Sunday Drewster & I drove for 7 hrs down to St. Louis to see Radiohead in concert. As we pulled up to Riverport Amphitheater after dark Radiohead had just come on stage, and we heard 2+2=5 booming from over the hill across the parking lot. Eventually we broke into a run.
The setup was amazing. The stage with seating was surrounded by a giant hill; most of the crowd was standing in the grass, listening to the music amped out of a second set of hanging speakers and watching giant video screens that they tuned to Thom and the gang. Behind the stage was a big flashing light board that somehow exactly captured the color and feel of each song: "Myxamatosis" was a violent heaving green, "Pyramid Song" a shimmering blue, "Paranoid Android" burst into angry red sparks in the middle. The stage was littered with all kinds of instruments which the band members moved about at random, demonstrating that yes they could play every one, Ed playing xylophone on "No surprises" and drums on "There, There," and of course Thom shuffling back and forth between various guitars and various keyboard instruments, or sometimes just singing and spinning around on stage into his own little thing. They tried to play everything for us but just ran out of time, after two encores of about 4 songs each they turned in. I sang and danced and practically cried several times the music was so achingly good, esp. Thom's voice smooth & clear on stuff like "Sail to the Moon."
They weren't afraid to change things either; Ed had some idea that he kept returning to in which he chopped through otherwise smooth passages, as if trying it out for the first time. I liked that. Thom also did this super lovable little dance after setting up the keyboard for Idioteque, sitting there on the bench swinging his arms back and forth for a while in his own little world.
Well as this was our first Radiohead concert we were both completely blown away. I mean, midway through the concert, I realized that no other band in circulation right now can even come close to this...with six awesome albums spanning the whole musical spectrum under their belts there's just no hope for anyone else. And what a show they put on, man oh man.
Still it seemed a little strange to drive 14 hours for 2 hours of enjoyment so Drew & I went to a riverboat casino afterwards. This was just plain old goofball funny. We walk in there with our casino id cards trailing behind us on the floor on stretchy little snap-on cords (got these from bored tellers at the front, whom we flirted with & teased) and each turned a whopping $10 into one-dollar chips. We walked around with our cheap well drinks looking for a blackjack table with a minimum $1 bid but the lowest they went was $5, so feeling like scummy cheapskates we went upstairs and frittered it away on blackjack machines, whom we accused of leading us on to get us to spend more, and argued with, until we lost it all & left goofily.
Posted by Alan at August 24, 2003 01:06 AM