R#42 blog

That’s the choice some fans might have had to make for their Saturday night in Barcelona.   Today’s venue, the Palau Sant Jordi, is right next door to the Olympic Stadium. That is the home of Andorra today, for their game with England in the 2010 Football World Cup qualifiers. The atmosphere should be amazing outside later, as fans of both events converge on this hill overlooking the city, soaked in sunshine. It will give our volunteers a whole different crowd to speak to as well. I wonder which

10.28pm: And we're done. Amazing gig. Hope you enjoyed tagging along. See you next time...   Anchorman (deserves our vote!)   10.17pm: We made it just in time for the end of the B-stage bit, which is where the first pic is from. The other two are from Viva La Vida, which made 16,000 people go extremely tingly. It was quite a wrench to leave them all singing as we came back to post these. Roy Castle would be proud of us.   The key to live photography: take dozens and two or three might be half-d

The sound in some of these arenas is incredible. I will never get tired of hearing the crowd spontaneously chanting that ‘Viva’ chorus. The echo and the sheer number of people singing as one, is something else. Amazing. Another thing that’s amazing, is another 982 signatures in Mannheim, the first stop for Oxfam Germany. 982 people lending their voice to Oxfam campaigns. Many thousands more learning from our volunteers, about Oxfam, Coldplay’s support of Oxfam and the ways that they can support

Monday 1st September 2008, 22:30. Zenith, Strasbourg, FR.   I just came upstairs to write a little note to the world. It’s heaving down there. Will Champion just dropped the beat for ‘Politik’. I have 1411 signatures sitting next to me. The Oxfam France agir-ici volunteers just handed them in before they went in to enjoy the show. In just 3 hours, 1411 people in Strasbourg called for Health and Education FOR ALL. That’s amazing. When the numbers are added for the whole tour, world leaders will h

Bonjour, Nazdar, Hallo, Hello’, Salve, Hola!   After a few weeks to get some sleep, rest a bit and catch up on life at home (where I lay my hat..), i’m back out on the road again with Coldplay. The crew room has a strangely orange glow. Light fittings, chairs and floor are all a matching ’Dulux’ tangerine colour. That’s in keeping with the awkward-but-stangly-interesting-tango-tent-like structure that is the Strasbourg Zenith, home of tomorrow night’s show. It sort of looks like a pile of bright

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 reports from last night's BBC show   Like the school summer holidays, our three weeks at home went all too fast. In many ways, starting again at the BBC is perfectly consistent with the "back to school" analogy. The BBC has that wonderful institutional feel, a similar must and polish smell and a strict adherence to regulations that is at first mildly annoying, but eventually becomes quite endearing.   We're at the BBC Radio Theatre today, in the

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 muses on the band's time in Japan   Can it really be a week since we left Japan? Worse yet, I've not yet submitted my journals from those shows. "Jetlag" sounds far more glamourous and interesting than "couldn't get off the sofa", so I'm sticking with that. Somehow though, I think we all know where the truth lies.   In a nice follow-on from the previous journal, I opened my hotel room curtains in Osaka to be greeted by a building in the distance

Great news for Oxfam, and Coldplay fans everywhere! Well.. mainly great news for fans who live in Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, or Atlanta.   The band have added 4 dates to the second leg of the Viva tour in North America. The USA is getting it’s fair share of those lovely boys from England. If you missed it, there has also been a date added in Dublin, Ireland, in December.. Loads more opportunities for Oxfam to talk to the fans, and a second shot for me, at seeing more or Washington (I spen

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 reports from Japan   I have to wonder whether it's called "the land of the rising sun" due to most visitors spending their first jetlagged days waking at 5am. Indeed, it was apparently a skewed body clock that had Chris walking round an Osaka park at sunrise when he began writing Lovers In Japan. It's cheesy and obvious, but it's impossible to wander the humid streets and not have the tune as a mental soundtrack.   Humid, now there's a thing. It's

The quiet hum of a computer. The muffled bleep of a printer. The distant mingled voices of the office. Grey clouds outside and the smell of freshly brewed tea. It’s all very different sights, sounds and smells to life on the road. No radios, no lines of cables on the floor, no waiting crowds filling arenas..   Most of the crew, myself included, have returned home after the first leg of the tour. Only a select few crew members have travelled on with Coldplay to Japan, for the two dates at Summer

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 sends Pemberton video footage...   Greetings from the East. Whilst we adjust to the jetlag and the culture shock, here's a little home movie from that festival in the mountains we did a little while back. R42   Discuss the latest blog and watch the video again here [thanks melanieau]    

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: In which #42 runs into Barack Obama   After spending the day off in New York, the Hartford show is close enough to drive to. Everyone climbs into a couple of vans outside the hotel and we head off. It's been a fair old while since the days when the band traveled to every gig by van. The nostalgia for the van days steps up a notch when they pull off the freeway after 90 minutes for a break. 'Motorway services are as integral a part of any band's early

