Corkus

I wouldn't pay all that money to see Coldplay close for The Temper Trap. :P

^ Awesome, thanks! So "London's Burning" was the awesome and heavy song they opened with 2 months ago. It's been bugging me ever since.

But "favorites" aren't always "hits". When I think of AM's "hits" that any first-time attendee of their shows wants to hear, I think of Dancefloor, Crying Lightning, Brianstorm, etc. They can still afford to rotate out the lesser-known singles like Cornerstone every now and then. That makes no sense. I'm personally lucky enough to have been able to afford seeing them several times last tour, but that sure as hell didn't mean I could afford Reading/Leeds. You have a slight advantage in the UK since you have all 3 of arena, stadium, and festival shows, but even there, most fans DON'T go to multiple shows on the same tour. And at a festival, you're going to get tons of people who don't give a rat's ass about the headlining band at all. (which is why I personally disagree with their choice to break out OoS at a fest) Just because you, I, and your friends can afford multiple shows does not mean most fans can. I'm a little unclear on what you're asking me, but I'll attempt to elaborate: You brought up the band's stage production on The Resistance tour, and I'll admit that restricted both the song order and song choice flexibility. (they had to raise/lower those damn towers at certain points to correlate with specific songs) And my main complaint with the tour was indeed show length, because they were still able to cram all the hits into every show, which is a good thing. But because they never played more than 90 minutes at arena shows, they didn't have space to throw in some of the hardcore "fan favorites", so to speak. So I think the shows should definitely be unique in some regard, but because of the production last tour, they really weren't given that freedom.

But remember that most people can afford to only attend one show. "Encouraging" further shows to budget fans by only playing a handful of hits one night is being a scumbag. Radiohead gets away with it because their audience is of a different mindset (even though it is admittedly hilarious how many people still expect to hear "Creep" at their shows), and they have calmer crowd vibes too. Although I still don't completely agree with their practices. Though last I checked, Arctic Monkeys DO play their hits at every show...

To use a current example, The Black Keys are currently playing in many of the same American arenas that Coldplay are playing in. Their floors are entirely GA, and that's not just one or two shows. It's all of them. So it's not just the venue's decision. It's the band and their promoters. And yeah, I've been to several shows at the Honda Center. Coldplay was the only one that had floor seats.

The paperless ticket method actually has many flaws. For one, prepaid cards are scalped as tickets instead. It's an extra step for the scalper, but that didn't stop hundreds and hundreds of Radiohead tickets PER SHOW being sold through 3rd parties. Second, if you're suddenly not able to make the show (because let's be honest, that happens to most of us every now and then), you're completely screwed. And will call works for smaller shows, but not arenas, so the paperless ticket concept still needs to be refined a lot.

^ Exactly. Like I said, I think Strangeland is extremely average. But going the safe route was better than continuing PS/NT's journey down the sewers.

I never said they weren't pop tracks. Coldplay is a pop band, after all, but people are pretending they aren't.

I still insist that floor seating in arenas is ridiculous. I've been in one of Coldplay's seats in the middle of the Home Depot Center, which is a STADIUM. It was an awful experience. You can't see one damn thing, plus you can't move around and dance because there's seats everywhere and other people want to just stand there. It would have been a far more enjoyable show in the higher levels. Not to mention Coldplay's floor seats are stupidly overpriced. Every rock band I can possibly think of has all-standing arena floors (even though Coldplay's "rock" status is disputable).

I really don't know where people are getting this idea that "Charlie Brown" would have been MX's "Yellow" if released earlier, or that people are emotionally distraught about the first two singles getting more exposure, or that CB is less of a "pop" song than others on the album, or that people are treating CB like it's the greatest song of all time. Yes, I concede that it's infinitely better than ETIAW or Parrot Dies, but that doesn't mean it's anywhere close to the best thing they've written. Or that it's not a pop song, because it totally is. It may be a better pop song than its MX counterparts, but it's about as blatant of a pop track as you can get.

We're allowed to criticize an album if we want. (don't be like the Coldplay section where people are like "PWEASE DON'T INSULT _______ I WUV IT") My favorite album is UTIS, but if you don't like it, fine by me. To me, Perfect Symmetry was like a cheesy 80's throwback gone horribly wrong. Keane's first two albums were campy, but at least they were grounded. 5 seconds into "Spiralling", the cheese was magnified tenfold. I did enjoy the title track and "Black Burning Heart", but after that and the even worse Night Train, the band was smart to scale it back.

