Monday 11 June 2012

The Tastiest Licks #1 Coldplay Live


Already topping album charts in thirty countries, Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto tour hit Manchester’s Etihad Stadium last night in a powder keg of flashing neon lights and chest-rattlingly uplifting anthems. 
   
   Front-man Chris Martin and the lads seem to have come on leaps and bounds since their now seemingly tame 2000 album Parachutes, opting for a more aggressive, and in my opinion, interesting style. With the release of Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay moved away from the image of the quiet, humble-mannered, charmingly buck-toothed (watch the video for Yellow and you’ll know what I mean) Englishman to the aptly revolutionary musical soldier. Running from mid 2008 to early 2010, the style of the Viva La Vida tour encapsulated this radical change. However, instead of alienating loyal fans, Coldplay managed to successfully add to their continuously swelling numbers of adoring followers. 

   With the Mylo Xyloto tour comes yet another stylistic as well as musical change. Opting for juxtaposition of style between a post apocalyptic grimy refugee centre and the bold fluorescent neon lights and graffiti of the 1980’s, the band certainly knows what to do to keep their hangers on uh...hanging on. The tour budget has also been beefed up since Viva La Vida and as I push my way through the ticket barrier, I am handed a brightly coloured wristband (that looks oddly like a child’s watch) that I am told will light up during the show.
The stage is set with five huge circular screens that I initially took to be enormous trampolines but after a moment a notice is projected upon the screen instructing everyone to put on their wristbands as ‘it’s part of the show!’ The stage is perfectly in keeping with their new look with the entire goal end being covered in a sheet with one or two lines of their poetry splashed all over it in neon graffiti. 

   The support acts on this date of the tour were hot new British icon Rita Ora and Swedish pop siren Robyn. Odd choices I initially thought. Where Robyn is Euro-zone-pop-nonsense, Coldplay are sophisticated and thought provoking. Where Rita Ora is the latest party girl, blazing the trail for independent young women, Coldplay are producing music of a much higher level about issues more than just how ‘everyone loves to party’. To be fair though, both were surprising.
   Rita Ora seems totally unfazed by her sudden shot to fame as she sprints out on to stage to mixed levels of applause (coked up chimpanzee to mild, stifled yawn). Sporting a pink netted top, multi-coloured animal print rain jacket and what appeared to be a pair of gentlemans briefs, her hair falling in dyed yellow ringlets, my thoughts drifted to the resemblance she bore to Madonna in the video to Lucky Star. This aside, she performed incredibly well. She has a fantastically varied vocal range, able to keep the bass down but also able to blast out some serious notes as well as an eyebrow raisingly impressive ability to free-style short vocal licks over the top of her own tunes. There is a tendency among musicians who find themselves suddenly topping the charts to become so overwhelmed and excited by their new found fame that during live performances they lose track of their vocals and deliver less than recordable renditions of their songs (see Rizzle Kicks at Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2011. I should just say that I love Rizzle Kicks but listening to them live just after they hit it big was naff).  However, listening to her performing such numbers as How We Do (Party) in which she, to varying degrees of success, got the audience to participate in the eye-rollingly annoying hook “party and bull-shit and party and bull-shit” to her current (as of 11/6/12) number twelve single R.I.P I was pleasantly surprised.  Interestingly enough, R.I.P is only three places above Coldplay themselves at number eight with Princess of China so all in all, good on ya Rita! Don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy the album but there is much potential here.

   Robyn was next and as I stood on the pitch with the twenty thousand other Coldplay fans watching the roadies remove Rita Ora’s drum kit to replace it with Robyn’s (WHY?!) I began to look forward to seeing what Robyn would do. I knew her whole ‘thing’ was her platinum blonde, tightly cropped hair but with a length hanging down nonchalantly over her right eye. She came on slowly after her backing band to a mish-mash of electro noise that sounded almost like a recording of two dial-up modems making violent love on top of a photocopier then played out over a loudspeaker. However, this was soon replaced by her singles Call Your Girlfriend as well as With Every Heartbeat and a rather catchy rendition of Cobrastyle done with her own techno-pop flair to great effect and I will admit, although being a well known cynic of all things dance music, I found myself quite enjoying it! Although my excuse is that it was originally done by hip-hop/reggae/punk artists Teddybears so I don’t feel too bad...

