Coldplay performed their 3rd US arena concert at the HP Pavillion in San Jose. Pictures are in the gallery here, including some cool pictures by julianasur, and dixonr315 and benha who all attended a pre-show meet and greet [courtesy of iTunes - the lucky dubbers!] . Fan comments/reviews/videos are below.

Setlist [Thanks IneedYou23]

1 Life in Technicolor
2 Violet Hill
3 Clocks
4 In my Place
5 Viva la Vida
6 42
7 Yes
8 The Scientist
9 Chinese Sleep Chant
10 God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
11 Square One
12 Speed of Sound
13 Strawberry Swing
14 Yellow [full band]
15 Politik
16 Lost
17 The Hardest Part [acoustic]
18 Death Will Never Conquer
19 Fix You
20 Lovers in Japan
21 Death and all his Friends

Some Fan Reviews/Comments

warning… this is rather large…

soo just got back from the coldplay concert in san jose. woo! and, yes. it was my first concert.

And it was a really good first concert =)

i’d been having second thoughts about going up until like a few days ago because i was just nervous. it sounds really stupid, i know, but i didn’t know what to expect and i don’t really like loudness or crowds. and i wouldn’t be able to drive because there’s no way my car would make it down that far. and the idea of hugo driving scared me since he hasn’t driven in forever.

but i convinced myself to do it so we rented a car and hugo practiced a little and he was really ok. so after work today we drove down to san jose. we managed to get parking really close which was awesome and only had to wait in line for about half an hour. our seats were pretty good cuz i got them pre-sale through best buy. we certainly weren’t super-close to the stage but it was decent and we weren’t in the high-up top section.

so we were in 113, two rows up from… how do you describe it? another doorway, set into the wall, for the section below us you know? ok.

(the pictures are pretty blurry cuz they’re from hugo’s blackberry. it’s pretty humorous, actually)

when we sat down, there were very few people there because it was still early. but, apparently, there were people above us because someone dripped quite a lot of beer onto my knee and the floor around me. and a few drops onto my head. i smelled lovely. but it wasn’t a big deal, really. i wasn’t going to let something freak me out now that i’d made it there.

the first openers were this band… they were from san jose and had won this contest to open for coldplay. picture atlantic: http://www.myspace.com/pictureatlantic. They were pretty good, energetic. you could tell how excited they were. the singer was like “yesterday we were playing for a crowd of 40, today we’re playing for 1500! thanks for voting for us!” it was cool.

the next openers, shearwater (http://www.shearwatermusic.com/), were like the ultimate opposite. they were so like looooowwww. the music was ok but they didn’t engage w/the audience at ALL. they said like one or two sentences to us the entire time and it was like blaaaaah. and i couldn’t help but think damn if this is what concerts are like, you can count me out thanks.

but then coldplay came on, all flashing lights and a huge backdrop of liberty leading the people and it was AWESOME.

Chris Martin was wearing the exact same suit that he’s worn every time he’s been on tv over the past few months. it was a little odd. (that little white spec is him. i swear they were bigger in real life)

they played viva la vida like the 3rd or 4th song in. it was awesome. that song is the whole reason i was there. it like… music is magical. and i know that sounds uber-corny, but it’s true. it changes your perception of things, it just… i can’t even describe what that song has done for me. nor do i think i want to, since i’m starting to sound more than a little creepy.

anyway. i discovered that i like coldplay more than i thought. i mean, i’d always enjoyed their songs and all. but they are so much better live. they sound awesome. and chris martin, i dunno, i’ve always thought the media paints him out to be kind of an asshole. but he was really cool. i mean, as cool as a rockstar performing to a bazillion people can seem. he was talking to us, thanking us for being there since, as he saw it, it was a friday night in the summer and there were so many good tv shows on and so many strip clubs we could be at. (it was funny, not asshole-y)and he joked around about how some of them were slowly approaching 50 and how nice it was that we’d come out to see a slowly aging british soft rock band. nice, self-deprecating humor. who doesn’t like that? and at one point he was like “ok, i’m going to get corny. and it’s the beginning of the tour so i’m allowed to get a little corny,” (or something to that effect) and started nearly gushing about how awesome the audience was and how no one ever recognizes that.

he messed up lyrics once or twice and actually stopped and laughed and went “damn messed that one up again. o well.” and then kept singing. he was quite funny and enjoyable. it made it feel like it was an intimate performance for over 1000 people.

they had these really cool like giant… ball things that hung from the ceiling that were like tv screens of them on stage as well as colors and images and things depending on the song. i don’t know how to describe it any better….

so, things were going awesome and i was enjoying myself immensely. and i was looking at all those people crammed up at the stage (because by the time they came on, obviously, the place had become absolutely packed) and i thought “it could be kind of fun to be up there right next to them.” and then i thought “no. that’s just because you can watch it from here and think that. if you were there you’d hate it.”

it was nearing the end of the show. they played ‘politik’ for the last song and at the end, Chris Martin was like “i don’t like playing that song at the end. let’s change that.” they started to walk along this side-stage thingie and it looked like they were going to exit but then they started to run along the aisle on the floor, and then up the stairs right next to our section! we got all excited, thinking they’d exit by us. but then they stopped at that doorway thing right below us! and they had microphones all set up and started playing unplugged! it was FREAKING AMAZING! they were like “uh, we wanted to try something a little different. obviously. if you don’t like it, you can make a lot of noise and we’ll come out again and try and fix it.”

i was 15 feet from coldplay. well, the back of their heads anyway.