Coldplay for my birthday!

Yesterday was my 40-somethingth birthday. I had a leisurely morning, then Caroline and I drove over to meet my parents for lunch at the Beef House. My parents had been on a trip with a club they're involved with and were on their way back to Illinois. On our drive home, we heard on the radio that there were still tickets available for Coldplay at Verizon Wireless Music Center. We stopped at the box office to see if any lawn seats were available, and I purchased 3 tickets for us. There were already people in line for the 6:00 gate opening when we bought our tickets at 3:30, so we ran home, packed a picnic dinner and waited for Karl to get home. Fortunately it's a quick drive to Verizon.

We arrived back at Verizon at 5:15. Verizon Wireless was there doing a promo where the first 100 Verizon customers who showed a Verizon phone could get in the "Jump The Line" gate area. Caroline has Verizon service, so I took her phone and got in that line while Caroline and Karl stayed in the regular line. When it was time to open all the gates, the Verizon gate was opened first, and it wasn't until all the Verizon people has been admitted that they opened the regular gates. It paid off, as I was able to place our blanket in the very front of the lawn section in the center section.

We ate our dinner and waited for the show to start. The first band was called Howling Bells. Didn't much care for them. Then came Snow Patrol, which at least I'd heard some of their songs. At this point Karl and I were beginning to think maybe we were too old to enjoy concerts...until Coldplay took the stage.

AWESOME! That about sums it up. A real crowd-pleasing show. Chris Martin has so much energy and really seems to enjoy what he's doing. Fun and entertaining to watch. About half-way through the band left the stage and went to a mini-stage located in a side section of the pavillion where they played a couple of songs. Then back to the main stage for a couple of numbers, then the band went to another mini-stage in the lawn section to our left. Finished up on the main stage. They played all the songs I wanted to hear except Speed of Sound.

As we were leaving Verizon we were handed a CD, which we promptly placed in the CD player of the car. Here's a link to get a free download of the CD that was handed out after the concert. It's 9 songs performed live by Coldplay. Fantastic!