19 December 2010: Crisis Hidden Gig: Coldplay in Liverpool (Fan Reviews)
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Fan Reviews (Part 2)
Part 1 can be found at 19 December 2010: Crisis Hidden Gig: Coldplay in Liverpool
England Journal: Day Three. This was the first day that was all about Coldplay. Oz and I met another Coldplay fan from the United States, Carrie, at Paddington Station. This was where we began our journey to the two “Hidden Gig” shows benefiting Crisis.
So we took the train from London to the city of the first show in Liverpool. As the special concerts were designed, the location for the gig was kept secret until 24 hours before the show, to share the sense of uncertainty that the homeless face every day in not knowing where they will live from day to day, and spread awareness about the problem.
While Oz and I have know each other for several years, as we both collect original props and costumes, what we did not know until last year was that we both also have a huge appreciation for stage, studio, and screen-used music memorabilia – namely instruments and wardrobe. So when Coldplay had a huge charity auction one year ago, their “End of the Decade Clearout Sale“, we subsequently found out that we had both won items at auction. This was how we also became acquainted with Carrie and other Coldplay fans who collected pieces from the auction.
In addition to all of the other excitement about these shows, it is quite extraordinary to build on these relationships that have been born out of a passion for collecting and preserving these important pop culture artifacts.
In any event, we were extremely fortunate with the weather, as it was very icy and snowy in England, but our train was able to maintain its schedule and take us on our journey to Liverpool. Throughout the trip, we could hear the loud noise of ice breaking off of the train. Upon arrival, the train was covered in ice.
Oddly enough, once we arrived in Liverpool, in our adventure to meet Coldplay, we literally bumped into frontman Chris Martin while waiting for our taxi cab outside. I believe it was likely that he was actually on the same train as us out of London. Carrie and Oz saw someone coming towards us and moved their luggage out of the way to make it easier for him to get between us, without realizing who it was until he said, “thanks, mate” as he passed and got into the car that was waiting for him.
After checking into our hotel, we later met up with fellow Coldplayers Mathieu from Belgium and Wisna from Slovakia for drinks and dinner.
We were thrilled as well as relieved to have made it through the poor weather conditions to the city of the first show, though sad among some reports of friends being stranded – one, Mario, unable to make his way out of London via Heathrow after meeting with us, to return to Germany (his flights being delayed from Saturday to Tuesday at the earliest) as well as another friend stuck in the U.S. trying to make it out to join us on our journey to see these concerts.
http://www.originalprop.com/blog/2010/12/20/original-prop-blog-in-england-journal-day-three/
London Snowpocalypse and Coldplay Karma Part III I don't even know where to begin with this story. There's so much before the Coldplay part (which is the part most readers will be interested in) that needs to be explained...I guess I'll do this in chapters again. And yes, this will be supremely long.
(As an introduction, in early November, Coldplay announced that they would be performing two one-off Christmas gigs for the homeless charity Crisis in Liverpool and Newcastle. I was gutted that they were one day after I was to fly home for Christmas, even though I'd gotten my equalisers in the form of the boat/shoot experience and Top of the Pops).
CHAPTER 1: HEATHROW'S CLUSTERF**K Basically, I was supposed to fly out of the UK to America via Heathrow on Saturday for Christmas. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing when I saw the snowy forecast on about Wednesday, but I thought it would mean delays at most, and I could deal with that. I didn't expect London to go off the fricking chain about four measly inches. So I go to the coach station in Norwich on Saturday morning. The coach is cancelled. They tell us that they have booked taxis for us instead, which sounded hunky-dory and plush to me, but in the end the coach pulled up an hour late, even though it hadn't snowed for 12 hours in Norwich. The closer we get to London, the more it's snowing, but being from Connecticut, I look at it and think that this is nothing. Turns out, when the coach makes its stop at Stanstead Airport, a man from the coach company comes on board and tells us the coach will not be going any further due to blocked roads to Heathrow and Gatwick, and what's more, Heathrow and Gatwick are CLOSED and National Express coaches are going offline as well.
So I get off the coach at Stanstead and try to devise a plan. My thoughts were that I needed to at least get to Heathrow and wait for my assumedly-delayed flight there. I tried to book a car to Heathrow--no dice, all taxis were cancelled. In the end, I booked a train ticket on the Stanstead Express to Liverpool Street Station, my home-away-from-home in London. This takes forever, but I get there. I flag down a taxi to bring me to Paddington Station, where the Heathrow Express departs from (if you saw the size and weight of my suitcase, you'd see why the Tube was not an option). I book a train ticket and make the Heathrow Express as the doors are closing.