Graduating soon so I'm leaving my summer schedule relatively open for work purposes (unlike last summer where I was at a show every week): 6/1 - KJEE: Silversun Pickups, Garbage, The Naked and Famous 8/10-12 - Outside Lands (Foo Fighters, Jack White, Stevie Wonder, Franz Ferdinand, The Kills, Regina Spektor, Bloc Party, Justice, Andrew Bird, etc.) 10/7 - Florence and the Machine (show #7) 10/9 - Metric 10/12-14 - Austin City Limits (not 100% but very likely, lineup pending) Depending on my availability, I may also see shows by Beach House and Hey Rosetta.

Amphitheater tour? Yeah, f*** that. Like I said on Twitter, I'd probably take a bullet for Flo, but shows at the Hollywood Bowl are worse than 50 bullets.

BINGO. Most of you are right in that Coldplay likely wouldn't play just any summer mini-fest in the U.S. But KROQ is highly influential across the whole country, and they were one of the first stations to give Coldplay national exposure after Parachutes, giving them an instant break so they wouldn't flounder in the American market for years like many of their British counterparts. So the band knows they're indebted to KROQ, hence why they played Weenie Roast just for fun. Anyway, didn't see this posted here, but Dom Anderson - tour manager for Muse and Incubus - tweeted this last night while he was snooping backstage:

Haha I turned this webcast into a drinking game and was drunk chatting it with friends....apoloigies to those of you who follow me on twitter who had to deal with my drunken commentary ahahahah. was actually very glad they limited the amount of MX material. they axctually got extremely good amount of time for KROQ show. most get much less. And honestly, about as goood as you can ask from a KKROQ show crowd, especially since many weren't here to see Coldplay at all. the bigger fans would have been at the Hollywood Bowl shows.

Incubus will still play, especially since they're playing Weenie Roast since they had to cancel Almost Acoustic Christmas last year. This might push back Coldplay's start time by a bit but we'll see.

Oh yeah, there's usually a surprise guest at Weenie Roast. Soundgarden is an insanely awesome surprise. Everyone there had better be appreciating it. Heck, this is probably better than Coldplay will be. (oh shoot, this is the wrong place to say that *scuttles out quickly*)

The problem with KROQ's mini-fests is that a lot of the audience are here to only see 2 or 3 of the bands playing, so you get a lot of quietness during pretty much every non-headline set. Which I think is kind of a shame, since everyone arriving late is not only robbing themselves of seeing some great bands, but is pretty much wasting their money since they PAID to see the full lineup whether they like it or not. Even though the venue's curfew is 11pm, I'm gonna predict Coldplay goes til 10:30 or maybe a bit later. I've never seen any headliner at KROQ events play more than an hour. Oh, for everyone who's awake right now (i.e. not living in Europe and sleeping), be sure to watch Silversun Pickups on the webcast in a few minutes. They're awesome.

Dianne has been to so many shows that she deserves to be able to put "Honorary Coldplay Roadie" on her resume. Anyway, wasn't able to hit up any of these Bowl shows (even though I live 40 minutes from the place) but the lighting and effects look awesome from the videos. A lot of bands feel really restricted when they're forced to use the Bowl's unique screens and lights, so I'm glad Coldplay found ways to be creative with it. Forgive me but I haven't seen live PoC footage until now, and damn, that's lazy as hell. Either get a touring female vocalist to sub in for Rihanna or cut that song out.

The stream? It started over an hour ago.

Of Monsters and Men are awesome. They're like an Icelandic Edward Sharpe. Watch them now, guys. Don't just sit around and wait for Coldplay. ;)

1st weekend :)

Last photos/videos of mine that I'm spamming a thread with for the meantime: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3iapD2hCDA]Kasabian - Underdog - Fonda Theater - Los Angeles, CA 4/17/12 - YouTube[/ame]

Enjoy the Flomance, guys:

Since I'm JUST NOW getting around to sharing my Coachella photos on here, may as well share a few Radiohead ones too: