20 October 2008: Scotiabank Place, Ottawa, ON, Canada
From WikiColdplay
Contents |
Setlist
- Life In Technicolor
- Violet Hill
- Clocks
- In My Place
- Speed Of Sound
- Cemeteries Of London
- Chinese Sleep Chant
- 42
- Fix You
- Strawberry Swing
- God Put A Smile Upon Your Face (techno version)
- The Hardest Part (piano - Chris)
- Postcards From Far Away (piano instrumental)
- Viva La Vida
- Lost!
- The Scientist (acoustic)
- Death Will Never Conquer (acoustic - Will singing)
- Viva La Vida (remix interlude)
First Encore - Politik
- Lovers In Japan
- Death And All His Friends
Second Encore - Yellow
- The Escapist (outro)
Photos
Photos from this show can be found at Coldplaying.com in the Gallery thread for Ottawa. http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/1541
Videos
Videos from this show can be found in the first post of the Coldplaying forum live thread for this show at http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44803
Discussion
All post-show discussion for this show at the forum thread: http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44803
Fan Reviews
All fan reviews have been submitted to us by the members of Coldplaying.com[1], unless stated otherwise.
A few funny moments (which you'll see in the vids) like Chris saying Oasis forgave Canada for the little 'incident' last month and that the 2 countries have made up. Chris was quite energetic (purposely tumbling from the piano to the ground at times). Crowd really got into it but still frustrating to see lots of people leaving before the final encore. Got tons of butterflies this time. Awesome night... looking forward to some 2009 dates.
[open6l]
OH MY GOD! That was bar none the best Coldplay concert i've been too! Well actually they were all equal. It was just a DAMN amazing concert. From the wind up to Life In Technicolor, to Politik, to The Escapist, to Fix You. I can go on forever.
Oh and I got to shake Chris Martin's hand! I was sitting on the edge on the left side of the floor seats and as they were running up to play Death Will Never Conquer and The Scientist on the side stage I was able to get a quick hand shake!
[ryansn]
Last night was awsome!! I got Guy's set list and also the set list on the right side of the stage under the piano for chris!!! ill have to take pictures of them! I also got a guitar pic which was lieing on chris's setlist...
Had floor tickets row 23.. Unfortunatly my little brother who adores coldplay.. (and who got the ticket after i had given it to my girlfriend!!) wasnt feeling great so I was a tad distracted but it didnt break my spirit. The guys played great .. seemed to be bang on throughout the night.
Something about Ottawa which these guys like that keeps them coming back. The crowd definitly doesn't compare to a Toronto or Ottawa crowd.
In responce to the people in line, thats Will Call. Where they pick the tickets up. When people order the tickets online, they dont go all the way out the Kanata (30 minutes out of the city where the rink is) to get the tickets. So they end up getting them the night of the show!!
Anyways absolutely fantastic show, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves!
[scott.tet]
Last night Maryse and I took our semi-regular "let's relive our youth" trek to the Scotiabank Place and took in a Coldplay concert. They were excellent! Preceeded by a forgettable opening act (Stars, who Wikipedia refers to as "a Juno Award nominated Canadian indie pop band") Coldplay squeezed all their hits and some new stuff into about an hour and-a-half.
We had fairly good seats, three rows up in the 200 level to the side of the stage. Not near enough for close-ups but I got some decent pics from my point and shoot camera.
The band began at centre stage, used the aprons at either side of the stage throughout the concert, did a short acoustic set below us on the stage-left apron and -get this - ran to the far end of the arena where they performed two acoustic numbers in front of a level 100 box!
All in all, a highly entertaining evening from Chris Martin and his band mates.
http://nonamedufus.blogspot.com/2008...-our-semi.html
The concert from Monday night has still been winding through my head steadily throughout this week. It’s sometimes hard to focus when the music is still playing and the lightshow is still shining. In some ways I’m super-distracted a lot and I think it’s funny that a band is doing it to me.
A friend Peter Onate asked me tonight whether it was the best concert I’d ever been to. I quickly replied “yes!” Afterwards I thought about it a bit more and I think it’s really hard to answer that question because concerts are so different! The Switchfoot concert last year was awesome because we were really close to the stage actually and it was a fun time. What else have I been to…. I can’t recall. The Coldplay concert was epic because I knew all the songs, knew many of the words, and wanted to see how they did it live. But I have to say, when you compare a live concert with the live experience from a music DVD it’s really hard to state which is better.
At a concert you have usually one vantage point and that is what it’s like for 2 hours. You resign yourself to that position. You decide to enjoy it for all its worth from right there. You dance it up on the spot, you look around, you wish they were closer, or you wish you could feel the enormity of the whole arena (if you are much closer). In a DVD, you have professionally mixed sound, multiple viewpoints, and close proximity at some angles. You can get totally into it but I don’t ever find myself jumping up and down while watching a live DVD. It’s not the same.