   After a long wait, the audience were eventually rewarded with a recording of Jay-Z’s misogynist rap anthem 99 Problems, probably as a salute to his friendship with Coldplay (he famously lives next door to Chris Martin and apparently Gwyneth Paltrow and Beyonce are very close friends). Following this utter tune to which I made an utter ass of myself, rapping along to all the words and getting strange looks from all who were stood around me, Coldplay took to the stage to the theme tune to the epic Back To The Future films. Not only was this a brilliantly uplifting and pulse poundingly exciting song to come on to, it also subtly suggested the links to both their previous discography as well as their huge steps forward with the unspoken promise that while striding forwards musically, they have not forgotten their previous works and would be remaining faithful to the sounds that made them. As I previously mentioned, the budget for the tour had clearly gone through the roof and this was made clear by all the things that they managed to grab people’s attention! Not only did they begin the set with the album’s title track Mylo Xyloto, they followed it with the fast paced yet soulful Hurts Like Heaven. During this, multi-coloured fireworks were set off and the lasers burst through the thick layer of stage smoke and lit up the dusky evening sky in a bright kaleidoscopic array of flashing neon lights. At this point also, our wristbands began to flash on and off in time with the music. All around the grounds people were jumping up and down in wonder as their friends and the people around them too began to throw out brightly coloured lights from their wrists, creating their own visual performance as Coldplay created their musical one.
   
   During Lovers In Japan, cannons full of butterfly shaped confetti were set off and the audience were left to fend for themselves as the baby pink and green mess cascaded down upon our heads, down our bras and shirts and littered the stadium floor so thickly that leaving after the show was akin walking across a thick pulpy carpet. Yellow followed soon after, arguably Coldplay’s best song and it was given a much more intimate feel when after coming to a vibrato shuddering end, Chris Martin bashfully admitted he had “fucked up” and asked the audience if he could go from the first chorus as the audience had not had time to sing a certain lyric. This level of honesty and commitment to fans is what makes Coldplay so endearing. They come across with a level of ‘English-ness’ that others tend not to. They have a quality about them still that seems to shout, “We are just some guys who make music and this sill feels way beyond us.” In fact, at one point after The Scientist, Chris thanked the audience for giving the band “the best job ever”.

   Certain highlights for me were stadium levelling anthem Viva La Vida in which, by way of applause, the audience continued chanting the songs refrain long after the band had stopped. The atmosphere of good times was palpable and for a brief moment, as cheesy as it sounds, the crowd were united in love for Coldplay and as we all sang our hearts out, the guys took to the stage again to perform Mylo Xyloto’s anthem Charlie Brown. This was time for the wristbands to come in to play once more. Flashing on and off in time to the music, the stadium lit up and flashed back into darkness every few seconds. From greens to blues, reds to whites and yellows, everyone was in awe. It made us feel like we were part of the show. Not only were we an audience, standing there singing, we were all part of the same visual experience! For a final song before their encore they played the hit single and knee tremblingly powerful Paradise. I have always thought the bass was incredible but it was something else entirely live. Those first few notes go right through you and as soon as the rest of the band began to play, everyone found themselves jumping in time.

   For the final encore, they ended with Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall to which I jumped about like a loon and once more made an ass of myself. More fireworks erupted as they finished the set and they stepped forwards to bow. Unfortunately I couldn’t make out Chris Martins final words as the applause was too loud for him to even be heard over the P.A. However, I think it’s a good thing if your fans can drown you out with cheering. Again, it just shows that as Coldplay continue to produce music that (seemingly) the world adores, they have managed once again to step up the level of performance. They really did give their all last night. Not one of them was not drenched in sweat yet all were smiling happily as they joined hands and took their final bows and thanked the audience for coming. 

I loved every second. It was fantastically produced, excellently performed and all in all, faultless.



Sunday 3 June 2012

Just Popped Up #1 Student Life - Wasted?

 Having been a student myself for the past two years of university and seven of secondary school, I feel this gives me a somewhat unique insight into how students these days are living and adapting to the world that they will soon help to maintain.

