28 June 2005: Crystal Palace Athletics Stadium, London, England
From WikiColdplay
Setlist
- Square One
- Politik
- Yellow
- God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
- Speed Of Sound
- Low
- Warning Sign
- Everything’s Not Lost
- Talk
- White Shadows
- The Scientist
- Don’t Panic
- ’Til Kingdom Come
- Clocks
- Swallowed In The Sea
Encore
Reviews
Thousands of music fans flocked to Crystal Palace to see Coldplay kick off their UK tour. They wowed a sell-out crowd at the National Sports Centre for the past two nights. The concerts came during a packed week for the band, who headlined the Glastonbury festival on Saturday and will be taking part in the Live 8 gig in Hyde Park this weekend.
Fans descended on Crystal Palace from across the UK to watch the gigs and hear songs from the group's new album X&Y, which has topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Tickets for both nights sold out within days of going on sale, bringing 30,000 capacity crowds to the venue. Wimbledon's teenage tennis sensation Andy Murray was among those expected to be there.
Thousands more people headed to Crystal Palace Park on Monday evening to listen to the gig from outside, enjoying picnics and barbecues in the sunshine. And restaurants, pubs and bars in Upper Norwood triangle were packed, with people spilling out onto the pavements before the gig.
Crystal Palace station was packed as concert-goers tried to make their way home by train. Crowd management arrangements were put in place, with different coloured channels telling people which way to go to catch trains to Croydon, London Bridge or Victoria.
Southern Trains diverted services from other routes to cope with demand but admitted they were unprepared for the extra passenger numbers. A spokesman said: "There were more people than we anticipated using the train but we still managed to get them all away by midnight."
The level of service was being reviewed yesterday (Tuesday) with the possibility of more trains being added for last night's concert.
Crystal Palace National Sports Centre was one of just three venues chosen by Coldplay for their short UK tour, which is also taking them as far afield as Bolton and Glasgow.
I didn't initially manage to get tickets for the Coldplay dates @ Crystal Palace, but a friend of mine got a ticket to Glastonbury at the last minute and therefore offered me two tickets to the Crystal Palace gig on the 28th because he was going to see them at Glasto.
I decided to take my girlfriend who has like me been a huge Coldplay fan for a long time. This was to be her 1st time watching Coldplay live; whereas I had previously enjoyed them immensely at the Scala, Kings Cross in June 2000 (when Chris had really curly hair haha), Brixton Academy 2001 and Nottingham Ice Arena in October 2002.
All these performances had been out of this world, from the intimacy at Scala demonstrating the understated raw talent of the band as they finished with 'You Only Live Twice', to the bigger stronger performance as they eased into the status of a stadium band when I saw them in Nottingham... the spine-tingling opening of 'Politik' through to probably my favourite track live: 'Daylight'. Obviously my girlfriend and I were soooo excited at the prospect of seeing them @ Crystal Palace.
We arrived at the venue around 7, it looked something like a Pompeii ampitheatre on a stormy day in South London, grand yet quirky. After standing near the front to the left of the stage in the rain listening to Interpol we were well ready for Coldplay to appear and blow us away.
'Square One' kicked off proceedings, which was expected and was one of the best songs of the night as the crowd immediately got into the atmosphere. Unfortunately however as the band continued Coldplaying, to my astonishment we started to lose interest. I was so disappointed with the fact that ultimately the set was more or less identical to Glastonbury, which I hugely enjoyed watching on the tele. It was mirrored even down to the things Chris was saying to the audience and the taking photos of the audience bit.
I can fully understand that with the release of 'X&Y' Coldplay have enough 'big' dare I say commercial songs that both hardcore fans and general, wider audiences are going to enjoy to fill a whole performance, but surely Glastonbury which thousands of people are going to watch at home should not be replicated for the remainder of the tour. Worse, I know people who went to Glastonbury to see them and also have tickets for Bolton Reebok Stadium. I only hope they mix it up a little bit for them.
Admittedly at the end of the Crystal Palace set Chris thanked the audience for helping them through a difficult performance. Coldplay are so good though that I would rather watch them at half their best than watch many other bands. It just seems to me that in the past Coldplay weren't adversed to throwing in a b-side or cover version, which can completely make a gig for some fans.
Of the new songs, 'What If', 'Fix You', 'Til Kingdom Come' and 'Square One' were awesome, but I would have liked to have heard 'X&Y'. 'Don't Panic' didn't sound as good as it used to, but 'Clocks' which is by no means my favourite track from 'Rush of Blood' was spot on, epic in its magnitude to build to a creshendo played live.