Furthermore, having done live sound, lighting, and video, I have a perspective that might be insanely unrealistic. That is, I dream of lighting arrangements. And expect concerts to rival my imagination. And even the largest bands are limited in their ability to put on a light show.
An amazing concert should plunge people fully into the music through the atmosphere and the visuals. It’s pretty lame when a concert simply has the performers standing there and performing. Well, maybe let’s even make a distinction between concerts and shows. I would likely be quite excited about a concert where the performers are so talented they could just sit there or stand there and play and everyone would be amazed (a la John Mayer, Phil Keaggy, Kid Koala to name a few). Coldplay doesn’t just do concerts, they do SHOWS.
It was great to see the globey lights suspending and still be really intrigued by them. They could light up and change colours and even project video inside them. There were points when the live camera footage would display in the globey lights. It amazed me actually to see different footage on the side screens, back of stage sreen, and the globey lights all at the same time. Sometimes it was live camera, sometimes related video (eg. video and images from Japan during “Lovers in Japan”), sometimes just decorations (eg. Viva logo, Delacroix painting). If they didn’t have live camera footage I would have been quite disappointed since I was so far away from the stage. This brought the band much closer. (note: they didn’t film this show for any kind of live DVD evidently because of all the kinds of cameras used — they were mainly huge depth of field kind of lenses and cameras)
Two songs from Viva La Vida really got people really pumped: “Viva La Vida” and “Lovers in Japan”. “Viva” got everyone pumped simply because of its poppy and catchy rhythm and melody. That song was obviously written to be performed live… with the “whoa whoaoooh” part for the crowd to sing while Chris Martin sang the chorus; with its pulsing strings. In some ways, during the concert I really didn’t care whether it was very tracked with non-live instruments because I was just so excited! In my section not too many were standing up but when Viva started pumping, I shouted to my friends and got them to stand up. Even after that there were still people sitting around us, some only getting up for the rousing bridge part (with the whoa whoaoohs). “Lovers in Japan” was just made to be truly epic because at the beginning of each round of the chorus, millions of small paper butterflies sprayed and drifted from the lighting racks at the top of the roof. It glittered like mad and it made the song just so amazing. The lights flashed to the pounding of the beats and it was just so full. My video in my previous post shows a lot of this. The funny thing is, I looked down at the sound guys and they had these little canopies they would unroll as the butterflies came pouring down to protect the sound boards from being littered with confetti-like things. The sound guys would blow away the butterflies and then hide under the meshing and control the dials and faders from under! Well thought through!
Another song that got the whole crowd together was “Fix You”. I’m not sure why, but everyone really loves that song. Chris Martin describes it as unpoetic and raw. I think that’s what people love about it. It’s raw. It’s bare. The emotion isn’t hidden by any uninterpretable symbolism. Everyone understands the song: something has gone wrong and you’re trying to make it right again. So everyone sings along. The song clearly moves from the lone voice of Chris Martin to the chorus of community near the end when the whole band sings and invites everyone to join in. “Fix You” cuts to the deepest parts of our souls.
Unfortunately the band ended with “Yellow” which I think isn’t really one of their best songs (although it seems to be their most cherished and popular). They only did that one song for the encore. I wish it had been a more musical and engaging song than that one.
It seems other bands will have a high bar to match. I wonder who would match or beat it?
http://www.singforever.ca/2008/10/23/coldplay-concert-unpackaged/
Media Reviews
Coldplay begins tour leg on grand scale in Ottawa
British rockers Coldplay kicked off the North American leg of their world tour at Scotiabank Place last on Monday night, and it sure didn't take long to turn into a joyous singalong as the four band members were caught up in a swell of some 13,000 voices.
By song three, singer Chris Martin had every man, woman and youth in the stadium belting along as he bashed an upright piano. After the processional Life in Technicolour and the rocking Violet Hill, two songs from the latest chart-topping disc, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, the familiar hook of the 2002 hit Clocks created a surge of energy in the near sold-out audience.
In My Place, another song from the Rush of Blood to the Head disc, had the same effect. With the stage lights up, Martin appeared tickled to see what he and bandmates Jonny Buckland, Will Champion and Guy Berryman had created. He bounced across the stage and down each of the two catwalks, bending backwards as he sang, a limber performer whose body was as supple as his voice.
Loveable and a bit goofy, the sandy-haired Mr. Paltrow never missed a chance to connect with the audience, sometimes even talking in the middle of a song. Precious, he was not.
