Thailand, according to Coldplay, is amazing. Coldplay, according to the 60,000 fans packing Rajamangala Stadium, is also pretty amazing -- no, maybe not "the best band in the world" as some gush on Twitter, but a top-quality package of dazzle, flares and fireworks, fan service, visual evocation and robust pop-rock-ballad sounds. If last Friday's gig were a movie, it was a blockbuster. It keyed you in excited and sent you out feeling entertained and satisfied.
It's easy to mock Coldplay, their feel-good lyrics, their clean-living, expletive-free image and their late embrace of dance beats and mild electronica. (Their first album, Parachutes, dripping with agony and self-doubt, remains their best.) But not many bands in the world today can fill up the entire Rajamangala Stadium like they did -- the standing tickets on the pitch was like a Mecca pilgrimage, while the stands are practically full of Thai as well as flown-in fans from Southeast Asia. (There were complaints about double bookings, but that's another story.)
The turnout was one of the biggest Bangkok has ever seen. Such hearty enthusiasm also served as a test for the city's public-transport system in handling such a gigantic gathering, and it failed miserably. The traffic shown on Google Maps at 7pm, an hour before kick-off, resembled a nasty brain haemorrhage, with a tangle of red veins all bleeding scarily towards Ramkhamhaeng.
Such hearty enthusiasm also indicates Coldplay's strength: their across-the-board appeal. Their music is friendly to a large swathe of listeners, from rock fans to pop buffs, from office workers to hipsters. They appeal to both men and women, to those schooled in the sound of Britpop in the mid-1990s to the latecomers after the millennium.
On Friday, there were reports of those who cried their eyes out at Fix You -- Coldplay's pinnacle of heart bleed -- and those who danced in exhilaration at Adventure Of A Lifetime. A preteen two seats from me sang along with Viva La Vida. The band even played a Bowie cover, Heroes, as well as the electropop smash hit Something Just Like This, a single they recently collaborated on with the DJ duo The Chainsmokers.
This show, from the Head Full Of Dreams Tour, began with an audio clip of Charlie Chaplin's speech on humanity from the film The Great Dictator -- yes, humanity is another key word in Coldplay's spirit. Then the spectacle exploded: fireworks shot up to the sky as the stadium roared, the trio of giant screens lit up and Chris Martin bawled out the titular A Head Full of Dreams. With a run of light, sound, visual graphics and particularly the Xyloband -- an LED wristband, distributed to every audience member, that automatically lit up in different colours in sync with the music -- this has already gone down as probably the most stunning concert production the city has ever hosted, with all due respect to Madonna and Lady Gaga.
Martin said the requisite sawasdee krub. He gushed about how the Bangkok audience was amazing and how he was happy to come back to Bangkok after 14 years. Their first gig here in 2004 was at Impact Arena, with much less fanfare and traffic. Backed by the band's stalwarts Will Champion, Guy Berryman and Johnny Buckland, Martin rolled out a set list that alternated between fast and slow songs, Yellow, Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall, The Scientist, Birds, a danceable remix of Paradise with the explosion of India-inspired floral colours in the backdrop. Martin's trademark falsetto, the way his slightly nasal vocal scaled the rest of the music, is better heard live, especially in ballads like Everglow (dedicated to the late King Rama IX) and, yes, Fix You.
Martin, who just turned 40 according to Gwyneth Paltrow's Instagram post from March 2, seemed to enjoy sprinting down the runway jutting out from the main stage, jumping and yodelling. Bangkok was humid that night, and for all the prepackaged quality of modern concerts played to global audiences, Martin and his bandmates inspired genuine energy.
After Clocks, Charlie Brown, Hymn For The Weekend, Viva La Vida and Adventure Of A Lifetime, the band left the main stage to play a set on an auxiliary platform closer to the stand. This was apparently a distribution of intimacy to fans. And this three-song set was what impressed me most: a Coldplay of less bombast and special effects, their musicianship in full display in In My Place, Don't Panic and Til Kingdom Come, a small folk-rock tune that Martin played on his acoustic guitar. At one point, Martin introduced one of his long-time crew members and mentioned how the band, before their ascent to global rock stardom in the late 1990s, used to tour in a van "smaller than this stage" playing gigs around England.
Now that they can command a chock-full stadium with a regalia of audiovisual accompaniments, the thought of the old Coldplay seems so alien -- and somehow so attractive. But we were yanked back to reality when the band returned to the main stage and rocked out three last songs, the infectious Something Just Like This, A Sky Full Of Stars and their latest hit, Up & Up. There was no encore, there was no Speed Of Sound. On screen, the credits rolled, literally, listing the creative team behind the production. Then the neon stadium lights came back on, flooding the field, like in a cinema after a film ends. The two-hour concert delivered, it was a spectacle, it was worth every baht, and it spelt the journey of a David who became a Goliath.
