Coldplay's Viva La Vida tour is closing in on its conclusion to the third North American leg as they played at the Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion in Raleigh, NC last night. The Coldplay-shaped puppets were last seen enjoying themselves on the Coney Island rides - see those pictures after the jump. No major changes to the arena/amphitheater setlist as Billie Jean replaced I'm A Believer in the acoustic set again. A problem with Twitpic prevents us from posting any decent live pictures (due to Twitter's outage yesterday), so we'll have much better pictures later on Friday. In the meatime here's one right in front of tonight's C-Stage (about 6 hours too early)...
[discussion] [photos] [videos] [wiki reviews/setlist] (updated over the next 24-48 hours)
Setlist:
Life In Technicolor
Violet Hill
Clocks
In My Place
Yellow
Glass Of Water
Cemeteries Of London
42
Fix You
Strawberry Swing
God Put A Smile Upon Your Face (techno version)
Talk (techno version)
The Hardest Part (Chris piano)
Postcards From Far Away (piano instrumental)
Viva La Vida
Lost!
Green Eyes (acoustic)
Death Will Never Conquer (Acoustic, sung by Will)
Billie Jean
Viva La Vida (remix interlude)
------
Politik
Lovers In Japan
Death And All His Friends
-------
The Scientist
Life in Technicolor ii
The Escapist (outro)
Picture by jcatanzaro @ Twitter... @ C-Stage!
Oh my god. It was phenomenal. Two of my friends were in the pit - Chris Martin high-fived one of them. Then, when he was throwing the tympani stick, it bounced into the same guy's hand! And at the end Jonny walked up to my other friend and GAVE him his pick, straight up handed it off to him. They made off like bandits.No real changes from the typical setlist. Billie Jean was cool, as well as a little improv harmonica song Chris did while they were out on the lawn playing the acoustic set. <3 Green Eyes, too [thanks twistedlogic149]
Wow. First coldplay concert and it was amazing! Everything, the band, the venue, the setlist, the crowd, was all great. They seemed kind of out of it but it barely showed at all, though I was thinking there would be two true encores - didn't really consider the first bit an encore lol. Favorite song would have to have been green eyes, lovers in japan, or the scientist. Oh and the hardest part really showed how great chris and will are in harmony! The band walked right past me on the way to the back stage!! As an aside wtf is with people getting super drunk at a coldplay concert?! There were 50 year old women jumping up and down dancing during every single song!! @guy above me - I think he was talking about the little thing chris sang while will was tuning his guitar, not will's song [thanks Link]
We got there around 4:30, then headed over to the venue immediately. We arrived at the gates at 4:45. We were pretty close to the front of the line, and it really started to get packed once we got there. They ended up not opening the gates until around 5:45. I was one of the first 10 or so people in and we all sprinted to get our front row spots on the lawn. When I first got a view of the lawn I saw 4 or 5 blue tarps with security guards around them, not 1 like I was told. I gave it my best guess and ended up picking the wrong blue tarp. It ended up being the one with the tent over it, but I had assumed that area was for something else...I know, I'm an idiot. I didn't mind really though, because despite the fact that they were a third the price of my Verizon Center tickets for the past two shows, the front row of the lawn had a hell of a lot better view than those seats...
When The Blue Danube came on, the crowd was still yapping and not even paying attention or clapping or anything. Coldplay came on just in time, right at 9 o'clock, and that was when they finally shut up. One highlight was during a song (can't remember which one), Chris introduced Jonny as "the nicest man in the world...Mr Jonathan Buckland...he's 15 years old!". I laughed pretty hard at that, but maybe you just had to be there to find it funny...