"We're Coldplay," he said early in the concert, unnecessarily identifying one of the biggest bands in the world. "We really appreciate the fact that all you beautiful Canadians have come out to see a band from miles away. You could have been playing Scrabble or doing homework. We hope to give you some good entertainment."
Indeed they did, delivering a career-spanning set with Martin setting an enthusiastic pace. To demonstrate the diversity of the band's catalogue, highlights ranged from Pink Floydian, as in the dark, mystical Speed of Sound, to Supertrampish, as in the stark piano opening of 42 or Lost, a shape-shifting song that has at least three different versions. On Monday night, it morphed from stark intimacy to a throbbing club beat.
No longer a wallflower who hides behind his piano, Martin has blossomed into the gregarious host of a magnificient event. It was a concert on a grand scale, complete with artful lighting design, a shower of multicoloured confetti and offshoot staging that helped bring the band members closer to the audience. At one point, the four musicians popped up in the upper stands, delighting the people in the nearby rows, and performed a couple of acoustic songs.
For those who were not making an early exit in order to get ahead of the traffic, the ultimate high was a gorgeous rendition of the band's breakthrough song, Yellow, played as an encore, the entire stadium bathed in yellow light.
Opening act Stars showed they have a few things in common with Coldplay, starting with a shared penchant for melodramatic pop music. Fronted by the quirky duo of Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan, the Montreal-based band delivered a strong set, except for the brutal sound and tuning problems. The sound was muddy and the vocals out of tune through most of the songs, but they played well nonetheless, their dark, repetitive songs flowing from a whisper to a frenzied wall of noise.
The Night Starts Here made the perfect opening to the highly anticipated evening. Ageless Beauty was one of the songs that spotlighted Millan's little-girl voice, while Campbell not only traded verses with her in duet fashion, but also supplied falsetto background harmonies and played keyboards, trumpet and other instruments.
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/...8-0d18512235f5
Coldplay heats up stage
Coldplay have been around long enough to know how to work an arena better than Jason Spezza, reports the Ottawa Sun.
But last night, the current kings of British pop brought a bagful of tricks to their gig at Scotiabank Place that only the very best can. The band that might be the next U2 -- singer Chris Martin, drummer Will Champion, guitarist Jonny Buckland and bassist Guy Berryman -- launched their North American tour here last night and judging by their show, few bands even come close to Coldplay in a live setting.
Back in June, the reviews for their fourth CD Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends were glowing, thanks in part to producer Brian Eno, who lit a creative fire under the band as he did for U2 with The Unforgettable Fire almost 20 years ago. Eno inspired the band to aim higher than on previous efforts. Now, after only four discs, Coldplay is being compared to the best bands ever.
They lived up to that billing last night with a spectacular show at Scotiabank Place in front of 13,000 adoring fans.
With Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" draped across the back of the stage and round video screens that looked like giant Chinese lanterns hanging throughout the arena, the band opened in theatrical fashion with prerecorded chunks of The Nutcracker playing in the dark. The joint erupted in a huge ovation as soon as they heard the first notes of the instrumental Life in Technicolor and Martin's plaintive vocal wail on Violet Hill and all those piano triads that signalled the band's most radio-friendly tune Clocks.
Combining the best of their previous CDs -- Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head and X&Y with a hefty dose from Viva la Vida, the band has plenty to choose from.
Dressed like one of the French soldiers in Delacroix's painting, Martin performed like a man at top of his craft. Charming as well as a prolific performer, he bounced lightly between piano and guitar, occasionally punctuating his performance with pratfalling dances like Charlie Chaplin.
The early setlist included In My Place, Speed of Sound, Cemeteries of London, all choreographed with an atmospheric light show that recalled a Middle Eastern desert tent. Even more miraculous was the superb studio-quality sound.
They had all 13,000 on their feet for Fix You, Strawberry Swing and a pared-down version of Talk, after which the band left a playful Martin alone at the piano.
"Another British band, Oasis, didn't have such a good time when they were in Canada a couple weeks ago and that's caused a horrible rift between our two countries," he joked, referring to the band being attacked in Toronto in September.
"I hope we can bridge that terrible gap tonight," he concluded before playing a solo piano turn on The Hardest Part, with drummer Champion moving beside Martin for Viva la Vida and Lost.
Later, in what seemed to be a calculated but playful move, the band joined fans down at a 100-level suite at the back of the arena, playing a bare bluegrass version of The Scientist.
Coldplay wound things down with Lovers in Japan and Yellow. As concerts go, it was brilliant, choreographed from start to finish with gorgeous playing, a varied setlist and enough theatrical magic to take your breath away.
The only thing missing was a little messy raw rock energy to add a little danger to the show. Oh, who am I kidding? This is Coldplay, after all.
http://www.ottawasun.com/Showbiz/Music/2008/10/21/7149821-sun.html
