Adventure Of A Lifetime: A Coldplay FanFic

Extra: Spotlight!

Spotlight!: R#42

This is the first time I've centered a title instead of putting it off to the right!

So, I'll call this a Spotlight! Seems right. Today's Spotlight! (yes, the exclamation point is a part of the name) is Roadie #42, because it's my 42nd page and he deserves this for being such an awesome person.

Roadie #42, also known as R#42 and just Roadie, is the most well-known roadie working on this tour, as well as previous ones. He, along with Phil, takes pictures of the band at every available moment. The fandom--army of Coldplayers--keeps his actual name a secret, but you can definitely Google it. His whole identity is a secret, really. Nobody outside of the crew (apart from us) knows what he looks like, and I'm not going to describe him to keep the fandom happy. But if you play detective and figure out his name, you can watch Will teaching a Master Class of drummers for Rhythm Studios and Roadie's there. Somewhere...

Roadie is also the person who does the blog on the Timeline--located on the Coldplay website--and updates show dates with pictures, as well as posting pictures to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. He basically helps to keep people up-to-date on happenings during the tour.

He's incredibly nice. I don't think I've ever met such a nice guy before, y'know, other than the band and Frosty. He's got that classic British accent, not too strong, not too weak, not too posh.

His photos are something else. I've seen a lot of the pictures he takes during soundchecks and shows, all the way up in the crowd, behind Will, sometimes even from backstage. Every single one of them are amazing. He gets awesome shots of all the Xylobands lit up, of Chris nearly taking flight, Will in the middle of breaking his drumset (he really did during soundcheck yesterday, it's fixed now), Jonny rocking out, and Guy smiling at the fans below him, because y'know, he doesn't jump around or go crazy like J does.

While out in the crowd, Roadie takes a lot of pictures of anything he can, including fans with ridiculous signs and sometimes masks, homemade clothes, security... everything. He's currently employing me and Quince as decoys, so nobody suspects him as much. But I'm not sure why me, because everybody obviously knows R#42 is a guy. But Quince kinda looks like a grown man already, so I suppose it works with him. I never thought I'd admit that about Quince, to be honest.

Everybody in the crew loves Roadie. He often gets them all together on the stage for a huge group photo--which he cannot be in unfortunately--after or before soundcheck, us included. We kind of fit in, with our crew hats and shirts. Roadie also goes around and does Instagram stories with some of the crew, asking about where they are for that specific show date, and what that crew member was doing at that moment in time, which was almost never "nothing."

Roadie is certainly a very important part of the tour and the band's career. Without Roadie, people who couldn't go to a show wouldn't be able to see pictures and sort of know what it's like that way. You wouldn't get behind-the-scenes access through his blogs. You wouldn't know much about the band in general without Roadie. So take some time to thank him.

So what do you think? Should I do more one-page Spotlights? I kind of enjoyed doing this, because it shows how important the crew actually is. 

This was written in place of the second show night in Amsterdam in my copy, but I'll be writing that after I finish Glastonbury's four days, and publish it then Glastonbury. So I'll basically be messing with my own head about this, because Amsterdam's second show won't be in my copy by itself--it'll be recapped the first day at Glastonbury. But here it'll be by itself and not recapped... oh, help me.

~Dark