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Last night, Christy and I had tickets to the Coldplay concert, and while I was very excited to be going to see this band live for the first time ever, Christy wasn't so sure.  However, by the end of the night, I think Chris and the gang from Coldplay had converted at least one skeptic into a fan.

There were a couple of opening bands for last night's show...the first one was The Howling Bells.  I hadn't ever heard of them, and we only caught the tail-end of their set, but it was pretty good.  I might see about getting some of their material at some point.  After they left the stage, Pete Yorn and his band came out.  His first song was "Strange Condition", which was the only song of his I knew.  After that, it was a bunch of stuff I didn't know, but thought was really good.  It was about this time that my friend Ramey texted me to ask where we were sitting, because he, his wife April, and his parents were all at the show.  I gave them our section and row and soon they all joined us.  We didn't have a lot of people sitting around us at that time so we thought they could hang out until someone told them to leave and go back to their seats.  As it turned out, luck was on our side and nobody did that so they got to hang out with us the entire show, which was a great added bonus!

After Pete Yorn wrapped up, Coldplay took the stage!  They came out and immediately got the crowd going with "Clocks" and "Yellow", which was great.  When they started playing "Yellow", these big yellow bouncy balls started bouncing all around the amphitheater like big beach balls.  It was great!

During the show, the band moved a couple of times...once, to a place off stage left where a piano was set up, and the band did a mash-up remix of a couple of oldies.  Then they returned to the stage and did a wonderful version of "Viva la Vida", with the crowd singing at the top of our lungs!  It was fantastic!  Their performance of "Fix You" was also a crowd favorite.  Then the 2nd time they moved into the crowd, they went to a small sound stage set up along the concourse, right in between the front section of seats and the back section of seats!  April, Ramey and I moved closer and got pretty close to see them.  This picture doesn't do it justice as to how close we were...

After this small set (where they played, of all things, "I'm a Believer"!), they returned to the main stage and took us home with some great tunes, including one of my favorites off the new album, "Death and All His Friends".  Start to finish, one of my favorite concerts of all time!  And another very cool thing they did was after the show, they had reps standing out at the gates as you were leaving handing out free copies of their new live album, "Leftrightleftrightleft" (you can also download it by going here.)  So not only did you get a great show, you got a free live album to boot!

It was a great show and I'm so happy that we were able to make it and enjoy it with such good friends!  Now, onto today and tomorrow...it's Finale Week on American Idol, and Jill Miranda will be sitting in on the blog tomorrow to give us all her thoughts on the final performances of the year from Adam Lambert and Kris Allen!  So look for that in the coming day or two!