the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Coldplay.

The band you like if you find Radiohead a bit too challenging, a bit too idiosyncratic and a bit less popular with your friends. But hey, what do I know? To me both are guilty of making the kind of jingly-jangily guitar music (JJGM) that I’d hoped dance music had banished into obscurity. To be nothing more than a stark of warning to adolescent boys with dreams of being intellectuals and virgins no longer of the dangers inherent in foolishly believing that their parents weren’t lying about their ‘musical’ ability. So that makes me a hypocrite, admittedly not in the same league as Coldplay, but still.

Is there a sliding scale of hypocrisy? If not, there should be. Is it possible to be only a ‘sometime’ hypocrite, only one on a day with only a ‘o’ in it,? Or else a full-time hypocrite, the kind who bangs on about being a vegan, whilst secretly wolfing down fillet steak cooked rare. I ask because a while ago, in a previous post, in addition to outing myself as a hypocrite, I asked whether it was better to be a hypocrite and know you are one, or to be a hypocrite and not know? Or, is it better to be a hypocrite and not even care?

Coldplay have provided me me with another possible iteration. Namely is it OK to take a laudably virtuous and principled stance on something, one that you know will have great negative financial implications for you and others, only for a few years later to totally reverse that decision, asserting that the reversal isn’t actually a reversal at all. But merely a realisation that simply by hiring someone to tell you that by tinkering with some eye-catching trivialities, and loudly proclaiming them as evidence of something, then they could resume doing what they did before they so foolishly announced they were going to stop doing it.

Confused? You and me both.

Because back in 2019, they announced to much approval by the right people that they were postponing touring their new album, not because it was full of the sort of JJGM beloved by estate agents and hairdressers, and didn’t want to cause the levels of aural pollution later achieved by Ed Sheeran. No, they cited their concern about the ‘environmental impact’

“We’re not touring this album,” frontman Chris Martin told BBC News. “We’re taking time over the next year or two, to work out how our tour can not only be sustainable [but] how can it be actively beneficial.” Instead of spending months on the road, they played two gigs in Jordan, which were be broadcast, free, to a global audience on YouTube. But what was ‘actively beneficial’ in 2019 wasn’t by 2022. Possibly, their accountants had looked at the financial losses of not touring – no income from ticket sales, merchandising revenues or sponsorship deals -and advised the band that they couldn’t afford their preachy principles. So, to no-one’s surprise, by 2022, it was business as usual. Publishing the bands press release almost word for word, one website fawning so much it thought its mother was Bambi, gushed:

Coldplay’s 2022 world tour will be powered almost entirely by renewable energy, using a rechargeable show battery the band developed with BMW, the band explains on their website. They have teamed up with BMW to develop a rechargeable battery that will be powered by recycled cooking oil, solar power, and the kinetic energy of their audiences. And if that weren’t enough, fans can always hop on one of the electricity-generating bikes that will also be installed at each show, helping to cut mainstream electricity usage down even more. 

I was Glastonbury years ago, up in the Green Fields very late one night and very off my face. We found a tent that not had a DJ playing some awesome tunes, but had the entire sound system powered by loads of tandem bikes producing electricity. No more than 500 people, most in a similar state to me – loads of energy and goodwill – but every now and again, the music would slow because not all of the bikes were in use. But ever the optimists and ignoring the fact that people who like JJGM are not known for their prolonged love of the dance-floor, the BBC tell us that this tour, which bothered earholes in Cardiff earlier this week, is partially powered by a dancefloor that generates electricity when fans jump up and down, and pedal power at the venues.

And just to enhance the whole sex and drugs and rock n roll vibe Their opener on Tuesday and Wednesday night will also play a bilingual video educating fans on the sustainability elements of the tour.

Sounds like fun.

And not to be churlish about things, earlier this year Coldplay were at it again, playing 11 shows in South America, trousering $65.4M, as part of a tour that has 122 shows. What’s the point of preaching principles to others if you can’t get massively rich when selling them out?