The Energy of Live Music (Week 47 of Fireflies at Dusk: A 52-Week Project)

Mylo Xyloto was the UK's best selling album of 2011.  The tour will have covered North America, Europe, and Asia.  The show brings this album alive along with Vida la Vida and previous albums.  

Any Gen Xer who has kept mementos from their growing-up years has one or maybe even a handful of tickets to concerts they saw in their youth.  Coldplay hadn't yet formed as a band (as we currently know them) in my Gen teenage years, but they were undoubtedly a soundtrack to my Gen X 20s.  At times, they were with me all day long - A Rush of Blood to the Head playing on my CD Walkman as I worked one of my rote temp jobs in a gray cubicle through the day, and Parachutes  in my car CD player late in the evening when I would drive home in the rain past the glow of storefront neon lights.

My pink light-up wristband.  To the left - a sea of people  across the stadium .  To the right - the lit up stage.  

What could be better than being around the music that has been a part of your life and seeing it live?  Any time there is live music at a stadium, there is this incredible energy there.  I think this is because a certain tour from a certain album only happens once in history which means that you are all having this epic collective experience.  And you are all living in the moment.   I think that is why that amazing energy that comes pouring out of a stadium - emanating so intensely that even passers-by outside can feel it in the cement under their feet.

The round screen above shows the larger image of Chris Martin on the stage below in the purple light....

Looking around at the audience, there was every generation there, and a huge Gen X presence.  It was incredible to have been there, experiencing this with thousands of people from Portland.  As the tour continues to go around the world, many of us will have had this collective experience together.

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(c) 2012 photography and writing by Chloe - all rights reserved