At one point, Chris asked if everyone was ready to be louder than they'd ever been on a Friday. The whole crowd yelled back "THURSDAY!". The look on Chris's face was priceless; he had no idea what we were saying. After the song was over Jonny pointed out to him that it was a Thursday. When Viva la Vida started playing, the crowd was at it's loudest. This really disappointed me, but it explained why the crowd was so weak. They were mostly newer fans whose first Coldplay song was Viva la Vida. When Coldplay started moving towards the c stage, there was a huge rush to get over there. I managed to get about ten feet away from the band in a big sweaty mob of teenagers screaming "OMG HE'S SO HOT!". (They were talking about me of course, not Chris). A lot of people started leaving after they finished Death And All His Friends. I couldn't help giving them the finger as they walked by. What a bunch of assholes. It's disrespectful to walk out when the band has two songs left to play. Even when Chris came back out to tell everyone about LeftRightLeftRightLeft, they kept walking. I was furious. I'm really glad they've gone back to playing The Scientist on piano. That's the way it was meant to be played. I haven't been a huge fan of Coldplay using pretty much the SAME set list for an entire year, but the addition of Glass of Water, Life in Technicolor ii, and Green Eyes helped keep things fresh. One thing I noticed tonight was that since I last saw Coldplay back in October, they've become a hundred times better. They've really got this routine down to a science. Viva Coldplay. [thanks Josh42]
I understand that if this is your first Coldplay show, it was probably the coolest thing in the world... because seeing Coldplay is always going to be awesome. But I thought they were better when I saw them last in Raleigh, in 2005. The B and C stage concept is cool but God Put A Smile/Talk feel like filler songs, Green Eyes/Death feel way too short, and with all the time it takes to get between each stage - I'd rather them just stay on the main stage and play 2 or 3 more full songs. Billie Jean was pretty cool though, I must say. Some of the songs didn't translate live as well as I'd hoped - Lost, Strawberry Swing, Glass of Water in particular. And even though they played for almost 2 hours, it felt like a short concert because of the already mentioned time in between stage changes, and how the setlist was so planned, songs never really ended... they just kind of went right into another. Coldplay is still awesome and it was still a really great show, I just wanted to offer up an opinion of something different than "OMG I LOVE COLDPLAY AMAZING SHOW" Oh, and Elbow was fantastic... Grounds for Divorce is such a kickass tune. [thanks aimorris]
HOLYCRAPITWASAMAZING. I saw Hoppy and said Hi to him and he winked at us! I got really close to them when they were on c-stage, I couldnt stop screaming I really put my vocal cords to the test .... Elbow is a lot better live I picked up a ton of butterfly confetti towards the end and I got a tour shirt. This drunk guy started crying during Fix You, it was great Yeah-before Chris said his goodbyes some people started to leave and then they played The Scientist and LiTii but I was almost too tired to sing along I was suprised at how good the Billie Jean cover was! [thanks lindilovescmart]
The concert was fabolous as usual! Not really big into writing reviews in all but...I was in the PIT which is always amazing! I got in line around 5, which I noticed was a bit too late, but my little brother walked up about 30 feet and got us a closer place in line hahaha. Then we ran to the PIT and secured the first row in front of Chris/Jonny. During the middle of Green Eyes, these 2 girls came and squeezed their way right in the front next to me and it kind of pissed me off, plus they were talking to me during the songs and trying to hold a convo which was a no no. I thought Chris was pretty electric tonight. Everything was great! EXcpet for leaving the theater, but Im in the hotel about to head to Charlotte for tonights show! [thanks gmalool]
My group got a decent lawn seat – for an idea of where, it was essentially the mirror image of where Coldplay showed up on the other side of the lawn. This is the only Coldplay concert I’ve been too, but it certainly felt like they had nailed a routine and knew how to go through the motions without seeming stale. I was surprised at how few people vocally recognized songs like Yellow, 42, In My Place, and even Billie Jean (my friend, who knew all the other songs they played, asked me if it was a “B-side or something”). Songs like The Scientist, Lovers In Japan, and Viva La Vida (no surprise there) were the ones that got the loudest immediate reaction. This led me to think that most of the people at this show were not like my friends and I, who had heard every album track and then some, and instead were people who probably had a couple favorites on their iPod and didn’t know the rest. Glass Of Water got virtually no reaction when they started it up.
As for the quality of the actual playing, the band was great, but that’s to be expected. Chris actually hit some blatantly wrong notes on the piano a handful of times (not “jazzy” or “experimental”; his hand slipped or something), but nobody seemed to care. His voice was especially strong, considering how weak it always sounded to me in the live recordings I have. The other band members were totally solid, and I loved Chris’ apparent adoration for Will. One of the best moments was a partially improvised shanty during the acoustic lawn set where Chris threw out lines like “When you’ve been on this leg of the tour since June / It’s nice to play in Raleigh, North Carolina, under the full moon” (big reaction) and “We’ve gotta play the show for the girls and boys / ‘Cause we hear those people in Raleigh make a lot of f---ing noise” (bigger reaction)...
Overall, it was great to observe how hard the band works to please its audience, with the confetti and balloons and the lawn set (Green Eyes was sublime). On an incredibly specific note, I loved it when Johnny took care of the ending of Cemeteries Of London (playing the little piano riff on his guitar). As for the opening bands, I was thoroughly impressed by Elbow, and will probably buy some of their material based just on how well they played. Kitty, Daisy, and Louis were nigh on unbearable by the end of the set by virtue of how similar all of their material sounded, no matter how talented they might have been (My friend nicknamed them Diarrhea because, in his words, “They sound like sh--”). However, they provided one of my favorite moments of the concert when they introduced their Jamaican guest player. He yelled “Ya!” into the microphone, and the crowd reciprocated. He followed up with “Ya ya!” and the crowd followed suit. He finished with “Ya ya yaaaaaaaaaaa!”, dragging out the last “Ya” and making his voice lower and more intense as the band started up. It was an epic introduction and, for a moment, made me think the band was about to play something interesting. Then Mr. Jamaica whips out his trumpet and launches into the corniest song of the whole set. I almost cried laughing. Also memorable was when, in the last song, they repeated the same bar of music for a minute and a half. It literally sounded like a CD was skipping. The crowd applauded when they finally broke off.
Great show, and will always be a great memory. [thanks - Gabriel]
More on this concert including reviews, videos, pictures and tweets here onwards.
The Coldplay-shaped puppets had a cracking ol' time on the Coney Island rides:
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