Trading Concerts: Tool for Coldplay

I see your drum kit, and I raise you feelings.

A show for a show.

Back in 2002, my friend Tim and I traded concerts.

Tim was loud, punk, and funny. He was exactly my height, his face covered with freckles and an easy grin. His spiky red hair was always dyed some crazy colour, and his wardrobe was mainly leather bracelets, army surplus gear, and Black Flag t-shirts.

Couldn’t find any photos of Tim, but this is pretty close.

We both loved music and loved going to concerts but our musical tastes were a bit, let’s say, diverse. My heavy rotation at the time included Radiohead, The Doves, Beck, and Coldplay (a bit of a bleak era for me), while he followed a vast esoteric coterie of local punk and metal bands. There was not a lot of overlap in our CD collections.

So we decided to trade concerts. A show for a show.

And that’s how I ended up seeing the unlikely pairing of Tool and Coldplay in late summer 2002.

Tim’s pick was first. Deep in the sticky heat of August, we ventured out to the wilds of Hamilton, Ontario to see Tool at Copps Coliseum. This was no easy feat back then either, requiring multiple hours and formats of transit to get there…