Nothing makes a Coldplay roadie’s heart leap like walking into a stadium on a drizzly day and finding a roof. Our Frankfurt experience begins this way and keeps getting better.
Soundcheck brings a little work on one of the new songs. The empty venue is acting as a pretty fearsome echo chamber, but even so, things sound promising.
By now everyone knows that an echoey venue in the afternoon really means one thing. When the crowd sings, it’ll sound amazing. And that’s precisely what we get.
I’ve talked before about the feedback mechanism between band performance and audience enthusiasm. On good nights, one feeds off the other in a loop, each driving the other to generate more and more energy. A huge cavernous reverberation seems to work was some kind of turbo-booster on this process. The band sounds immense and the crowd are like a jet engine at close range.
There’s a new plan for maximum smoke during God Put A Smile this evening. The smoke floods the stage to the point that the band can no longer see *each other* let alone the audience at which point the fellas stop the song and collapse into laughter.
Charlie Brown also gets a restart as Chris asks folks to keep their phones away for just one song and experience the moment. It’s not a moan, not a telling off – it’s almost just a social experiment. Early conclusions from this correspondent are that the already extreme communal vibe kicks up yet another notch. Pleasing results and doubtless more research to come… 🙂
There’s also audience participation on the C-Stage when the setlist takes a diversion. There’s a sign in the crowd requesting a singalong of Don’t Look Back In Anger and the band happily oblige. The communal singalong vibe of the night just kept on building…
With the huge venue echoes and the enthusiastically loud crowd, the only word to sum up the night properly would have to be “roaring”.
R42
