Well, after seeing U2 last month (which was amazing by the way… have I mentioned that?!) I’ve experienced some more great bands in the last few weeks.

I went to Greenbelt over the August Bank Holiday weekend with Ali and her mates from Bristol. Because she was working on the set-up team, it meant we were able to camp a lot closer to the main area, which was much better than the last time I went, when we were camped so far away!

There was a great variety of music over the weekend: Athlete, Röyksopp, Sixpence None The Richer, Cornershop, yFriday, plus lots of smaller artists as well.

Also, I got to hear a bit of Rob Bell too, which was really interesting. I’ve got a few of his books, but I’ve yet to read them – that’s something I need to do when I get a bit more time! He was doing a Q&A session, so covered quite a few subjects. He did a couple of specific talks as well, but unfortunately I didn’t manage to get into those because the queues were so long that people got turned away. I need to get an MP3 of them!

The camping wasn’t too bad – I cooked a few meals on my gas stove, although I’ll admit that I had my fair share of burgers and bacon rolls from the food vans! And we did alright for the weather as well – we had a bit of rain, but generally it was pretty good. The biggest downside to festivals for me is the severe lack of showers, but on the Sunday morning I went for a swim at the nearby leisure centre so did feel reasonably clean after that!

Check out my photos here.

Then last night I saw Coldplay live, which was really good. I bought tickets last year, and the original plan was for me to go with James and Helen, and I was really looking forward to that because we don’t really ever get to do anything socially, but as I posted a while back, they had a family wedding they had to go to, so it meant that I we wouldn’t be able to go together.

I’d bought an extra ticket for the gig, which quite late on I sold to Dave who decided to go because Ralph and Tom had got hold of tickets as well. So we all left from their house and walked the 3 miles from their’s to the Lancashire Cricket Ground for the gig.

We arrived as the first support – White Lies – were already playing. The ground was already jam-packed, even though Coldplay weren’t due on stage for another two and a half hours! White Lies were alright, although they played their only real hit as we were coming in, and the rest sounded a bit samey I thought.

Then next on was Jay-Z – who it could be argued is an odd choice for support at a Coldplay gig. I did discover that Tom really isn’t a Jay-Z fan at all (although he wasn’t feeling 100% so that might be part of the reason for his pained expression during the set!)

I guess the guy is a really talented producer and he certainly got the crowd on-side, but for me hearing a crowd of 50,000 joining in with with the line “I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one” really sits badly with me… when I hear those kind of lyrics, and the way they’re just so disrespectful to women, it’s just really turns me off it all.

Anyway, enough of my critique of Jay-Z, and onto the reason we were there – Coldplay.

Everything about the band’s performance was brilliant. Musically, they sounded amazing, and Chris Martin surprised me in how well he bounced off the crowd, and he’s really energetic on stage – running around a lot of the time (when he’s not sitting down at a piano!)

I often hear people criticise the band by saying that their music is really depressing and boring, but after experiencing their live show, there’s no way you could say that.

The music was really uplifting, and had such an energy to it – basically I really enjoyed it!

It’s a real shame I wasn’t able to go with James and Hel, although they apparently did make it back from the wedding in time for when Coldplay came on, but I think they were way at the back somewhere! But I did have a really great time with the guys, and we all got a free live CD on the way out which was cool. I took quite a few photos of the gig on my phone, and they’re all here.

And finally, last weekend I was down in Hemel Hemstead for Helen & Jeff’s wedding – and for some crazy reason, I agreed to do a video of it! I normally don’t do wedding videos, because they can be an absolute nightmare, and you’re basically on the go for the whole day, which means you don’t quite experience it the same way, but they had no-one else to do it, so I relented! It also removed the hassle of having to find a decent wedding present!

It was nice seeing the old crowd – in some ways it seems like it was hardly any time ago since we were all in Birmingham at uni, but in reality it’s nearly 15 years! And it was a really nice wedding, and most of us stayed over so it was good to properly catch up.

I’ve now got to try and get the video edited for them – though where the time’s going to come from I’m not sure!

You can see my photos of the day here. Most of them from the daytime weren’t actually taken by me because I was filming, but I left my camera with the other guys to takes some for me!