KC Hill
Dexter
Cibbuano
Paladin
Craig Hill
Oracle of DelphiColdplay: towards a secular collectivism
July 10th 2006 06:21
I recently had the pleasure of seeing Coldplay at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne. I'm not a huge Coldplay fan, but having been impressed with their show at the Horden Pavillion in Sydney when they last toured Australia, I thought I'd check them out again.
And what a powerful show Coldplay puts on. More akin to pentecostal revival than a rock concert, Coldplay's performance inspires a sensation of 'togetherness', of collective unity, in the audience. Different to, say, the Rolling Stones, that most professional of rock bands, Coldplay's appeal does not appear to lie in the specific sentiment expressed in the lyrics of a particular song. Indeed, the ubiquity of Colpay's music, its proliferation in advertisements, soundtracks, sporting events etc, testifies to its lyrical mysteriousness; rendering the music aplicable in a plethora of fora.
The concert itself affirmed that Coldplay's appeal plays on the audience's desire for transcendence, to go beyond the atomised, individualised experience of daily life, and to achieve, or at least glimpse, a sense of collective unity, a sense of fellowship with Man in the knowledge that each of us are part of some greater, powerful and incomprehensible whole.
Coldplay's concert production is a rhetorical tour de force of collectivist engineering. Recalling, fascistic rally design, Coldplay relies heavily on the universal aesthetic appeal of bright lighting and lasers, the use of which approached that of a symphony for the deaf, to dazzle and entrance the audience. Chris Martin's performance style also contributed, his disconnected disengaged movements on stage, and repeated gestures towards the roof of the stadium suggested himself as a medium, a conduit, channeling a force greater than himself. One fundamental point in the concert was a projection on a large screen that was erected behind the stage of vision that began from outerspace with the image of earth and which then zoomed in until the cells in an anonymous man's hand were visible. A projection of the infinte divisibility of the universe, the projection was at the same time an affirmation of the atomic interconnectedness of the universe, a possible conerstone of the Coldplay thesis.
The thematic content of the Coldplay playlist also tended towards a yearning for transcendence, its repeated focus on outerspace, on the intransigence of time, and the interconnectedness of the universe's atomic structure, which reached its apotheosis in 'The Scientist', belies the band as a manifestation of contemporary culture's desire for meaning that goes beyond materialism, but doesn't really know where to look, or how to look.
And what a powerful show Coldplay puts on. More akin to pentecostal revival than a rock concert, Coldplay's performance inspires a sensation of 'togetherness', of collective unity, in the audience. Different to, say, the Rolling Stones, that most professional of rock bands, Coldplay's appeal does not appear to lie in the specific sentiment expressed in the lyrics of a particular song. Indeed, the ubiquity of Colpay's music, its proliferation in advertisements, soundtracks, sporting events etc, testifies to its lyrical mysteriousness; rendering the music aplicable in a plethora of fora.
The concert itself affirmed that Coldplay's appeal plays on the audience's desire for transcendence, to go beyond the atomised, individualised experience of daily life, and to achieve, or at least glimpse, a sense of collective unity, a sense of fellowship with Man in the knowledge that each of us are part of some greater, powerful and incomprehensible whole.
Coldplay's concert production is a rhetorical tour de force of collectivist engineering. Recalling, fascistic rally design, Coldplay relies heavily on the universal aesthetic appeal of bright lighting and lasers, the use of which approached that of a symphony for the deaf, to dazzle and entrance the audience. Chris Martin's performance style also contributed, his disconnected disengaged movements on stage, and repeated gestures towards the roof of the stadium suggested himself as a medium, a conduit, channeling a force greater than himself. One fundamental point in the concert was a projection on a large screen that was erected behind the stage of vision that began from outerspace with the image of earth and which then zoomed in until the cells in an anonymous man's hand were visible. A projection of the infinte divisibility of the universe, the projection was at the same time an affirmation of the atomic interconnectedness of the universe, a possible conerstone of the Coldplay thesis.
The thematic content of the Coldplay playlist also tended towards a yearning for transcendence, its repeated focus on outerspace, on the intransigence of time, and the interconnectedness of the universe's atomic structure, which reached its apotheosis in 'The Scientist', belies the band as a manifestation of contemporary culture's desire for meaning that goes beyond materialism, but doesn't really know where to look, or how to look.
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