m. start time, many disappointed fans missed out on the first couple of songs from U.K. chart toppers Coldplay.
Still, devotees came in droves to praise Chris Martin and company as they executed their trademark brand of emotive pop in a well-rehearsed manner. Three-minute sonic sermons for the melody-starved masses were delivered in songs like “Yellow”, “Clocks”, “The Scientist”, and “The Speed of Sound”, each one executed with verve and passion. Judging from the wide-grinning smiles that reached to the furthest recesses of the 20,000-capacity venue on the large monitor above the stage, the members of Coldplay were enjoying themselves. Playing for almost two hours, the black-clad Brits had the endurance of seasoned yoga instructors. There’s no denying the bond between the group and their followers. It’s electric, real, and almost a bit overwhelming for nonbelievers.
Still, if God had the funky-meter out, the holiest racket was kicked up by Vancouver rock deities Black Mountain. The up-and-coming five-piece was, mind-bogglingly, asked by Coldplay to open the shows on its current tour. Black Mountain thus found the courage to take up the daunting task of playing in front of thousands of people who don’t give a shit about them. It’s a crying shame the band’s music fell largely on deaf ears. With the majority of the audience having yet to find its seats, their gnarly set was met with blank stares, bar a riotous crew of lovely tie-dyed supporters from Vancouver. The lysergic crunch of “Don’t Run Our Hearts Around” filled the amphitheatre with pure power, and all the extra amplification suited the rock-steady unit, despite a muddled, bottom-heavy mix that at least improved with each number.
Josh Wells’s stick work sounded like the coming of the apocalypse, with the bass drum in particular packing a 10-ton punch. Amber Webber sang as sweet as honey, and Jeremy Schmidt’s spaced-out keyboards meshed perfectly with the superb bass moves of Matt Camirand. But it was lead singer and guitarist Steve McBean who impressed the most—his shredding almost severed heads down in the pit. It was enough to make you sorry for everyone caught in traffic on the road outside.
Source: http://www.straight.com
Coldplay sends its hooks into appreciative crowd
Coldplay has given the haters plenty of fodder by now. For starters, the British quartet has sold 18.5 million copies of its Splenda-sweet albums while edgier hipster favorites are stuck in relative obscurity. The band not only blatantly ripped off U2, circa “The Unforgettable Fire,” for the its third album, “X&Y,” but also had the audacity to declare its intentions to be the next U2.
And there’s that Chris Martin guy, who seems just a little too nice to front the biggest rock band on the planet. I mean, is it too much to ask for him to slug a few paparazzi or trash some hotel rooms?
But even the staunchest haters would have been hard-pressed to pooh-pooh this year’s “it” band Tuesday night as it delivered a fun, satisfying and hit-filled set to 16,000-plus appreciative fans at the White River Amphitheatre. The group showcased its ability to churn out hook-filled, feel-good pop by the album load. And sure, the U2-inspired stuff sounded a bit derivative next to older tunes. But, hey, even the Rolling Stones used Chuck Berry’s style from time to time, right?
The set kicked off 15 minutes late to accommodate all of the fans still crawling along on Auburn-Enumclaw Road. (This critic missed the opening act – Vancouver, B.C.’s Black Mountain – despite leaving two hours before the show. And it took another two hours to escape the White River lot after the show.) Then the main attraction – Martin, guitarist Jon Buckland, drummer Will Champion and bassist Guy Berryman – emerged, all dressed in black and backlit by digital numbers on the curved video screen behind them as they kicked off with “Square One,” the lead track from their new album.
From the start, the band added percussive punch to even the most ethereal numbers. And Martin delivered with the disarmingly carefree zest of a kid, whether he was skipping giddily across the stage, balancing awkwardly on one leg, grinding maniacally against his piano bench or racing through the crowd during the encore.
The band followed the opener by pounding out an intense delivery of “Politik.” As he hunched over his piano, Martin thrilled the local crowd by changing one of the song’s rhymes to “give me Seattle and the rain/Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain.”
Then he properly addressed the crowd, referring to Coldplay’s first local performance at a Seattle nightclub, The Showbox.
“This is for anybody who was there. This is the song that brought us here five years ago,” he said, introducing the band’s ultracatchy “Yellow.”
