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19-Nov-08: Dallas - Tickets, Preview, Meetups, Review/Photos

busybeeburns
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Sarab543

Sarab543

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a meetup sounds cool!! but does anyone have one extra ticket for dallas? I got a single ticket on ebay (it was a good deal and it was a floor seat) and my cousin is going to give me a ride but he is planning on staying and waiting outside during the whole concert! so I am trying to find him a ticket so he wont do that, he actually likes coldplay a lot, just doesnt have a ticket.... we can probably come up with 70 dollars for one if anyone has an extra....

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busybeeburns

busybeeburns

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[Preview] He loves Coldplay, she hates it. How about you?

 

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Whiny Brit band or winning foursome? A critic and writer face off in advance of the band’s visit to American Airlines Center this week

 

When discussing controversial musicians, the usual suspects often crop up: the Sex Pistols, Eminem or Madonna.

 

But Coldplay?

 

Believe it or not, this British foursome has provoked just as much negative passion as positive — hard to tell whether that hilarious insult from the 2005 film The 40-Year-Old Virgin (you know the scene we’re talking about) was a homage or petulant swipe — and a quick Google search for "Coldplay" and "hate" unearths plenty of screeds aimed at frontman Chris Martin and his bandmates.

 

"It does seem to be the case that Coldplay have become one of those definitive cultural dividers, the twain of which shall never meet," wrote Andy Gill in London’s The Independent in June. "They’re sort of the anti-Sex Pistols, an act that repulses not through outrage, bad manners and poor grooming, but through their inoffensive niceness and emollient personableness."

 

Then there’s the matter of The New York Times’ scathing 2005 broadside, in which critic Jon Pareles labeled the group "the most insufferable band of the decade": "[W]hen the music swells up once more with tremolo guitars and chiming keyboards, and Mr. Martin’s voice breaks for the umpteenth time, it sounds like hokum to me."

 

Yet the band continues to plug ahead, having released its fourth album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, in June and embarking on a world tour shortly thereafter. (The tour wings its way into Dallas’ American Airlines Center on Wednesday.) As seemingly one of the only music critics who actually doesn’t mind Coldplay, I decided to face off with colleague Erin White, whose distaste for the band and its songs is practically palpable. Who makes the better case? You decide.

 

Why I love Coldplay by Preston Jones

 

1 - Despite all the hatin’, they’ve still managed to sell more than 40 million albums worldwide. Normally, critics despair when acts get so big that everyone hops on the bandwagon, but in my opinion, this is a rare case where the public has good taste. Believe me, when you’ve got artists like the Pussycat Dolls, Hinder or Metro Station burning up the charts, racking up eye-popping sales on the iTunes Store and plastering themselves all over any televised awards show that’ll have ’em, the consistent success of a band like Coldplay is low on the crummy scale.

 

2 - Do you really think rappers Swizz Beatz, Brit-rock icon Richard Ashcroft or the equally legendary Brian Eno would collaborate with just anyone? Outside of Coldplay’s own albums, Martin has built up quite the Rolodex, reaching out to some of modern music’s most fascinating talents, offering up songs he has written in whatever spare 10 minutes he has, as well as providing vocal cameos for his pals Jay-Z (on the admittedly iffy Beach Chair) and Kanye West (on the far better Homecoming). Plus, you’ve gotta love any pasty Brit who unabashedly loves hip-hop.

 

3 Many times — and as a music critic, I’m certainly not excluded — people bash what they secretly love. After all, coolness is in the eye of the beholder. Someone’s buying all those albums, T-shirts and concert tickets, and it’s not legions of people wanting to vent their spleens in Coldplay’s direction. So, I’m guessing, a lot of this sound and fury over Coldplay has more to do with putting up a front rather than genuinely getting all worked up over some rather pleasant pop-rock tunes.

 

4 - One of the most frequent charges leveled at Coldplay is that Martin and company shamelessly rip off other, better bands like U2 or Radiohead — and it’s true, the band does owe a debt to its rockin’ British forebears. Still, there are days when I’d rather pop in a track like Talk (from 2005’s X&Y) with its recycled Kraftwerk riff than listen to another band trying and failing to break new ground. Sooner or later, they all work their way back to the source. Why not embrace a band that willingly acknowledges this?

 

5 - Anyone who suggests that every Coldplay album sounds the same hasn’t picked one up in a while. Even a quick spin through 2000’s Parachutes doesn’t begin to point the way toward 2008’s Viva la Vida. Each album has gradually expanded the group’s sonic scope, incorporating a variety of elements that cement Coldplay’s status as one of the most forward-thinking rock groups out there. It’s a delicate balance between retaining that which made the band popular initially, while not becoming locked in a predictable rut, and so far, Coldplay has managed to avoid the trap.

 

Why I hate Coldplay by Erin White

 

1 - They are smug. In the latest single, Viva La Vida, lead singer Chris Martin alternately compares himself to a puppet, a warrior and a hunted, wanted man. He repeatedly refers to how he used to rule the world and how now, one supposes from trying to interpret the impenetrable lyrics, he no longer does and he’s angry about his waning influence. Perhaps this kind of self-seriousness is somewhat warranted if you’re a pop-star-turned-activist like Bono. Or if you’re a pop-star-turned-political-rabble rouser-like the late John Lennon. Maybe even if you’re legitimately bringing something musically new to the table like Jay-Z. But when you are a pop-star-turned actress-marrier-turned-hipster-dad like Martin is, it’s just irritating and infuriating.

 

2 - They were an iPod commercial before iPod even existed — slickly produced to appeal to hipsters with money and boomers who want to feel like they’re still relevant. This is not, in my book, a good thing. And they do not even have the saving grace of being wonderfully bouncy like Feist.

 

3 - All of their songs sound the same. Create a strummy melody. Add some piano. Add some strings. Build to the chorus. Throw in some whiny lyrics. Sing in a falsetto. Voila: a new Coldplay song. And if you’re not irritated already, consider this: Martin’s vocal stylings are directly to blame for the Fray. Still not upset? They’re to blame for James Blunt, too.

 

4 - All of their songs are boring. This is, in my opinion, why they have been able to build a fan base. They are the white walls of the music industry — nonthreatening, appropriate for every situation, able to be projected upon. They are Nickelback for the yuppie crowd. I can forgive a lot of things — silliness, vapidness, being just plain bad. I can’t forgive boring.

 

5 - They are lacking in any real substance. That doesn’t mean all music needs to address topics of global importance. But I can’t stand bands that package nonsense under a label of something of great importance. "You’re part of the human race/All of the stars and the outer space/Part of the system again/All this noise, I’m waking up/All this space I’m taking up/I cannot hear, you’re breaking up". . . . . Come on. That is a pretentious re-wording of the "What does life really mean" journal entries every depressed teenager wrote in high school. U2, a band to which to Coldplay is often compared, created major radio hits writing songs about the violence in Ireland. If Coldplay wants to be taken that seriously, it ought to start reading a newspaper and write about something other than itself.

 

http://www.star-telegram.com/nightlife/story/1035167.html

 

---------------------------------

 

Coldplay

7:30 p.m. Wednesday

American Airlines Center, Dallas

 

$49.50-$97.50

972-647-5700; http://www.ticketmaster.com

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ice water.

ice water.

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Definitely. And since I'm on firefox as a browser, it tires to correct things that it thinks are misspelled. So it corrected it as, 'Cynthia' I was like.. 'ughh. That's not how she spells it.. >;[' Loll.

 

Haha, I don't know where or what time, either. What time should we even get there?

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