My wife and I took my daughter and seven girlfriends to the Coldplay concert last night at Verizon Center.

The good news is the band is much more confident in concert than when I saw them four years ago in NYC. Chris Martin seems to be having more fun as an entertainer in a big arena and the band is pretty tight.

The stage show and lights and effects were really terrific, very Sgt. Pepper’s-ish. The sound was also quite big and crisp.

The band now has a pretty large body of work to run through and it did it fast and efficiently with little banter and little whiney vocals from Chris Martin.

This is a hard-working band that knows how fortunate it is to have a large fan base and to sell out big arenas in today’s economy.

I enjoyed the show even though at times I felt like I was in an Apple iPod ad. The show started at 8:30ish and ended at 10:30ish so everyone still got to play Trick or Treat. Well done Coldplay, well done.