COLDPLAY’S HOT PLAY IN THE SOUTHLAND

It’s just part of the band’s ongoing, extremely successful Live Nation world tour, orchestrated by Michael Rapino, and massive roll-out for their recent Capitol album, Xylo Myloto, by 3D Management’s Dave Holmes.

The band also performed on American Idol and headlined Saturday night’s KROQ Weenie Roast y Fiesta in Irvine, with surprise guests Soundgarden, Incubus, Of Monsters and Men, Angels & Airwaves, Offspring and others.

Coldplay’s current show is a crowd-pleasing spectacle, dubbed by a veteran observer as “one of the best rock shows ever production-wise,” featuring fireworks, reams of confetti, giant beach balls unleashed in the crowd, lasers and a spectacular, graffiti-themed light show helped along by remote-control computerized blinking bracelets handed out to everyone in the crowd making for a twinkling backdrop amidst a full moon.

There were plenty of musical highlights, but the evening’s most emotional moment came with Chris Martin sat alone at the piano, plunking out a ballad version of the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party),” which he repeated the next night at the KROQ show, as a tribute to the late Adam “MCA” Yauch. The video went viral immediately.

Starting with “Hurts Like Heaven” from the new album, after entering to John Williams’ theme from Back to the Future, the band’s set included most of their hits, “In My Place,” “The Scientist,” “Yellow,” “Viva La Vida” and “Clocks,” with the real revelation a soaring version of “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face,” featuring a churning Jonny Buckland guitar solo. For the encore, the band did an acoustic set midway through the massive audience, playing “Us Against the World” and “Speed of Sound” about 20 yards from where we sat. Other standouts from Xylo Myloto included “Princess of China,” sung along to a video of Rihanna, “Charlie Brown,” “Paradise” and the closing “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall.”