:: a.whisper.in.water ::

:: Thursday, August 14, 2003 ::

Though Control...Thought Control...
Holy shit I just saw Radiohead last night. Holy shit I just saw Radiohead last night. Perhaps midway though the post it'll sink in. Here's where my teensy readership finds out how fanatic I am about Radiohead. I simply must send those nice boys from Oxford a token of my appreciation for a most enjoyable show, though Jenn later pointed out after the fact that we didn't see Colin Greenwood at all, and conversely saw Johnny everywhere. I adore Johnny Greenwood, I've decided. His contribution to the band's sound is as unmistakable as it is underappreciated. Plus, he's the Pixies fan, or at least the most outspoken one. Seeing him live definitely proved it; his aspirations to the Joey Santiago solo were most evident, since he can't have possibly made it through the show without breaking several strings doing what he did.

The setlist included a pretty high dose of Hail to the Thief, though the show was definitely not without its very pleasant surprises. I haven't been able to find a setlist to which to link, nor did I write it down, but doubtless AtEase will have it up soon enough, odds are within the day (thereby rendering this sentence inaccurate). I'd liked to have seen more from The Bends, but with roughly 2 hours on stage, and 2 separate encores (the first for 4 songs, the second for 2), there's hardly room for complaint.

Highlights include, but are by no means restricted to:

-A fierce live take of "The National Anthem"
-A huge surprise in "Creep," which I though audiences would never hear again stateside (though it was played in Tokyo on the Pacific leg of their tour)
-Thom laughing during said "Creep" when a pair of panties hit the stage
-Thom's spastic dance-twitching which has, since Kid A-era touring, become a prominent part of the show
-me shouting my ass off
-Phil Selway in a swank black suit laying down a very solid and consistent set of drums throughout the show
-Ed O'Brien being ugly
-My. IRON. Lung. Surprisingly enough, the band's timing on the transitions was pretty poor; it was a bit of a mess getting to the chorus.
-Fucking LUCKY. They played LUCKY.
-A somewhat emasculated, though very exciting "Paranoid Android."
-A rather surprising "The Gloaming," though the studio version remains among the weakest tracks from Hail to the Thief
-My being annoying and picking up on what song the band was playing a good 8-12 bars ahead of the crowd, including calling "Creep" on pre-song fiddling.
-A gorgeous "No Surprises," (The crowd also cheered vociferously at the lines "bring down the government / they don't, they don't speak for us." The band itself seemed to play a lot of its anti-status quo songs, though odds are lots of their songs are anti-status quo, and I was simply sensitized to it given the present political climate. Back to the list.) with Johnny doing a gorgeous job with the xylophone they brought out after the first encore, leading to the following exchange:

Me: I bet you sex their next song is "No Surpris-"
Jenn, smiling: Okay.

-Clouds of all sorts of smoke wafting about
-An oddly high number of drunk kids who'd totally lost their group of friends wandering around

Plus the usual stadium-concert traffic/parking woes. Bruce, who is presently on crutches after attempting to cheat mortality in an Ultimate Frisbee game at Sandy Island, inspired Kathy to shell out the extra money for Premiere parking, which made life a great deal easier when the time came to leave: our car actually got home before Tristan and Kelley's car made it TWENTY FEET from their original parking spot. Reportedly, Tristan stood atop his car and charted a path through the sea of cars and barriers, prompting other folks to take notice. When Tristan put his plans into action, about 10 cars followed him, infused with the hope that this wayward sailor could lead them all to escape, which he did. Cloves are interesting, though still don't contain enough nicotine for me to usefully smoke them. Here, I make a concession to the inability to archive life in its totality, though odds are I'll come back to this entry as I remember more deemed-blogworthy details.

In a couple of sidenotes, Jenn and I split at some point, but are still in love, and are still very much acting together. Net effect: one ruined evening. Details at eleven. As well, the first link you see to your left points to my new, redundant LiveJournal, whose purpose is basically to act as a gateway to this site for the convenience of LiveJournalers. I'm not going to split my blogging efforts between the two, as that would be very, very silly indeed. Blogger for life, yo.

:: Aziz 7:06 PM [+] ::
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