ApproximatelyInfinite

Hahahaha, it just made me laugh, I wasn't sleeping anyway :P Y'all need to come over here in the summer so we can all see them at Giants Stadium or wherever they're playing :cheesy:

:cry: :kiss:

:hug: s to everyone for all the nice comments :nice:

Smart, eh? :wink3: :P I watermarked one of my photos from the Today Show with my actual username/blog name, but it's so long that it looked silly. Yay for graphical representation! PS: I'm finally listening back to the gig now and it's tearing my heart out :bigcry:

OK, here's a photo spam of my favorites :wacky:. I watermarked them because they're also going on my blog, sorry about that, but for once I kind of like them :P

Thank you! :kiss: I wish I didn't write so much, though :lol:. I'll never be able to express myself in anything less than an essay.

:bigcry: PS: I love how the date of the gig in your sig is white while the others are grey :wacky:

Ok, so by now this is probably old news, but I didn't bring my computer to England with me (half a good choice, half annoying as hell), so this is the first chance I'm getting to post anything (also due to 11 INCHES OF SNOW AT HOME ON THE DAY I FLEW BACK TO THE US and ensuing power outages etc). I'm going to start at the very beginning, way pre-concert, because the whole trip was special to me, not just the show. And if you don't feel like diving into the characteristically-long spoiler (and this is going to be a looooong one), this is what it says in a nutshell: this was the best I've ever seen them, my 15th time, and I highly doubt that any other gig they or any other artist do will ever mean more to me than this one, having to do with venue, company, circumstance, as well as band performance. I'm walking around in awe that any of this even happened, and that it went better than I could have ever hoped for. PRE-GIG GIG DAY I'll post my few favorite photos later today, but the link to the Facebook album is in the last post on page 100 :D

You really think? :surprised: I have to re-listen to this one this time from the perspective of not being there, but I was at both this and Oxegen this year, and it makes my heart explode with love and gratefulness to think that those might have been two of the best shows they've done this year :bigcry:

Oh, and THIS is the Facebook album with the best of my photos! Some of them are pretty OK and others are meh, but I had to capture as much as I could of this gig.

:lol: Oh man, I look a bit off, but whatevs, it's cute :wacky: The penguin picture wins, though :P

OMG I forgot about AM! HOW WAS IT? And seriously, guys, I'll write about it in my review, but beyond all the Coldplay stuffs, I feel like I learned something about friendship this week. I'm not exactly rolling in the friends department lately, nor am I around people who understand my interests and choices a lot, so this week...meant a lot to me :heart: [/sappy]

OMG THIS THREAD IS 100 PAGES, I WILL NEVER CATCH UP :bigcry: And can I just say I miss Mich, Anna, Jo, and Laura more than I feel like I've ever missed people in my life?

OMG HI GUYS This is the first time I've had internet in days because we got 11+ inches of snow at home here in the US and no one has power and blah blah, and I didn't bring my computer to England! I'll have a review maybe by tomorrow? I'm going to type it up tonight and will post it whenever it's done and I can get it up. And photos will trickle out. I REALLY want to write up my story but life is so nuts right now! Suffice it to say that this was the best Coldplay-related thing I've gone to yet, tied with the Boat Trip last year. To see Coldplay at my university? To talk to them outside buildings I had classes in and got my degree in? Insanity. I'll never, ever get over this gig, or this band. Or the lovely girls I went with.

Ugh, guys, I'm so sorry this isn't up to date right now. If I have time before I run to the airport I'll try and fix it a bit, but my real-life constraints this week have prevented me from being able to keep this thing up as it should :sad: THIS is a good place to look for a lot of the radio things I've missed.

He's come close, as we know, with photographers at least. I can't imagine that pressure, really, and that's why I feel bad for him. I just hope he never does it on a live talkshow or something where the media would really pick up on it and he'd never hear the end of it.

