My Coldplay.com - A Coldplay Blog

WITH her trendy Bugaboo Stroller, yoga classes and macrobiotic diet, Gwyneth Paltrow has long been the poster girl for a certain type of London lifestyle. Not the kind enjoyed by the likes of Kate Moss, obviously. You can’t imagine Paltrow drinking till dawn, snorting coke.

No, she is the epitome of the nanny-spurning, baby-food puréeing yummy mummy: effortlessly glamorous, nutritionally-obsessed, socially aware and as dull as dishwater. While the Primrose Hill set are scandalising the neighbours, in Belsize Park, one a [Read more]

‘Intimacy’ available to pre-order now as band announce full tracklisting and release date. Paul Epworth and Jacknife Lee are also behind the desk…

Bloc Party’s third album, ‘Intimacy’, will be available digitally from August 21. It will be delivered to fans who pre-order the album from the band’s website www.blocparty.com. Those who pre-order will also be sent a physical version of the album from October 27 which includes extra songs. [Read more]

Liam Gallagher prefers being a stay-at-home dad these days, but he’s not lost his rock’n’roll swagger

Liam Gallagher says he and his brother “are two totally different people and the sooner people realise that the less we can go on about it”. Fair enough, but, having interviewed Noel several years ago, I can report the Gallagher boys have more in common than being in the same band and having the same mum and dad: extreme candour, for one thing. You asked Noel a question, you got a straight answer. If anything, his kid brother is even more straight-talking. Also (and I didn’t think this could be possible), Liam swears even more. [Read more]

If I could muster any enthusiasm for Coldplay and their particular brand of world-weary pop, I wouldn’t have the same financial problems. The band will play the new Point Theatre in Dublin’s docklands in December, with tickets priced from €54.80. Alright, if Coldplay were performing in my back garden I’d close the windows and pull the blinds, but credit where it’s due. Chris Martin and his colleagues are bringing some sort of normality back to ticket pricing.
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We catch up with Coldplay’s latest support act

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Americans are flocking to be entertained UK-style, reports John Harlow in Los Angeles

BRITISH film makers, video game designers, rock stars and television personalities are topping the charts compiled by America’s entertainment industry this summer, only five years after cultural exports from the UK appeared to be in the doldrums.

Thanks to two pairs of British brothers who are behind the new Batman film and the video game Grand Auto Theft IV - and the popularity of figures as diverse as Coldplay, the rock band, and Gordon Ramsay, the foul-mouthed chef - Britons have returned to the ascendancy. [Read more]

I’m really enjoying Coldplay’s new CD Viva La Vida (or Death and All His Friends).  Studio-wise, I think it’s one of the best CD’s I’ve listened to and it really evidences itself when the songs (Viva La Vida and Violet Hill) come on the radio and I really remember and sing along.

Coldplay has deliberately written songs that they want crowds to sing along to…. “belt it to the rafters” or something like that.  However, many of the songs contain strings and tracks that aren’t really replicable on stage!  A good example is Viva La Vida, which is driven by a pulsing string track rhythm.  There are no drum kit sounds, so they instead pull out the tympany and church bell out for the song during their performances (as seen live on videos on youtube).  But it’s a bit unbelievable when Chris Martin and the guitarist Jonny Buckland play their keyboards for a short while before leaving them for the mic or the electric guitar, and the strings play on.  Obviously they have a running string track in the background. [Read more]

Eat your heart out, other Fresno musicians — Rico Rodriguez is opening for Coldplay.

Rodriguez, a Fresno boy, plays drums in the Bay Area-based rock band Picture Atlantic, who won the opportunity to open for a little ol’ band named Coldplay tomorrow night at HP Pavilion in San Jose. Did we mention the band was hand-picked by Chris Martin & Co? Yeah, that’s cool too.

Though he recently moved to Santa Clara to focus on the band, Rodriguez (pictured second from right) is a veteran of Fresno’s local scene and was in town this week visiting his family. We caught up with him to get some details, thoughts and exclamations as he preps for Friday’s show. [Read more]

We chat to Coldplay’s current support act

With Austin swoon-rockers Shearwater supporting Coldplay on the opening four dates of the tour, Coldplay.com called up frontman Jonathan Meiburg ahead of the first LA show, to find out a little bit more about them.

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Elio Leoni-Sceti’s move from Reckitt Benckiser, the household products group, to be chief executive of EMI Music will prompt amusement, and perhaps dismay. Each time Mr Leoni-Sceti is referred to as a “detergent expert”, EMI’s artists will feel a little more uneasy. That may be one reason why, in the official statement welcoming him to the music group, much was made of the Italian’s excitement about the prospect of working with Kylie, Lily and Norah and nothing of his regret at no longer working with Airwick, Veet and Vanish. [Read more]