Fantastic!

Of the 40,000 people who spent up to 7hrs in an open arena on a Wednesday night in Glasgow, I doubt you could find one who would disagree. They are better live than recorded.

The amazing thing is that Coldplay could become ever become a huge stadium draw. Their music is … mellow. Boring, I called it, when the band first became popular.

Lead singer Chris Martin admitted, “we really don’t have very many good songs. If we had written Wonderwall, we’d play it right now for you.” He’s very understated and self effacing in that charming British way.

U2, by comparison, has 30 songs, bigger and better known than any of the Coldplay “hits”. More appropriate stadium anthems.

Improbably, Coldplay delivers. Best I thought was Yellow.

Click PLAY or watch Yellow live in Tokyo on YouTube.

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.

I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called “Yellow”.

The original TV edit for Yellow Coldplay calls their “cheapest & best video”. The band is not known for great music videos, however.

This is the Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends tour, backing up their 2008 album produced by Brian Eno. I’m looking forward to the concert video that was shot June 20-21, 2009 in Vancouver.

Though Chris Martin is front man and clearly the “star”, the band shares profits equally, as do U2 and R.E.M. They’ve also agreed that anyone using hard drugs will be fired.

Coldplay turned down multi-million dollar contracts from Gatorade, Diet Coke, and Gap because those specific deals might denigrate the specific songs requested.

===

Mr. Beyoncé, Jay-Z, was one of the back-up bands. He’s not as well known nor as popular in the U.K. as in the States.

Jay-Z is smart, talented and a survivor in a tough musical genre.

He’s trying to push rap into the future. With a big, talented band, and complexity of song construction something like Jazz. A tight act. But my theory is that rap really has nowhere to go. It was perfected early on by bands like NWA, and we’ve only seen a few interesting variations since.

This positive review is surprising coming from me. I dislike live entertainment. And HATE standing up for hours at a rock concert.

Happily I was able to sit for Coldplay. By luck I had the perfect seat. I sat too for all of the last stadium concert I saw, R.E.M some dozen years ago.