Mich and Anna might go very early if there's word that there's a lot of people, but we're all getting to Norwich early Wednesday evening. I'm going to crash immediately to sleep off jetlag and then get up and go to UEA (probably meeting Mich and Anna there, who might go early in case it's a madhouse) at like 10:30 AM to make sure we're all there in time for wristbands at noon. I just really want to have slept, you know :P I don't know whether people are going to queue straight after getting wristbands, but at least some probably will, so I figure right after that we'll just queue for the doors. I'm not even sure where they'll let us do that: the main LCR doors are right where all the tour buses are going to be and where they're going to be loading in gear, so I assume they're not going to want us all sitting there...I wish I'd done at least one other gig there so I knew how this worked better :lol: I have absolutely everything crossed for you winning. I still feel terrible about all of this, about you and everyone else that wanted so badly to go.

MY EMAIL WAS IN MY SPAM BOX. Everyone that hasn't gotten it yet should check there, apparently mine came through around 1:30 PM EST but I didn't see it until I thought to check in spam.

It really is tiny, it's not even just the photos that make it look that way. I've been in there millions of times when there aren't gigs or parties happening, and it's just not a very big space. Pretty much anywhere is good, especially if you're in the front of the "raised floor" section at the top of those stairs. I'm going to be aiming to get right at the barrier, of course, but it's really great to be anywhere in there as long as you're not behind a pole.

Ugh, I was waiting for the first interview drama. Most of me feels terrible for him--people ask the dumbest questions that are totally irrelevant, and if these people did their research, they'd know that questions like that about his family life will set him off and not make for a great interview. But at the same time...I feel like he's got to expect that. Not respond to the questions, but maybe not hang up or walk out either. Easier said than done, of course, but politely ignoring the question by saying "no comment" or something would probably make him look better, because of course everyone just latches on to the times that he's done things like this. I kind of think he should lighten up a bit about that subject matter in general. He was doing well with the mentions of her on Sunday Morning and Colbert.

For those going, this is what the LCR (venue) looks like: I've actually never gone to a gig there just because good acts usually sell out so fast and everyone there's usually more interested in getting wasted, but...this was a big reason why I decided that if it was possible, I had to go. Don't completely understand how 1500 fit in there though.

I'm still unprepared to put it in the album ranking list yet. I'm going to have to put some thought into that. And I had the same problem with VLV as well--really liked it, but didn't really get the brilliance of some tracks until later. This time, I felt that the songs I was iffy about I'd already heard, and they sounded much, much better in context of the album. Maybe it's because I was "more excited" for VLV's release, even though I had my concerns about what they were doing even back then. But I was so, so excited for it that when it came, it might have been inevitable for me to be a bit more critical of it at first (same thing happened to me with a non-Coldplay album this year that I was pants-wetting excited for). This time, I was quite worried about the whole thing, even though we'd heard most of the songs in some form, and was very pleasantly surprised. There was no hurdle of equating high expectations with reality and bringing them more down to earth: this time it was the opposite, and that was refreshing.

I feel almost exactly the same way--this is really well written. I really love MX, actually a lot more than I expected I would, but I wonder how it'll age, especially in comparison to the others, because it seems very "of its moment" and, like you said, uses a lot of similar techniques to other (pop) music out there these days. I definitely agree that it's less innovative than I think anything else they've released in that sense. However, for some reason I feel that MX is more cohesive than VLV. I have a hard time articulating what I mean, but I feel like the sonic thread is stronger on MX than it was on VLV, in that all the songs seemed to have a common "thing" going on. I think all of Coldplay's albums BUT VLV are actually quite cohesive, while VLV is more doing one thing one minute and a completely different thing the next. That worked for that album, very well, I think, but I'm always drawn to album cohesion, and I feel that that's something MX has in spades. And "watch your step" is a great way of putting it--I think they pulled this album and this style off very well, but if they plan to do the same sort of thing again (meaning create another album working off popular tricks and sounds of the time with a dash of anthems and a dash of acoustic guitar songs), I don't know if it would work as well for them. The next time around I'd love to see them really try and put out that stripped-down album they originally planned on doing, or something similarly different from what they've been doing of late. Reassess and tone down a bit, I guess.

I agree it's not their best work, but I certainly don't think it's an embarrassment, either. Each is entitled to their opinion, of course, but I think I'd like to hear a description of why it's one of the worst albums ever heard out of curiosity.

FINALLY got around to watching this, and these were the best parts. The "you took our Gwyneth" thing killed me, for some reason, and the "I'm 17% high" line :lol:. Chris looked so nervous, but was still completely willing to play along, which was great.