Rock group Coldplay attacks 'corporate evil'

Coldplay's Chris Martin has dismissed pressure to boost his record company's profits, saying: "Shareholders are the great evil of this modern world."

EMI issued a profit warning in February partly because the release of the UK band's latest album X&Y was delayed.

But Coldplay frontman Martin said: "I don't really care about EMI. I'm not really concerned about that."

He spoke about the "the slavery that we are all under to shareholders" ahead of the album's release in early June.

Coldplay have sold 20 million albums worldwide, having a big UK and US hit with 2002 album A Rush of Blood to the Head.

Also famous for being the husband of Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Martin spoke to reporters before a 90-minute concert at New York's Beacon Theatre on Tuesday.

He said their new album was delayed because their first eight months of recording sessions produced songs that lacked the "spark" of such earlier hits as Yellow, Clocks and The Scientist.

"It's very strange for us that we spent 18 months in the studio just trying to make songs that make us feel a certain way and then suddenly become part of this corporate machine," Martin said.

He said the band's success gave them artistic freedom and the ability to talk about subjects dear to them such as fair trade - paying fair prices for products such as coffee and cotton from developing nations.

I`ve had a major bug up my butt against that idiot ever since he went to the mike at the Grammys and chose to focus his speech around the subject of "May you elect anyone but Bush", which by the way was a speech he ended by saying just that; "May you elect anyone but Bush". Yes, it`s quite one thing for an Amercian to say that, and we have enough of those, but for an English doofus whose only claim to fame consists solely of leeching off the fame of an American leech and then bashing the honor of the country that spilled blood for the rights of that leech, it`s quite another. He is primordial ooze.

I`ve always found it quite interesting that for the past 35 plus years, when the US is in time of crisis, when the Union is in danger, the ones who bash the US the most are always the ones who live it up the most on the backs of those who break them the most. It`s always the ones who put out the least and expect the most who do the bashing.

Bush didn`t have to do anything after 911. He knew he would be hated if he took action, he knew it could destroy his political career, his life, yet he followed his oath of office beyond everything else, beyond all else, and that seems to fly right over the heads of people like Chris Moron.

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

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