On Saturday March 14th, the day before Lisa’s daughter Alexandra and her Husband Eric arrived in Sydney, Lisa and I went to Sound Relief concert. It was a benefit concert to raise money for the Red Cross support of the Victorian Bushfire Appeal and was held at the Sydney Cricket Grounds in Moore Park. It is about 15 minutes away from our home in Sydney’s CBD. If you would like to give, it is not too late. Click on this link: http://www.soundrelief.com.au/syd/lineup.html
Coldplay, the music group was in town to do a four sold out shows in Sydney, so when they heard about the benefit, they jumped on board and opened the event at around 12:20pm. I think a lot of the attendees didn’t get the word, or were stuck in traffic, or didn’t care because there were large open areas on the field as well in the seats that were empty and didn’t fill until later. The photo below is of them performing a hit from a previous album called Yellow.
The folks running the show from a logistical perspective, segmented the field and charged a slightly higher price for being close to the stage, and limited the number for safety reasons. You can see the wall that separates the inner field from the outer field. What you can’t see is a wall to the right of the stage that was a chain link fence that teenagers started tossing themselves over and running into the inner crowd. The first 60 or 70 made it with no problem before security noticed this and started chasing people down. Wave after wave of teenagers would jump the barricade during Coldplay’s performance and security would attempt to stop them. The lead singer, Chris Martin, was amused by this as much as Lisa and I were, and mentioned something about it while on stage. Later, during a brief encore, he jumped off the stage and onto the field and started running with his arms spread out wide like a plane or bird through the empty areas and crowds ran after him like a flock. He made it to the retaining wall that separated the inner field from the outer field but got too bogged down to get over. This allowed many of the previously mentioned teenagers on the right a great opening to jump the fence while security was distracted. No doubt Chris did this on purpose for that purpose.
Another highlight during their set was when they had Australia’s John Farnham join them on stage and did the song, You’re The Voice, that everyone in the crowd knew all the words to, loved, and danced to. Alas, Lisa and I were clueless, but it was a great vibe.
Lisa and I stuck around to hear Lisa’s favorite band, Architecture in Helsinki, and then we left. We wanted to see Jet who was playing later, but we didn’t want to wait three hours before they came on.