I shouldn't have gone to Heathrow at all. Everything, absolutely everything was grounded, and there were thousands upon thousands of people with luggage and children on every scrap of floor. I decide to wait in the queue for the Delta Airlines desk to see what I can do about my ticket. They sent people down the line telling us we can't rebook at the airport, the only thing we CAN do is try to leave the airport and rebook by phone. The number they gave us is Mon-Fri only, and it was Saturday. Genius, I tell you. To top it off, once it hit 6PM, all the Delta employees left their desks and went home, leaving Heathrow staff to deal with us and the people flying the other airlines. The only thing to do was to try to get a hotel. I go downstairs to the hotel booking desk and wait in queue for that. I waited for 1.5 hours. Once I got to the desk, the man told me he had ONE hotel available in ALL OF LONDON, and it was the equivalent of $700 a night. I tried ringing the good ole Arran House, but I couldn't get through. Luckily, my dad got through and booked me 4 nights straight...because he had also rebooked my flight for WEDNESDAY, the earliest availability. This smacked of Eyjafjallajokull.
It took me 2.5 more hours to get back to Paddington Station via train, where I wolfed down Burger King like a starving child and then waited in a taxi queue for another hour. By this time, it was 11PM. I got to the Arran House, get settled in, update Facebook/Twitter to keep people updated, decide I'm too tired to shower, and attempt to sleep.
I'm actually quite proud of the way I handled all this. Contrary to my "Chicken Little" tendencies that everyone seems to think I have, I think I'm quite good in crises. I just kind of sighed and went with the flow, because what else is there to do? I know most people I know would have been the half of the people in the airport that would have just sobbed into the linoleum floors or raged at airline employees. Things are much easier to deal with when you see the humor in them. I will, however, not be seeing the humor in anything if my Wednesday flight is cancelled as well (very possible) and I can't be at home for Christmas.
CHAPTER 2: GETTING TO LIVERPOOL I couldn't sleep that well for some reason. I woke up around 10, early for me, to messages from Coldplay friends on Facebook and the like telling me that the band just opened up 200 more tickets each for the Liverpool gig that night and the Newcastle gig the following night. I distinctly recall saying when they announced these gigs last month or so that I wish there was some way I could stay in England for 2-3 more days so I could go, but had no hopes of actually ending up there. The previous night, I thought "haha, well I'm in England now, what are the odds of miracles happening and me going to one? Slim to none." The catch with these 200 tickets was that you had to buy them in person, so that was out. Except that the lovely Mich was already at the venue in Liverpool and offered to buy one for me. I immediately turned down the offer, thinking it would be too expensive, time consuming, and complicated to get there, find a place to stay, somehow get out of my Arran House booking for the night, and deal with all my luggage. For fun, though, I looked up train times and prices to Liverpool in a few hours time. To my utter astonishment, a) trains to Liverpool leave from Euston Station, a 5 minute walk from the Arran House, b) trains to Liverpool from London only take 2.5 hours, in contrast to 6+ hours from Norwich, and c) round-trip fare would cost me only £40, half as much as it costs me the day before to go to London from Norwich. My heart began to beat very fast. I looked up hotels, and found one practically in the train station itself (and across the street from the gig venue) for £30/night. Getting excited, I ran downstairs and asked the Arran House staff how much their cancellation policy was. Because they're lovely people and they know me, they said they wouldn't charge me at all for the missed out night AND that they'd watch my luggage for me. Squeeing my brains out, I ran back up stairs to find Mich telling me she just found herself with an extra gig ticket anyway. I promptly booked train and hotel, through a spare change of clothes in my purse, and high-tailed it to Euston smiling like an idiot and barely containing my glee.
I woke up at 10:30 with no notion of going to Liverpool and only a tiny shade of an idea to finagle my way to Newcastle the following day. By 12, I was in Euston early, waiting for my train, eating lunch, buying toiletries for the trip, and being the only happy person in the entire station (which was riddled with thousands of disgruntled travelers, just like the airport, as apparently England falls apart at the seams in snow). Trains were being cancelled and delayed left and right still, but Liverpool ones seemed to be running OK. However, my 2:02 departure time came and went and I started to get nervous. Luckily, it was only 20 minutes late and I bopped on the train happily, hardly believing that things were working out.
