Coldplay Viva La Vida Tour!

Coldplay kinda sealed the Attack of the Indies or rather Attack of Former Indies on the Grammies by notching 3 major awards. I hated them for that without prior self reflection (to those who know me damn well, me? Self reflection? You gotta be kidding!) But yes, with Coldplay, I need to have some sort of in-depth reflection because “we” both went a long way together. When I was a fresh wide eyed intern with the only Islamic party in the country, my long endless nights of vetting and keying amendments for the electoral rolls were made bearable by “A Rush of Blood to the Head “cassette played with utmost caution and almost inaudible volume because I was still a poor student with no money to buy a walkman plus I was at the political party’s markas, for crying out loud.  But even before that, Coldplay triggered my curiosity when TIMES wrote a feature on their Parachutes album. Some of the stuff mentioned in the feature was how Coldplay is a bunch of clean cut boys singing raw poignant songs and Chris Martin’s favourite read was “Men from Mars, Women from Venus”. I bet that was way before he realized he will one day produced Apple and Paris with the so-called Hollywood royalty-Gwyneth Paltrow.

 

Coming back to Coldplay going mainstream, now, I took a step backward and asked this question: “So what? Let them be as big as they want it so long as they still produced good music”.

 

This purposeful ranting about Coldplay has a lot to do with the fact that I got to watch the band performed in Singapore last Monday. This time around, I was joined by the Kajang Motley Crew-Altaf and Irma. This was Coldplay third time performing in Singapore, making it a wicked hatrick of sold out concerts for the region. The band performed a solid combination of songs taken from all their albums-Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head, X & Y and the latest Grammy winning album, Viva La Vida.  I was silly to ignore and not giving the new album any chance that as Chris played the opening song of the night from the new album, I was dumbstruck to say the least. “Which one is this?” I asked myself. Oh, never mind, it was damn brilliant, anyway. But later on, when he played the infamous intro of “Clocks” on the piano, I screamed my heads off. I know this one, I told myself and started singing together. From that point onwards, there was no turning back for me and also those two crazy Chinese girls seated in front of me. We embraced the atmospheric music of Coldplay as they performed those songs that I remembered so well from the Parachutes era up to Viva La Vida. This time around, Coldplay allowed the beautiful masterpieces of Brian Eno to be displayed on the large screens together with six huge globe-shaped slides installed to the middle part of the stadium’s ceiling to accompany some of their songs for that night. This added more to the grand ambience that would only suit Coldplay’s orchestral ambitious sounds especially their new songs such as Viva La Vida, Lost and Lovers in Japan. Not forgetting, huge yellow balloons, laser shoots and swirling confetti were some of the wonderful surprises that the audience experienced throughout the concert.

 

I loved the part when they did “Speed of Sound” in unplugged version. Later, Chris narrated on how he was not the better singer in the group. Jerry, their lead guitar would make a better lead, he alleged. Hints of breaking up and announcing his new successor subtly to his fans?  I hope not! Although rumors of Coldplay breaking up because Chris Martin wants to pursue a solo career was heard way before their Viva La Vida Tour.

 

Songs performed that night (not in proper order) were: Don’t Panic, Clocks, In My Place, Fix You, Scientist, Politik, Speed of Sound, Yellow, God Put a Smile on Your Face, Lovers in Japan, Viva La Vida, Trouble, Square One, What If, The Hardest Part, Lost and 42. I think I left a few other tracks but you know what? I am not a professional music critic or reviewer. Hehehe.

 

Kudos to Coldplay for such a great concert. At least, the concert experience instill enough confidence in me to go and buy Viva La Vida and gave it a chance it deserves. J