I will definitely see Coldplay again, but if I had a message it would be murder for them not to play a few alternative tracks next time around. I guess I'm just not as easy to please as I used to be.
[thanks Paul]
Coldplay's good vibrations
Chilly winds whipping mercilessly into a crowded outdoor arena and a ceaselessly melodramatic Chris Martin on stage, leading Coldplay out for its second sold-out night at London’s Crystal Palace National Sports Centre last Tuesday seemed like a dreadful combination. Wet night it was, but for whatever the reason, the worries of this gig soaking out to be a soggy granny jumper of a disaster proved to be unfounded as Coldplay unswervingly held up its unforgettable fire and refused to allow the elements to rain on its parade.
Once again, the confidence received from its hotly-received new album X&Y was telling, but the raw energy of the masses locking into the band’s live intensity spoke volumes of the upward gradient that favours Coldplay these days.
“Impossible is nothing” could well be the band’s backstage mantra.
Two weekends ago, it bowled over the masses at the Glastonbury festival; last week’s pair of London dates only served to underline the fact that Coldplay is navigating and also overshadowing the arena rock reputation of U2 with each concert conquered on its Twisted Logic world tour.
Curious how there are probably a dozen cynical reasons, flimsy as they maybe, to doubt Coldplay’s position as potentially the world’s biggest rock band of the moment. However without sounding too cheesy, it’s safe to report that the Chris Martin live experience, rain or sun, was undoubtedly big on heart and warmth.
Expectations were already high on Tuesday night with the opening acts – The Morning Runner and NYC’s stylishly sombre Interpol delivering sets of note.
In the freezing winds howling through the venue, Coldplay emerged from the dark at 9pm with the sort of downbeat melancholy that suited the weather. Martin needed to take this concert by the horns and that he did – with a firm gentleness that, oddly enough, belied a reassuringly friendly and warm relationship therapist rather than a snarly and bitter rock star.
Early openers – Square One, and Politik let fly sparks in the air and the crackling emotive energy of the entire band was spine-tingling. An optimistic band on a pessimistic night sounded well-placed, indeed.
“How we wished we had written ‘that’ Travis song (Why Does It Always Rain on Me?), but I guess we have a few good tunes of our own,” joked Martin about the storm clouds looming large.
Over 25,000 fans paid good money for this stadium-sized appointment, and Martin so unashamedly tore into his scrapbook of hard-luck romances and dashed opportunities with surreal amounts of giddy excitement and earnest.
Nothing too abstract. The man just sits there, singing neck sideways on a piano and he has the whole crowd singing along and going teary-eyed with emotion.
For a measure of overzealous arrogance, trust the band to front-end the show with its biggest tracks as Martin sandwiched heartfelt versions of Yellow and God Put A Smile Upon Your Face with the recent hit Speed of Sound.
It seems Coldplay makes stadium singalongs for fun nowadays.
Shades of soft rock aside, people love the fact that Martin is a romantic natural, tapping into his manic joy and feeling the full emotional storm of his dysfunctional relationships all expressed in lyrical directness.
Bad poetry to some, but the tender fluency that seems to connect from a Coldplay tune cannot be undermined. Just because Martin is also happily married to a Hollywood celebrity and is a doting dad doesn’t necessarily mean that his music is all swinging Californian sunshine, either. On the contrary, Martin’s tunes do seemingly come from an endlessly depressing winter – albeit written with a sensitive side that deserves far wider recognition.
Martin can be a wet sponge at times, but he can sure confront his demons and exhale hope in the aftermath of messed up relationships. The heartbreakingly intense Talk, complete with guitarist Johnny Buckland’s shimmering lines, easily took hold as one of the night’s top tunes.
The rest of Coldplay – bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion can be obscure to the masses, but their contributions were no less immense. Anything from the hopeless ballad of Everything’s Not Lost and the soulful Scientist to the stabbing rhythms on White Shadows, Coldplay were dispatching Verve-style ballads with frightening modern muzak-like accessibility, but, miraculously, the band clawed on to credibility through its passionate pulse.
Those who consider Coldplay marginal on creativity may ask how it landed on the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic for X&Y recently, but those touched by Martin’s warm afterglow at this gig would be the first to tell you that the band’s uncomplicated songs about complex human relationships can seem simple and naive, yet when they hit a nerve, you know you’ve been hooked.
How these songs managed to galvanise the crowds in such bitterly cold conditions is anyone’s guess. But with the melodic sting of In My Place and the enormous sweetness of Fix You closing out the concert on a high, you needed to have a cold heart to walk out of the stadium without a lump in your throat.
http://www.star-ecentral.com/news/story.asp?file=/2005/7/4/soundnstage/11359200&sec=soundnstage