There was intermittent wifi on the train, so I was able to keep in touch with queuing Coldplay friends via Twitter. I found out that Chris Martin invited them all into the venue to watch the soundcheck! I'm not a jealous person, but the only thing I ever get seriously jealous about is when people get amazing music-related opportunities like that. However, I was just in such thankful awe about even going to one of the Crisis gigs that I didn't feel a speck of jealousy for a second and was only happy for them--and I've had a Coldplay Karma hat-trick of late, so I have no right to be jealous of anything. The only part I feel like I really would have killed to be there for is that Will's little daughter Ava was apparently there hamming it up with the guys, and I would have loved to see that adorableness.
I got into Liverpool at 5 and discovered just how close my hotel was to the station. I dropped off my stuff, freshened up as best I could (the previous night was the only night in 5+ years I hadn't showered before bed, so I needed it), and walked to the venue. Google maps lied to me about its location, and I discovered it had been right under my nose the whole time. I met up with Mich and Alison and a bunch of others, finally believing that I was actually there and about to see Coldplay for the...11th time in my life. I'm a nerd. We enthused about excitement, silver linings to snow-clouds (me), the sneak-preview of the setlist they got in the soundcheck (THEY WERE GOING TO PLAY SHIVER, OMG), and all the little things about the soundcheck. Crisis passed out special Coldplay badges/buttons with the dates of the gigs on them. It was absolutely lovely.
CHAPTER 3: THE GIG My friends all had standing tickets and the one Mich had for me was seated, on the balcony, which I was completely fine with. I didn't expect to be there at all--I would have been grateful to be isolated to the toilet and only hearing the music through the wall, as I thought I'd be in an entirely different country for these two gigs. I queued with them anyway, because there's something about the happy stress of queuing that I love, even when it's below freezing out. The doors opened at 7, 1.5-2 hours after I got to the venue, and I stepped out of line to let the pit people fight to the death for front row. I discovered my seats on the balcony were actually great--the venue's capacity was only 1,000, and it was a tiny, old-fashioned theater that was unaccustomed to rock concerts, so I was right on top of them.
The opening act was The Choir With No Name, a choir of homeless people from London. They almost made me cry, and I haven't properly cried since about 2008. Some of them were impressive singers and some of them were not, but it was their enthusiasm and happiness, and their stories, that got me, and the crowd approved massively.
Despite a technical error before showtime involving lack of sound, Peter Kay (English comedian) introduced the band and they came out rocking. "In My Place" is an amazing opener--they should do that more often! I'm not going to go through the entire setlist song by song, but I will say to my utter surprise (and besides "Shiver"), "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" was my absolute favorite of the night, and that's not usually high on my Coldplay favorites list. They nailed it, and Will was a beast on the drums like I'd never seen him before, and Jonny whaled (wailed?) on his guitar with everything he had in him. Musically, it might be the second-best I've ever seen them, even if Chris did fudge up the lyrics of almost every song time and time again. They were laid back and willing to ad-lib and experiment unlike they are on tour, where everything is pre-determined and highly scripted. Chris was in a great mood and didn't beat himself up over his mistakes, even though Will literally had to baby him through some songs and lyrics. Of course, he said about five times that they only have 3 hit singles, the only reason they're popular is because Guy is so handsome, the new material they're keeping under wraps is "atrocious," and that he's actually a jerk in person that everyone hates, but that's Chris for you, take him or leave him. Their enthusiasm was catching and more than filled the tiny venue. I stood up the whole time even though most people on the balcony didn't and sung my heart out. I videoed The Choir With No Name's rendition of "Politik," "Shiver" (which I'm hesitant to post because I give the most horrible girly squeal at the start even though I knew it was coming), and "Christmas Lights," which was note-perfect despite it being the first time actually played live (and Chris's dad played one of the three Elvises!). I got some decent pictures, which doesn't usually happen to me at gigs even when I'm front row. During "Christmas Lights," Peter Kay randomly came back on stage and started chucking out bags of Walkers Crisps and Quality Street chocolates to the crowd, in addition to bananas, which could have actually hurt someone by beaning them in the head. It was all very random, but highly enjoyable. I loved the ad-lib, laid-back nature of everything. They should try to do it that way more often.
