Marina & the Diamonds/Coldplay

Anyone who has stepped in the Bell Center will tell you how intimidating it is.  Hopefully for Coldplay and his opening acts, the crowd was more cheerful than at a Habs-Bruins game!

Marina & the Diamonds had the job of getting the crowd ready for Coldplay. The English artist and her band welcomed us in the melodramatic and soap opera wold of the latest cd of Marina, “Electraheart”.  The singer spoke French several times, much to the crowd’s delight.  The ambiance got a level higher with “Bubblegum bitch”, which Marina completed by wearing a bright fuschia beauty pageant sash over her pink dress.  She finished her set with the dancy “radioactive” and “how to be a heartbreaker”.

The stage was changed quickly to let place for the main act, Coldplay.  From memory, I had never seen this many techs running around a stage to get it ready.  30 minutes later, Coldplay embarked on stage to the “Back to the future” theme, bringing us with them on a time travel of their career, including their biggest successes.

It didn’t take a minute through “Mylo Xiloto” that the bracelets everyone was wearing started lighting through the Bell Center, making the fans cheer.  By “In my place”, the crowd exploded as confetti was shot throughout the Bell Center.  ”The Scientist”, “Yellow” and “Violet Hill” were played before the whole band moved to the part of the stage that was positioned in the middle of the crowd to play a few songs, including “Princess of China” with images of Rihanna on the round screens placed all around the stages, in the upper parts.  ”Viva la Vida” followed on the main stage, where Chris Martin stayed laying for a few minutes as the crowd continued doing the “oh ho oh ho” of the chorus.  Amazed by the crowd, Martin thanked everyone in French and again in English before disappearing backstage; he reappeared a few minutes later in the crowd to sing “Us Against the World” and told the crowd to participate because the louder we would sing would make the other band members appear.  After their major success “Clocks”, the band ran through the crowd to get on stage and play it again, full band this time.

For their encore, the band played the the only suitable song for such an event in the Bell Center, “Fix you”, which is the entrance song for the Montreal Canadiens before every game.  To close that beautiful evening, the band played “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall”.

Round 2 is tonight at Bell Center, and we can expect another well-oiled and spectacular show by Chris Martin and his 3 acolytes.