I’m starting to worry that I’m over-extending my concert karma. With the help of some beautiful, generous people, I managed to snag a seat for Coldplay’s VH1 Storytellers performance tonight at BAM’s Harvey Theater. I was totally beyond psyched out!
According to the pre-show intro, Coldplay is the reason that VH1 has recently brought back the great Storytellers series. Coldplay had contacted the network several months ago saying that they would be coming out with a new album in June and that they’d like to do an episode of Storytellers. The only problem was the program was no longer being done. It was eventually decided that bringing back Storytellers was a great idea, and since then they’ve had DMB, Greenday, and Bruce Springstein tell their tales and sing some songs…but apparently the whole reason the show was revived was because of CP.
Anyway, the theater looked beautiful, with the Coldplay logo made up in a huge light display that sat onstage behind the drum kit, and giant lit up spheres hung from overhead. The guys all wore black tops and bottoms with white sneakers. Jonny had a trucker hat on.
Coldplay did a set of 10 songs, performed in the following order: Square One, Politik, Yellow, Speed of Sound, Warning Sign, Clocks, Scientist, In My Place, Fix You, and the song they wrote for Johnny Cash, Till Kingdom Come, as the encore. The also reshot “Clocks.”
The band sounded amazing. Out of the new songs, “Fix You” is particularly good. And during “Clocks,” Chris does this thing where he does a horizontal 360 while singing one of the verses. (Er…it’s hard to explain.)
Chris joked that the reason why “yellow” was in its namesake song was because he knew there was some word missing from the line “look at the stars/ look how they shine for you/ and all the things you do…” He said he happen to look over to the side and he saw a Yellow Pages sitting beside him. “In an alternate universe, this song would be called ‘Playboy,’” ribbed Martin.
Chris claimed that the song “Speed of Sound” was created out of a failed attempt to do a cover version of Kate Bush‘s “Running Up That Hill,” saying that they wanted to recreate the drum part exactly…and also the chords, but Jonny couldn’t get them right. The result was a song that was supposed to be “Running…” but didn’t sound like it.
After the concert was over, Coldplay did a short Q & A with some pre-selected questions from the audience, which I’m assuming were the winning Qs of the Coldplay.com competition. Some of the queries were about how they overcome writer’s block (Chris claimed that he’s never had it, but Will thinks otherwise), if success has made it more difficult to write music (Guy answered that sometimes it does get in the way), and one man asked “Where do you get those vest-shirts?” (a company called Nice Collective from California).
Look out for Coldplay’s Storytellers to air in June!
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