Gary Barlow (Wiki link for clueless Americans) was the not-so-secret special guest (at least us Coldplayers knew because it had been alluded to in the soundcheck and my friends passed along the info to me). There is a multitude of artists that I would prefer to have as guests at a Coldplay gig, but I have a soft spot for Gary, probably because even though he's a member of a kind-of boyband, he writes all of their stuff and has talent as a singer, songwriter, and a musician. Also, I grudgingly admit when pressed that I actually like "Back For Good," their most known song that Chris professes his love for every three minutes. Before he came on as a surprise, Chris started to pluck out the song on the piano and sing some words before he said something to the effect of "nah, I wouldn't do a disservice to that wonderful song by trying to play it myself. If there was only someone here who could do it justice...." upon which a wild Gary Barlow appeared and belted out "Back For Good" with the band to 99% of the audience's surprise and 100% of the audience's glee (even Mich :P). One woman in front of me almost wet her pants, I swear to God. This is how popular Gary and Take That are here.
This was probably the best setlist I've ever seen them do in person. They had a wonderful mix of material from all four albums, not just the most recent and the overplayed singles. My dream setlist is eclectic and they'd never play it because a lot of the songs aren't suitable for gigs because they're mellow downers, but they could have played "Mary Had a Little Lamb" the whole time for all I cared, because they played effing "Shiver" and I can die happy now. Cross that off the bucket list as well.
After the gig, I went down to the lobby and bought myself a limited-edition t-shirt, featuring the band and Simon Pegg in his Elvis costume from the "Christmas Lights" video. Besides the fact that I wanted the shirt because it was awesome AND it had my love Simon Pegg on it as well, I clearly remember watching them take the very photo they used on the shirt when they snapped it at the "Christmas Lights" video shoot on the 25th. I thought it was awesome I could wear a literal memory of mine. The photo is actually great: Guy is looking moodily handsome as usual, Will's looking intensely tough as usual, but Chris is desperately trying not to crack up and you can tell Jonny is laughing too, he's grinning so wide, and Simon's Elvisness graces the middle of the photo.
I met up with my friends again outside, where we expressed our 110% approval of the night and how we were so surprised it ended up being so good quality-wise even though they've been out of practice in the studio for a year now. However, about a hundred people were lingering around the stage door, which was right next to the main door, unfortunately for Chris. About 45 minutes after the show ended, he came out only to be swarmed by fans. He obviously knew it was coming, given the location of the stage door, so he was nothing but funny and gracious to us all, but I just felt for him the entire time. The man can't walk to a car 50 feet away without it taking 30 minutes so each fan can have their moment. I actually apologised to security profusely for the way we were all so rabid. I snapped pictures like an obnoxious fan, though, which came out surprisingly well. Everyone's been asking me if he remembered me from the toilet incident/TOTP when I got my moment with him, and NO, he did NOT. This is because a) he is human, b) he sees hundreds of fan faces every day and even though we had a unique encounter he has no reason to remember me specifically, and c) it was an absolute mob scene and only had time to say "Hi, happy Christmas," etc to each person while signing whatever they put forth. He did smile at me again, though, and I said "Thanks, man" in my uber-American accent and cringed at my still-surprising to me voice, and I was once again a bit afraid of his eyes, but there was less eye-contact going on because there were so many people. He was also wearing a woman's hat, which for some reason cracks me up, probably because the man is clueless with fashion despite who he's married to. It was a North Face beanie with a pom pom (I know this because I was standing next to him, OK, I don't spend my time on the internet gossiping about the brands of his clothes), and indeed, it's from the women's department. He also talked about his daughter a bit, which seems wholly out of character. Someone mentioned something about his "babies," and he said that Apple's not a baby anymore, she's 6. Someone else commented on her name, saying they liked it/knew someone with the same name, and Chris said "well I like it, but most people don't seem to. I call those people c**ts." I hate when people use that particular word, even though I've got a sailor mouth myself, but there aren't many things I can't forgive that man for because I'm an utter loser.
