Coldplay / Fiona Apple

Unless I misunderstood, last night was actually the first night; the kick-off of this tour for Coldplay and Fiona Apple.

Fiona started about 8pm. She played all her popular stuff, and some new stuff too. She really does have a great voice, and it's quite obvious listenening to her live. The only song I was hoping for but didn't get to hear was her version of John Lennon's "Across The Universe"; one of my personal Fiona favorites. I assume that she didn't want to have to pay the royalties to perform that song. Plus, she wasn't able to play too long anyway because she was the opener. (By the way, if you ever get a chance to check out the music video, do it now! It's amazing.) So I understood pretty well about that and wasn't too disappointed. Especially since she did play my other favorite, "Shadowboxer", as her third song of the night. She ended strongly it with "Fast As You Can", another great tune that was awesome to hear. And although I've been planning on picking up her new album Extraordinary Machine anyway, it reaffirmed that I should get right on that... there's going to be some great stuff on it.

Now, before I get into the Coldplay experience, you may have already noticed that I didn't do the usual write-down-the-setlist thing this time. Should I have? Probably. But I didn't. Not necessarily because I didn't feel like it though... I simply forgot to grab my pen and paper. Oh well.

Coldplay was awesome too. They played most of their hits as well, while throwing in new stuff from X&Y (which my procrastinating ass has also yet to pick up). After the opener, "Square One", Chris asked the audience, "We just landed and we didn't hear yet. Can you tell us who's in the Superbowl?". The crowd went nuts of course. He then asked, "...And does anyone know where I can get a cup of coffee around here?". In fact, a song or two later they played one of my Coldplay favs, "God Put A Smile Upon Your Face". Chris played with the lyrics in the first verse a bit and sang:

"God gave me stlye, and gave me grace.
God put a Starbucks on the corner of every fucking place."

That was some pretty good shit. hehe They even did an intimate acoustic-type mini-set and played a couple songs from the late Johnny Cash. Having never really listened to Cash, they didn't do a whole lot for me, but I found it interesting at least. After that, they played an acoustic version of "Trouble", which of course was awesome!

Like I said before, I didn't write down the set list this time, but here are the songs that I can remember off the top of my head (probably not in a completely accurate order):

• Square One
• Politik
• God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
• Yellow
• Speed Of Sound
• Ring Of Fire (Johnny Cash cover)
• Trouble
• The Scientist
• Clocks
• In My Place

There were plenty of others I'm forgetting of course, but hopefully you get the idea. It would help if I was more familiar with the contents of X&Y... Regardless, the concert was very enjoyable. They were entertaining to watch (especially Chris basically dry-humping his piano all night, and his other idiosyncrasies), they sounded great and had some very interesting lights and video segments playing to the music behind them.

Bottom line: I'm very happy I went and would go see both Coldplay and Fiona again.

P.S. 'Cell phone screens: The Modern Concert Candles'. Funny but incredibly sad all at the same time.

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Added 2/22/2011:

I just found the complete song list for Coldplay's set.

• Square One
• Politik
• Yellow
• Speed Of Sound
• God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
• X&Y
• How You See The World
• Don't Panic
• White Shadows
• The Scientist
• Til Kingdom Come
• Ring Of Fire
• Trouble
• Clocks
• Talk

Encore:

• Swallowed In The Sea
• In My Place
• Fix You