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 reports from Canada   So that's Canada done for a little while, eh? This time out, a good proportion of the crew are Canadians, so Chris's claim from the stage that it's a "home from home" have an extra resonance. As soon as Life In Technicolor hits in Montreal, I'm suddenly reminded about this place. Nobody knows whether it's the crowd or the acoustics, but the cheering is absolutely deafening throughout, which can't help but lift the show to new

The walls are shaking. The crew are checking the huge sound system. Both band and crew, are back in the USA. Canada behind us, until we roll into Ottawa, next time we cross the pond. A very sleepy crew left Toronto after 3 consecurive show days. We made the (slightly) bonkers border crossing back South.. (all off the buses at 4.30am, only to be sent back to our buses without checking out passports).   Oxfam America volunteers will be here in an hour. All geared up and ready to ask this Connectic

It’s the end of the road in Toronto. We will soon cross the border back into the United States of America.   I’m in the production office, post-shower. I’ve packed the Oxfam road case. I’ve seen off the awesome Oxfam Canada volunteering team. Another 1615 signatures for the FOR ALL campaign. Signed. Sealed. Delivered.. (or something like that).   I took my shower in the dressing room (after the band had left). Paper butterflies still littered the floor. There are not many better feelings than a

Santogold just warmed up in a huddle to my left. Black hats, white shirts, balck ’pants’, white ’sneakers’ and sunglasses. The lights are bright out there you know.. They just took the stage, with a roar rippling through the excited crowd. Sirens ring around. There goes the beat. There’s the bass.   Backstage always sounds like a glamorous place.. all couches, plants.. etc. This is just where we work. I’m sat by a concrete wall. Surrounded by road cases. Roadies and crew are perched on cases wit

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 becomes a mountain person   We arrive in Whistler pretty dazed and confused. The travel has been fairly brutal once again - but hey,nobody said it was easy...   All I knew about this in advance was that it's a festival. I think I vaguely got the idea that there would be some trees. But the van ride from the airport to Whistler lays it all out before us in glorious technicolour. Mountains, lakes, glacial streams, it's all here. The road hairpins i

The singing was ringing in my ears as I packed up and took a shower last night. Chris Martin had told the crowd the rules of the encore: that they had to make lots of noise, if they wanted the band to come out again. That was before they played the last song of the set.. then, even with a mic, you couldn’t hear him speak to introduce it.   Montreal was an amazing show. The crowd in full voice from start to end. Coldplay couldn’t help but play a second encore. There’s a lesson in making some nois

Ole, Ole Ole Ole .. Cold-play Coldplay! (repeat many times).   There’s nothing like a festival crowd. Squished in tight for the best spot. For some that’s right by the speaker, on your friends shoulders, by the fence, or it might be at the back.. where there’s room to dance. For everyone, it’s on the grass/mud/dust/hay, or whatever else is underfoot. It was dust at the first ever Pemberton Festival.   For most, the best spot was as close to the stage as possible, when the night reached Coldplay

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 sends pictures from Philly   We're in the mountains doing a festival right now. In the meantime, here are some photos from during Yellow the other night. R#42      

Canada and the Rocky Mountains.. the latest destination of the Coldplay Tour. It’s the day of their headline slot at the Pemberton Festival, which will also see Jay-Z perform before the London boys take to the main stage. Quite an impressive pair of headliners. Surely rumours of a collaboration will circulate the site. We shall wait and see.   Philadelphia Wachovia Center was the last to play host to Coldplay’s sold out show. A night to remember for thousands more fans before the tour headed for

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 reports from Philly   I only realise that today is a Friday when I head out of the venue in the afternoon and see the first of the 'tailgaters' setting up in the parking lot. This is something that doesn't seem to happen in Europe - maybe it's the weather. For the uninitiated, what happens is that folks arrive way early for the show and have a barbeque / picnic / party out of the backs of their cars - all getting into the spirit of things with mus

Check out coldplay.com for a new newsreel entry: Fortis est veritas ("truth is strong")   Good afternoon. It has been brought to our attention that the Wikipedia article on hard-living rock combo Coldplay is not as accurate as it could be. For starters, it was Mr Tim Crompton who first suggested the name Coldplay, not Mr Tim Rice-Oxley.   Also, the song featuring Miss Kylie Minogue is called Lhuna, not Lunar, and is not confirmed to be on the band's next album. Furthermore, eagled-eyed readers o

Check out coldplay.com for a new blog entry: #42 tells of unexpected encores in Chicago...   So today we exchange the sun-drenched palms of Western California for the 'Windy City' of Chicago. It's a rudely early awakening for the flight - made no better by the fact that I didn't really start packing until about 2am. We get to the plane and the luggage van looks like an explosion in a childcare store.   You can't help but wonder whether the huge burst of bright colour and 'home-made' artwork that

Those are the lyrics I just heard Chris Martin sing from the United Center stage on the second night of their stop in Chicago. They are on stage right now.   Just before I came in to write, they played ‘Yellow’ to a rapturous reception, literally lighting up the arena with that song, both in colour and voice. Oxfam had a massive 1143 great Chicagoans signed up last night, and it looks like a similar amount again tonight. The audiences seem really keen to find out more. The energy of the voluntee