Once I got my ticket signed, I cleared off to find Phil Harvey (former manager, "5th member," current creative director of the band) and Craig and Roos standing in a much smaller group of people by the stage door. Somehow, Craig, who has the best Coldplay Karma of anyone we know, managed to get the venue to give him the HUGE poster advertising the gig, which Phil and Chris signed for him. Not only did Phil sign his name, though: underneath where the poster read COLDPLAY, he wrote in "with Special Guests, The Calligraphers," which is the name of Craig's band. The astonishing part about this is that Craig didn't tell him to write that at all: Phil remembered not only Craig from previous meetings, but the name of his band. This is why I love these people: they not only are kind and gracious to their fans, they go above and beyond the call of duty when they don't have to and treat us not only like real people with feelings, but like their friends. We had a nice small chat with Phil again (he was wearing a t-shirt and a scarf, the idiot, so he didn't spend a ton of time with all of us), he said he'd see those also going to Newcastle tomorrow, and he signed my ticket for me.
I suppose that's really all I have to say about it all. In a nutshell, I'm still in shock that I got to go, and as long as I'm not still stranded here past Wednesday (and therefore miss Christmas at home), I will actually be glad my first flight was cancelled. Besides the sheer luck that's befallen me for the third time in these past few weeks concerning Coldplay, it was also one of my favorite gigs I've ever seen them play. And I got to meet Chris and Phil again, however briefly, which is always a lovely thing, to put it mildly. My photos are here, for those interested, and I'll try to get videos up soon, but I warn you that despite the good audio, they're shaky and you can hear me bellowing out the words as usual.
In the meantime, I'm recovering from the gig (I'm telling myself my tiredness and sore throat are from dancing and singing and being so excited last night and not an impending illness) and my thoughts don't stray far from the status of my Wednesday night flight. It's too early to say anything, but Heathrow has been a huge, huge failure in all this concerning both management of crises and customer service. They've cancelled 2/3 of all flights til Wednesday morning simply so everything is easier to work out from a clerical point of view, which I think is appalling. They've chosen to ruin tens of thousands of peoples' plans and Christmases simply so they can have an easier job of getting things back on track--as a huge airport with hundreds of huge airlines in it, you'd think they'd have enough combined human and brain power to get everything up and running again with minimal cancellations. At this point, I'm only 60-70% sure I will actually be getting out of here on Wednesday, and if my flight is cancelled again, it's almost guaranteed I will not be home in time for Christmas. And as indescribably grateful and happy I am to have been able to go to this gig, I would trade all three amazing Coldplay events I've had come my way these past few weeks just to get home safe and on time for Christmas.
http://www.approximatelyinfinite.net/2010/12/london-snowpocalypse-and-coldplay-karma.html
I flew in to London on the 18th and was met by the lovely Craig and Roos at Stansted! Weather looked alright as we got on the transfer bus. It didn’t stay that way, however. I don’t want to go into details but what was supposed to be a 1.5 hour journey turned into a 5+ hour journey into London. Yay. (Yes, due to snow, of course). We missed our train to Liverpool but managed to get on a later one – so far so good!
Roos and I were lucky we travelled a day early as a lot of flights got cancelled the next day. On the train (quite comfortable thanks to a 1st class update) we watched a couple of Coldplay vids and just relaxed after a really long day.
We got back to the hostel (a really nice one - Hatters Hostel - stay there if you need a place to stay in Liverpool! We got a three bed room for about 25 pounds/night/person) and there we met up with Zuzana (Wisna)! Very nice to finally meet. We had a chat with her and pretty much just went to bed after that.
Next day (CONCERT DAY!!) we met up with Zuzana again for breakfast. I went up to the room again a bit before the others to get a shower and stuff before we left (I'm the slowest person ever so I figured I should get a headstart, haha). A little while sooner the door to the room is flung up and Craig and Roos rush in and shout something about an additional ticket release for the gig. They had seated tickets and they desperately wanted to change them for standing ones. They leave as quickly as the arrived and I'm sitting - quite stunned as to what has just happened, haha.
A call later confirmed that they had managed to get standing tickets (not through the additional release but through a bit of trading and stuff...) which made me very happy indeed! They came back to the room after picking up Zuzana's and my ticket and they got ready. My ticket! It finally seemed real when I got this. After a quick stop at Primark to get blankets and a hat for Craig we walked down to Royal Court Theater where the gig would take place.
