Coldplay: Viva la Vida Tour

As many of you know, Coldplay is my favorite band, so you can imagine how excited I've been about the release of their new (long-awaited) album - Viva la Vida. I was on iTunes at midnight the day the album was released (they actually had it available at 11:45 pm the day before) and I have been listening to it ever since.

To kick off their new tour Coldplay decided to give a couple of free "fan appreciation" concerts, and one of them was to be at Madison Square Garden. Of course I signed up to win tickets and actually was chosen as one of the winners! Not only that, but my tickets were floor seats, about thirty rows from the stage. Nice.

Matt and I went last night - it was pretty awesome to be shown to "close to the stage" floor seats, and we settled in for the concert. The opening band was called the Blue Jackets, they were handpicked by Coldplay to open for this concert. They were pretty good, but the next part of the show was even cooler. This DJ named Jon Hopkins came out and spun trancy, new-agey songs for about twenty minutes, accompanied by some trippy, 70s looking cartoons on a big screen. I actually discovered later that Jon Hopkins songs have been used in moments of "Sex and the City", pretty cool.

Finally, it was time for Coldplay! Chris Martin came out in that military jacket that he's been rocking everywhere. And the concert was pretty awesome. From the new album they played "Life in Technicolor", "Lost", "42", and some others. My favorite song from the new album so far is "Viva la Vida" and their energetic rendition was freaking awesome. They mixed up the old stuff too - "In My Place", "Square One", and even "Yellow" from a special mike up in the nosebleeds. The last song of the night was "Lovers in Japan" from the new album, and on a screen they had all these images of Japan and cherry blossoms, etc. And they made it rain confetti butterflies all over the garden, I picked up a few and pasted them into my journal with the concert ticket. Definitely my favorite part of the night.

So thank you Chris Martin and Johnny Buckland and Guy Berryman and Will Champion for coming to NY and letting Jenn come and hear her favorite music for free!