Dozens of beach ball-sized yellow balloons wafted over the crowd midsong. “You can bust ’em,” Martin instructed between lyrics. Several audience members complied, unleashing showers of bright confetti.
“God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” and “Speed of Sound,” the best track from the new album, followed. The screen prompted fans to snap their cameras in unison during “Low” for an effect that would have been neater had more fans come equipped.
The middle of the set also included “A Rush of Blood to the Head,” “Everything’s Not Lost,” “White Shadows” and “The Scientist,” that last song dedicated to the people in the cheap seats with added lyric, “The thing about Coldplay/That should make you happy/ Is that we’re best when viewed from afar.”
Then Martin took a moment to introduce his band mates, acknowledging that much of the rock press treats them as anonymous extras to Mr. Gwyneth Paltrow. “Everybody thinks it’s just one person when it’s four,” he said. “And without each other we’d be lost.”
The band segued right into a few bars of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” from an effective, subdued delivery of “Till Kingdom Come,” the hidden track from “X&Y” and a song originally written for the late country great.
The band delivered “Don’t Panic” and a soaring rendition of “Clocks” before taking a bow with “Talk.”
The encore began on a melancholy note with “Swallowed in the Sea,” followed by an invigorating delivery of “In My Place” during which Martin raced up to the top of the reserved seats to spend a moment with the people on White River’s grassy berm. He passed within arm’s reach of this critic, soaked with sweat and a huge grin on his face, as he headed back to the stage.
New single “Fix You” seemed a tad anticlimactic after that number. But overall it was a great show. And even if Coldplay is still a few notches short of reaching the legendary U2’s status, the band proved it had carved out a respectable and sizable niche of its own.
Source: http://www.thenewstribune.com
Coldplay: Stuck in traffic
7:15 p.m. : Leave house.
7:40 : Hit traffic on 167. Entertain ourselves by singing every bit of Coldplay we remember.
7:43 : Exhaust knowledge of Coldplay lyrics. Sit in traffic.
8:40 : Finally reach exit for 18E. Discover that this horrendously clogged road is the root of 167's congestion.
8:41 : Burn rubber around line of cars to take next exit and get 18E-free directions from smirking but kindly gas-station attendant.
9:00 : Reach road to amphitheater. Sit in traffic.
9:15 : Overhear equally delirious people in next car enact this potential scenario:
Chris Martin: Gwyneth, we have to play late. There's some traffic problem.
Gwyneth Paltrow: Chris! We have to get home! Apple is waiting for us!
9:30 : Tune in to 106.1 to hear a caller, who has had "like seven beers already," say that Coldplay hasn't started yet because the band got stuck in traffic.
9:49 : Rush to amphitheater doors as strains of "Yellow" drift over parking lot.
10:00 : Learn that our tickets, along with a handful of other concertgoers', somehow do not exist at will call. Throw something of a fit to venue staff, who manage to scare up a pair.
10:15 : After missing about 20 minutes of the show, I take a seat, fully prepared to scoff at Martin and his overly heartfelt warbling (not to mention questionable taste in baby names). Instead, I find myself smiling at his smug acoustic guitar and even enjoying his overwrought to-and-fro rocking on the piano stool while he croons "Everything's Not Lost." Sure, the bassist and drummer pound out the same palpitating thump-thump beat on every song. True, Martin's falsetto is so excessively earnest that it seems to have its own oh-so-sensitive manscape of stubble. (In fact, Martin has never sung better than when he dropped out of the stratosphere altogether and did a fine Johnny Cash impression on a cover of "Ring of Fire." Coldplay mixed up songs from all three of its albums, including the newly released "X&Y.") And yes, while the band may spend its time dreaming of grandeur under the Joshua Tree, the fruits of its labor are amiably inane at best, tedious and middlebrow at worst. But Coldplay is unabashedly in the business of making music for guys who like to wrap their arms around their girlfriends at an amphitheater. To deny them or their audiences that pleasure would be like building a giant concert venue in the middle of the remote, inaccessible, manure-perfumed countryside — just kind of silly.
10:55 : Run to beat the crowds when show ends, ditching the encore.
11:20 : Finally escape exiting amphitheater traffic.
Total time spent driving the 35 miles to and from White River: Four hours.
Time spent listening to Coldplay: 40 minutes.
Time spent wondering whether Coldplay was worth it: Immeasurable.
Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com
