I saw this story this weekend and it blew me away. It's the antithesis of the corruption that scars professional sports, and really captivates what sports should be all about.
*Broadband users: make sure you watch the video on the right side of the screen.
2/21/2006
Coldplay
I'm not even going to get into why I haven't blogged in so long. I'm just gonna get right to the meat and potatoes.
By "meat" I mean Coldplay. And by "potatoes" I mean...well, Coldplay. Back in November I had my finger on the left-click trigger of my mouse ready to buy the best seats in the Omaha Qwest
Center for last night's concert. I kept refreshing my Ticketmaster page over and over again at 9:53, 9:55, 9:56, until the screen changed and let me in to purchase the goods. I had my credit card number already "Ctrl-x'd" and ready to be "Ctrl-v'd" into the form...and when the time came, I was in the zone. Got a ticket for Dawn and Wade, and hit "Buy." Imagine my surprise when I found that we were in the second row on the main floor. That's right. Second row. We were never more than 30-40 feet from frontman Chris Martin at any point in their standard set, and since we were on the end of the row, Wade and I were able to reach out and cop a feel from him as he ran past down the aisle to the rear of the arena.
The concert itself blew my mind [Anyone who's going to a show soon may not want to continue reading this post, because I'm going to give away some things]. They start out with a blinding white panoramic screen for a backdrop, counting down from around four minutes while the band plays the intro for "Square One," the opener off their latest album, "X&Y." The clock ticks down
as the band is in silhouette in the foreground, and right before the chorus, Martin comes sprinting to the front and leaps off of a platform, landing right in front of a bunch of drunken rich kids whose parents bought them tickets to a concert they'll probably leave early, and a mixture of true fans like myself and the people with which I attended. There's a whole lot of sound just blowing you away for about 10 minutes straight as they roll into "Politik," and the whole thing is choreographed brilliantly. The 15,000-plus fans were nuts from the get-go, and the show had a lot of cool elements like giant yellow balloons filled with confetti dropping from the rafters during "Yellow," a semi-unplugged songset including the tribute to Johnny Cash "Till Kingdom Come" (including a rendition of "Ring of Fire" that brought the house down), and a heck of a lot of Chris Martin running around like a lunatic (totally surprising me with his energy). Martin and gang seemed to be impressed with the venue from the beginning, saying if they'd known they "were going to get such a warm welcome from a place they'd never been, they would have come visit a long time ago." A writer from the Omaha World-Herald even said the climax of "Clocks" was the loudest response they'd ever heard during an arena concert. So what I'm saying is, it rocked big and bad, and you should have been there.
The concert was more than worth the price of admission (and believe me, with Ticketmaster's surcharges and arena fees, it was an investment), and will definitely be tough to top. The opening act was Fiona Apple, whose voice is still amazing me this morning. She's something to see on stage too, girating and seeming to curse out imaginary friends when she's not curling her 5-foot, 2-inch dainty figure into a ball. But man can she belt it out. I was more than entertained by her performance and will probably listen to a playlist from her on the iPod today.
And as for Coldplay, they've potentially surpassed Travis as the greatest band on my own personal planet. Now I've just got to go to England and see Travis perform live.
By "meat" I mean Coldplay. And by "potatoes" I mean...well, Coldplay. Back in November I had my finger on the left-click trigger of my mouse ready to buy the best seats in the Omaha Qwest
Center for last night's concert. I kept refreshing my Ticketmaster page over and over again at 9:53, 9:55, 9:56, until the screen changed and let me in to purchase the goods. I had my credit card number already "Ctrl-x'd" and ready to be "Ctrl-v'd" into the form...and when the time came, I was in the zone. Got a ticket for Dawn and Wade, and hit "Buy." Imagine my surprise when I found that we were in the second row on the main floor. That's right. Second row. We were never more than 30-40 feet from frontman Chris Martin at any point in their standard set, and since we were on the end of the row, Wade and I were able to reach out and cop a feel from him as he ran past down the aisle to the rear of the arena.The concert itself blew my mind [Anyone who's going to a show soon may not want to continue reading this post, because I'm going to give away some things]. They start out with a blinding white panoramic screen for a backdrop, counting down from around four minutes while the band plays the intro for "Square One," the opener off their latest album, "X&Y." The clock ticks down
as the band is in silhouette in the foreground, and right before the chorus, Martin comes sprinting to the front and leaps off of a platform, landing right in front of a bunch of drunken rich kids whose parents bought them tickets to a concert they'll probably leave early, and a mixture of true fans like myself and the people with which I attended. There's a whole lot of sound just blowing you away for about 10 minutes straight as they roll into "Politik," and the whole thing is choreographed brilliantly. The 15,000-plus fans were nuts from the get-go, and the show had a lot of cool elements like giant yellow balloons filled with confetti dropping from the rafters during "Yellow," a semi-unplugged songset including the tribute to Johnny Cash "Till Kingdom Come" (including a rendition of "Ring of Fire" that brought the house down), and a heck of a lot of Chris Martin running around like a lunatic (totally surprising me with his energy). Martin and gang seemed to be impressed with the venue from the beginning, saying if they'd known they "were going to get such a warm welcome from a place they'd never been, they would have come visit a long time ago." A writer from the Omaha World-Herald even said the climax of "Clocks" was the loudest response they'd ever heard during an arena concert. So what I'm saying is, it rocked big and bad, and you should have been there.The concert was more than worth the price of admission (and believe me, with Ticketmaster's surcharges and arena fees, it was an investment), and will definitely be tough to top. The opening act was Fiona Apple, whose voice is still amazing me this morning. She's something to see on stage too, girating and seeming to curse out imaginary friends when she's not curling her 5-foot, 2-inch dainty figure into a ball. But man can she belt it out. I was more than entertained by her performance and will probably listen to a playlist from her on the iPod today.
And as for Coldplay, they've potentially surpassed Travis as the greatest band on my own personal planet. Now I've just got to go to England and see Travis perform live.
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