Tour Journal: Milwaukee, WI

There’s another soundcheck today, so we’re all set and ready by 4pm. Chris is arriving separately and is still on his way from the airport.

Will, Jonny and Guy get up and start noodling around. Guy has a fantastic chunky bass riff which he plays over and over, letting Will and Jonny pick up and join in. As tends to be the case when jamming with no vocals, the music gets rather intense and a bit spacey. The tune takes a twist and a lurching turn as Jonny joins in with an atonal guitar part which is slightly grating but at the same time utterly wonderful.

The whole piece falls together and quite frankly becomes the audio equivalent of the three guys off looking for trouble. If this is a glimpse of the promised ‘harder edge’ I’m into it already.

Eventually Chris arrives, and there’s some work to be done on a track they haven’t attempted since the beginning of the tour. Inevitably, there’s a couple of shaky run through as they try to remember how exactly it goes. Soon though, they’re all playing the same parts of the song at the same time, which always helps. There’s some lighting programming to look at, so the guys leave the stage and let Richard Ashcroft’s crew set up. It’s utterly great having Richard back. He’s a proper legend and undoubtedly lights a fire under the guys by going on before them. Talk about a tought act to follow, but you get the feeling that that half the point of inviting him along.

When the Coldplay set gets underway, I watch one of the crowd close to where I’m working . She has a camera in one hand and her cellphone in the other, clearly determined to capture as much of the experience to take him with her as possible. I can’t quite work out what to think, whether she’s missing out on actually BEING THERE, or if it’s a classic example of the age, where so much more than ever, people have the ability to record moments in their life they want to remember. Either way, it gets me wondering how many thousands of digital camera photos, and tiny video clips existing of the Twisted Logic tour.

Maybe I should try to find out…

Source: The Coldplayer