  My overall concern is that student life is really not all it's cracked up to be. Let me explain; my girlfriend, when she began her first year at Birmingham (so proud...) attended  a kind of taster day in which students who had received a place were introduced to the university and given a general welcome. During the introduction, the representative, in an attempt to win popularity excitedly exclaimed that the main focus of university life was to get wasted and party all night long.
   While no doubt the Beastie Boys fought and potentially died for my right to party, there is a strong focus among the youth of today that university life is a chance to get as drunk as humanly possible and post pictures about it on as many social networking sites as they can manage. This, readers, reflects everything that is wrong with this generation.
   The attitude of many students nowadays is: 'Get so wasted you have to receive medical attention and do some work when you wake up in hospital three days later at which time you can proudly tell your friends that it was 'The best night of my life."  
   At the risk of sounding like a dessicated, dried-up old fart, I must remind you that I have been to my fair share of parties and have too experienced the effects of alcohol on more than one occasion (the fact that my liver has immense trouble processing any thimble sized amount of booze out of my blood before I make a total gimp out of myself by giggling at flower pots may have something to do with this...) However, being the kind of strange, social observer I like to think myself, logging on to Facebook and being pestered in the notices that person A has recently uploaded photos of themselves being violently sick up the backside of person B makes me want to bury my face in my hands and weep myself to sleep while possibly listening to Morrissey records...

   While university should be a time of one's life in which freedom from parental restraint should be relished, the 'all-guns-blazing' thought process of many students I have met just ends up sounding childish. When I hear people excitedly boasting, 'I was so drunk last night. It was amazing. I had twelve vodka shots and a few pints after and then Jodie ended up throwing up into Ashley's face...' I want to lean over and point out that it makes you sound like a complete buffoon, unable to process a full sentence without adjusting your gentle archers and lemonade drip deeper into your vein.

   The main issue is alcohol. When I turned eighteen, I went to the pub. No problems. It wasn't particularly exciting for me. It was just something that I couldn't do legally before but now I could. I bought a pint and while drinking it wondered why I had bothered. Buying alcohol was never something that interested me before I was eighteen and now I am twenty, whatever excitement I felt at purchasing a pint of Fosters has quickly gone down the drain (ba-bum-tsshh).
However, while observing students in bars, (the boys wearing tightly fitted t-shirts, muscled arms rippling, ego's swelling like over-sized zits just waiting to be popped by a witty put down in a shower of yellow mucus, and the girls scantily clad in the remnants of Mick Jagger's wardrobe, tottering drunkenly across the dance-floor in packs of no less than three, sporting foot high stilettos...) it is clear that the excitement for them is still very much there. It's thrilling to grab the first round in for the lads. It's fun to slide over a tenner and in return get a chopping board laden with only four different flavoured vodka shots.

For these people, I actually feel bad. Not only are you giving your livers a damn good kicking, you're being suckered in by the whole gimmick. You're amazed by the flashing lights and the idea that what you're doing is rebellious and a little bit dangerous. You love the idea that it makes you look like one of the gang and is therefore hiding your character deficiencies that only become apparent when you're not slumped at the bar with the lads slamming pint after pint after pint. You think yourself cool and edgy, a little bit glamorous and cheeky when all the while, everyone is actually thinking the same thing: Why are we doing this? This is not why we are here.

True, it is an aspect of life as a student, in moderation at least. But in actual fact, society as a whole has a negative view of the student lifestyle. Any organization that claims otherwise is trying to sell you something. Any one who says otherwise is telling themselves and anyone else who will listen,exactly what they want to hear without being true to what they really think.

Again, I am not opposed to going out with the fellas to grab a drink (in fact I should hopefully be doing just that in a few days!) but my point is mainly that students see drinking as a means to an end. The end being solely getting completely off their faces. I don't really mind or care but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why it's considered a cool thing to do. No-one cares if you're violently sick after eating some off tuna. No-one would care if you jumped off a roof and broke both your legs whilst sober. So why does alcohol become a factor in which these things are kitsch and fun?

  Anyway, if you are a student and you find yourself out on a night out, just stop for a moment and think to yourself, 'Do I actually want to do this? Or am I doing this in an attempt to fit in?'

Thanks for reading,
Rob out.