I never thought I'd say it — as a diehard crank who will rant and rail about nasty tickets who push ahead in movie queues, frosty boutique bimbos, and sullen baristas — but Coldplay's Chris Martin is too nice.
Exhibit one: Late in the band's show at Oakland Arena on Jan. 31, Martin thanked the makers of his pants. The designers, who call themselves — get this — the Nice Collective, were in the audience, and they apparently rated a shout-out — along with the Guerilla News Network, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, and Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. OK, iPods — who isn't grateful someone designed a musical delivery system that's smaller and easier to misplace than a Walkman — but ... pants?Pants did seem to be getting a leg up on the zeitgeist last week when Bay Area band Pants Pants Pants e-mailed me to announce they'd scored more than 100,000 downloads for their recent extremely nerdy but somehow fascinating music video, a shot-by-shot re-creation of Full House's opening credits. And I had been thinking about Martin's trousers (and not in the way you think) before he piped up. Midset, amid the soothing, symphonic rock of "The Scientist," I started wondering how those pants actually remained in place. How could he roll around onstage, dragging guitarist Jonny Buckland down beside him so they resembled two dying beetles, and then crawl along the floor up front as if in hot pursuit of a rambunctious toddler named Apple — all while avoiding the dread plumber's crack?
Anyway, Martin answered my question. Those nice tailors at Nice Collective make some goddamn nice pants for nice rock stars, who are also nice to their longtime fans who saw 'em way back when at the Fillmore, before they became a "fucking enormous rock band — or soft rock band," as Martin endearingly put it.
Never mind that their set seemed nearly identical to the one they played at Shoreline Amphitheatre last August, sans Martin's chatter about loving San Francisco. Even the angst-free acoustic rendition of June and Johnny's "Ring of Fire" remained — a version that my companion described last year as "the worst Johnny Cash cover I ever heard."
I was a bit sad that I missed Fiona Apple's opening turn. Still, one could just sit — marveling at the sheer number of Caucasians in one arena (the two blonds in front of me spent most of the concert taking smudgy phone pictures of the stage and sending them, one by one, to everyone in their address books) — and imagine the quality of backstage chatter.
APPLE: Hi, Chris. God, I'm depressed. I'm at the top of all these critics' best-of-2005 lists. If only those old creeps bought records.
MARTIN: I wish I could be so fucking depressed! Maybe my lyrics would improve. Just turn that frown upside down, Fiona. Don't you know Apples are my favorite fruit?
APPLE: Hey, you stepped on my granny-apple-doll wood-carvings!
MARTIN: Have you ever tried piyoga for that bad attitude?
APPLE: I hate you.
I stand by my review of X&Y last year: The trouble with Coldplay is that, despite the calming, balanced, almost Enya-esque beauty of their music, they're so denuded of danger, risk, grit, rebellion, and sexuality (apart from Martin's ADD-style hip-thrusts behind his piano) that they threaten to become the musical equivalent of St. John's wort.
So what is at play with Coldplay? What drives the music, the vision, and, oh, those much-maligned words?
I believe it's yoga, and Martin's ashtanga teacher Anthony Carlisi can confirm. Shortly after Coldplay's Shoreline date, I tracked down Carlisi via e-mail and asked him if he believed the practice leads to good music and, really, decent rock 'n' roll — which most would probably associate with unhealthy and downright antisocial antics like rolling around in broken glass and doing lines of coke off speaker cabinets.
He replied: "Absolutely !!!!!!!!!!! (sic) In fact I just saw Chris in Phoenix before the concert there. He has been practicing now for several years. I visit and teach him and Gwyneth when I am in London. He was telling me that he loves how it has enhanced everything he does. His energy was electric at the concert................Great Show!!!!!!!!!!!!"
See? It's not rock, after all, but yoga. All of which probably explains Martin's greatest feat at the Oakland appearance: bending over backward while playing keyboards and touching the ground with the top of his noggin. Brings a whole new meaning to the lyric "rush of blood to the head."
Source: http://www.sfbg.com
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