In the queue already was Mich (Mimixxx) (who would turn out to be an excellent concert buddy, indeed!) so we joined her. In front of us were a bunch of Italian fans (I know axe (Andrea) was part of that group and I'm guessing Iriden (Denise) as well? I'm sorry I didn't say hello to everyone properly!) Alison (RedGirl76) soon joined our little group too. Very nice girl
The band soon arrived as well and it was very nice to see their smiling faces as they walked in! I'm gonna skip all the trivial stuff - it's basically just us hanging out, taking turns to get warm and get stuff to eat. We did get cups of coffee and tea by the lovely staff at the venue! But now we're getting to the good stuff - thank you for sticking through all the "boring" bits
At about 4pm the security guard who had been standing with us poked his head out through the venue door and asked us to grab our stuff and come inside. (We were about 14 people at this point - he counted us). We all did as we were told, of course, my first thought was that we were going to get to queue inside since it was a bit nippy outside! That, however, wasn't the case! Instead, we were told that "Chris thought that it was too cold outside and wanted to know if we wanted to come in and listen to the soundcheck". Eh. YES! Of course we wanted to! Wristbands were handed out and we piled into the venue. I was very happy to see Debs sitting in the audience! So was Will's little girl Ava. She was the epitome of adorable! She was dancing around to the songs and Chris sang her a song
I can't really remember who came out first of the boys - I'm thinking it was Jonny (I'm relying on my pics for this!) Matt came out as well and I shouted to him that I loved his book He seemed very touched! Phil walked around a bit on/off stage and he seemed very happy to talk to us Everyone came out and waved to us but Chris was the one who kept up most of the conversation, of course. He came down and chatted with us a bit too! Such a nice man, I mean really. Mich (and Craig) gave him some advice on whether or not to play the X-Factor
They continued the soundcheck and it was so adorable everytime Chris turned around to look at Will for a bit of help with the pacing and stuff. He had some trouble with Christmas Lights! Then they went back up to do a couple of more songs and the rest of the band walked offstage. Chris (and Phil), however, came down to talk to us again! Now this was really such a high point for me... Okay, first of all I have to be a bit of a fangirl - sorry! Craig asked him to sing just a line from A Message or something and Chris got all flustered and embarrassed - claiming he couldn't do it. I said that we could all sing along with him and then he said "Aw, you're very sweet." and touched my arm. I'm sorry - but I could've died right there.
What came next, though... Debs came up to us, hugged me from the side and turned to Chris.
Debs: "This girl here, she has a lovely singing voice." Chris: "Oh, really? That's great!" Debs: "She sang Fix You on the boat!" Chris: "Ah, that's cool! I heard about that!"
(for you who don't know - we had a bit of karaoke on the boat trip...)
THAT MEANS I'VE BEEN TALKED ABOUT.
I can't wrap my head around that at all. And Debs even remembered me! It's just the best thing ever to me. So, Chris said goodbye - lovely to meet you all - see you in the same places later - and left. We were ushered back outside where both Roos and I kind of realized what had just happened and we cried a bit We queued up again and that is where I'm going to leave you for the time being.
TO BE CONTINUED!
[AnnaElisabeth]
Friday and Saturday last week have been a nightmare coming true. I had been following the weather forecast for days, I was not even worried about the snow fallen in Venice on friday as our airport was working perfectly despite it, but Easyjet decided that because of possible heavy snow fall in London on saturday morning, my flight was cancelled. I tried to find a solution while coming back home from work and saw that Ryanair had a flight at 22.35 that night from another airport that we have in the area. I threw a few things in my luggage already half prepared and took the shuttle to the airport. The queue to buy the tickets was insanely long as the ticket desk was also for people who had to change their cancelled flight. Time was passing and if I wanted to buy the ticket I had to go up to the first in line and beg them to make me go ahead of them, and they thankfully did. As I said I don't even tought about the price of the ticket, I just wanted to get to the UK as soon as possible. Went through check-in, metal detector and onto the waiting lounge. At 1 am the flight was cancelled. I didn't have means to get back home, so I got in the queue again to try and find another flight to any city in the UK. I was feeling like a zombie, and when it was my turn the girl at the desk told me the first flight to London was at the same time the day after, I asked her if there was any other departing from other italian cities. There was one for Liverpool from Milan...on December 20th, which I of course declined, but then a Treviso-Leeds flight was scheduled for saturday at 1.15 pm and I decided to take that one, hoping the weather there was better. I didn't sleep a lot that night, I guess you can imagine airports are not the best place to sleep. I spent the morning after checking updates about the situation in Leeds and about by friend's flight (she had a flight to London from Milan). Lovely Anna () helped me giving infos about the transport between Leeds and Liverpool saying the trains were running even tough some of them had some delays. And then thank heavens we were boarding onto our flight. Met Andrea (axe) and the other italian guys on the flight Once at Leeds I run to the shuttle to the train station and then a few minutes later the train to Liverpool. Alighting at Liverpool train station was the end of the nightmare, I couldn't believe I was really there. My friend, on the other and, was losing hope as all the available flights were completely packed and the forecast didn't seem to be positive for sunday
The day after I went to the venue at about 10.30, just to see where it was and check if someone was already there..and well of course there was someone, axe & co., so I decided to stay there. I had printed my friend's copy of her ID and credit card to collect the tickets, and luckily it worked. Then Craig came searching for standing tickets and I sold him my friend's one since she couldn't definitely make it and consider how much money she lost with this trip getting back 50£ was not a bad thing.
