Coldplay at MSG

The Grand Finale
Originally uploaded by subatomicfilms.

I was one of the lucky (actually, there were thousands others, so maybe not that lucky) folks that got tickets for the Coldplay show at Madison Square Gardens. Can't say that I'm a huge fan, I'm more of an armchair Coldplay admirer.

I really enjoyed their first album, Parachutes, but think their albums after it are nothing to be proud of. So, I went to the show with low expectations, and mostly because it was free.

The first two opening acts were abysmal (not even worthy of a mention)! So, I was getting more and more frustrated and decided that I'd give Coldplay a few songs, and if they sucked, I would exit early to Brooklyn.

However, they brought it! I think they are settling nicely into their billing as 'the new U2/Radiohead', arena-rock gods. The band sounded tight, and Chris Martin played the role of frontman quite well: inane banter between songs, dancing wildly, audience participation and charisma to burn.

They belted out a nice mixture of old and new songs and pulled some cool 'surprises', including a bizarre acoustic performance of monster hit Yellow at the back of the arena amongst the crowd.

The only downer was that there was no encore, which the crowd totally wanted. I guess, you get what you pay for.