Coldplay have emerged as unlikely troublemakers ahead of the Brit Awards tomorrow (February 21, 2012), a group who in the past have come across as about as edgy as a water melon apparently causing organisers of the event a health and safety nightmare with their plans for their live performance.
The UK's Sun newspaper reports that the Devon group have ordered so many pyrotechnics for the slot at London's O2 Arena that bosses are worried that they might blow the roof off the venue. A source said, "It has been a logistical nightmare and for a long time organisers didn't think they'd be able to go ahead with the plans. People have been running around the arena with clipboards for weeks trying to sort it out." It would be far from us to say that the boys are planning such extravagances to make up for the relatively tepid nature of their music.
There've been a great many standout aesthetical performances over the years, Pink Floyd's live representation of 'The Wall' which saw the band play behind a towering "brick" structure, to U2's Zoo TV tour in the early 90s and more recent histrionics from the likes of Ufo launching Muse and the technicolour dream of The Flaming Lips gigs. One of our favourites though is a stage prop that never even made it onto the stage; Black Sabbath's set designers reading numbers in metres and not feet ahead of making a replica Stonehenge for the band to perform in front of during 1983's Born Again tour, meaning that it had to be left in storage. It was parodied in the classic spoof 'Spinal Tap.