We were really few people, all from the italian fansites and coldplaying, for most of the day. As you already know we managed to catch Jonny and Will arriving at the venue with Mercedes vans, while Guy and Chris arrived by foot. I might be one of the few who actually saw Guy arriving, as no one had seen any vans parking. Chris was the only one who stopped, signed things and left us with a "See you in a minute". After waiting a bit more in the queue I decided to go for a walk in the shopping center (bathroom and something hot to drink were needed), but when I came back everyone had disappeared. Two people there told me they had been invited to the soundcheck. The only freaking time I move from there and something like that happens, I knew it dammit. I started praying the security guy to let me in, since he knew I had been there with everyone else since the morning. He wouldn't let me in, nearly crying I tried with the security at the stage entrance, he went in to ask for permission and then led me inside, he was my saviour. Everything was so surreal inside, the tiny stage, the few of us just looking at them in awe, no fanatism, just happy to be have been that lucky.
When Phil and Chris came to talk to us at the end of the soundcheck, Phil told us italians "see you next year", so I tried to get from him when and where we were going to see them again, but apparently he wasn't sure. Well good thing is that they're coming Then they were told they should play live again Life is for Living, and tough Phil was absolutely positive about it, Chris wasn't as well, I hope he managed to convince them Just a second before they went I called my friend and made Chris to say hello to her.
After the gig we stayed there and as you know Chris was the only coming out, the other had left straight after the end of the gig, as always. Also talked with Phil, who had just a short sleeve t-shirt because apparently he couldn't find his jacket anymore and I managed to say hi to Debs, she seemed so nice
[iriden]
What a fantastic gig that was - I'd forgotten how good a show Coldplay put on. They thrived off the energy of the small venue and it felt as though I was really part of the concert and not simply watching them. For those people that tell me Coldplay are slow and boring, this show proved otherwise - it was lively, full of hits and packed with energy. I didn't think it was possible to get so into Fix You that you could smash a microphone stand!
Highlights:
- Shiver - what a beautiful song - I've been singing it to myself ever since the gig. I can't believe that it has been out of the set for so long.
- God Put A Smile Upon Your Face - packed full of energy. Jonny and Will were really going for it by the last instrumental part. I don't know how Will managed to stay on his stool with the way he was jerking about banging the drums as hard as he was.
- Chris signing my ticket after the show - I came out of the pub, saw a large group of people waiting at the stage door so I joined them and within 5 minutes there was the Chris Martin. No-one's commented so far that once he got into his car it sped off and jumped through a red light...
Lowlights:
- The number of obvious mistakes that were made in most songs. One or two I'd forgive but for so many to occur, especially in songs they've been playing professionally for up to ten years, was disappointing. Politik, for example, lost its atmosphere when Chris descended into cursing under the sun at forgetting the words.
- The set was far too short; it felt like it had ended no sooner than it had started. Songs like Speed of Sound, Talk, Lovers In Japan, 42 all seem to be popular yet were not included. The only song that was played that I would have taken out was Cemeteries of London.
[r2ro]
Media Reviews
Can be found at 19 December 2010: Crisis Hidden Gig: Coldplay in Liverpool
Twitter Updates
Can be found at 19 December 2010: Crisis Hidden Gig: Coldplay in Liverpool
Setlist
Can be found at 19 December 2010: Crisis Hidden Gig: Coldplay in Liverpool
Photos
Photos from this show can be found at Coldplaying.com in the Gallery thread for Crisis: Newcastle. http://www.coldplaying.com/forum/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/1827
