First, a little backgrounder. In August, 2001, my SO and I drove 12 hours to Manassas, Virginia to see Radiohead, but a huge summer rainstorm flooded the ampitheater and the show was cancelled. Big, huge bummer.
So it was with great anticipation that BunRa, our friend G-Man, and I set out to St. Louis for the show. Remembering the DC Debacle, BunRa forbade me to wash my car before the trip (I had done that in 2001),announced an injunction against playing any Radiohead in the car on the trip up, and refused to even acknowledge the fact that we were going to a concert (“I’m really excited about seeing the Arch!”). Apparently, the sympathetic magic worked; after getting our shop on in the University district (thanks to the IMHO Dopers for the recommendations), we discovered that our hotel was running a shuttle bus to the concert and, after a light dinner of hot wings and nachos, we had some special homemade brownies (I had three) and proceeded to the UMB Bank Pavilion.
The weather was perfect–totally clear skies, temperature in the low 80’s, and the humidity level was reasonable. When we arrived, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks were playing their first song, so we hurried to find a place on the lawn. Unfortunately, we were separated from the G-Man at that point and didn’t see him again for the rest of the show. (We later found out that he had hooked up with some other friends of his and had a lovely time at the show.) The Jicks’ set was very good. I am an old Pavement fan, so it was encouraging to see Malkmus still at it. But I must say the songs, while polished, lacked that laconic soul that his Pavement songs had in spades. Had I not been a Pavement-head, I would have enjoyed the set much more, I think. I will say that the band took to playing in front of a huge crowd very well–they were loose, relaxed, and called a couple of audibles on stage. (Meaning they deviated from their set list and decided to play songs because they fit the moment better.)
The sun went down as the Jicks finished up, and soon a fat, red Mars was rising above the stage. Late 60’s reggae played over the sound system as the crew set up for Radiohead. I recognized Toots and the Maytals, Desmond Decker, the Ethiopians, and The Upsetters (which was really cool because I bought their 1969 album Return of Django that afternoon) on the playlist. The reggae, the weather, and dessert all contributed to a general feeling of extreme well-being on our part as we lay in the grass. BunRa said “I could just lay here for the rest of my life.” But when the lights went down, she jumped to her feet along with 10,000 others.
The Main Event got off to a rather rocky start with “The Gloaming” off Hail to the Thief. The song depends on several loops being in synch, and one of them got off. Thom stopped the song between the first and second verses, restarted the loops, and pressed on. “2+2=5” was next. The intro was great, but the rocking section at the end seemed to drag a bit–the tempo was considerably slower than on the record. The band seemed to settle down a bit on “Sit Down, Stand Up”, and “Where I End and You Begin” was flawless. The first three songs of the set had been pretty much faithful readings of the studio versions, but “Where I End…” took off with lots of pleasingly psychedelic swirls, beeps, and squwaks that went beyond the recorded version until that wah-guitar part near the end rocked through the fog. Next was the totally unexpected “Bulletproof” from The Bends, and then the biggest disappointment of the night, “Airbag”, which was the first time the band used the three guitar attack that characterized their earlier records. Something went bad wrong with the sound system during “Airbag”, and it sounded confused and clanky, and I think Thom kind of gave up on the song about halfway through. The band regrouped for “Knives Out”, which was always my least favorite Radiohead song because it kind of meanders without a point, but it really worked live. I looked around the lawn and said to BunRa “They should change the name of that song to ‘Spark Up’, 'cause that’s what everyone was doing!” From that point on, despite patrolling security thugs, the air was heavy with ganja.
The second half of the set really picked up. “Talk Show Host”, which was the B-side to “Street Spirit”, was tremendous. “Sail to the Moon”, which is the only slow song on Hail to the Thief that I like, was perfectly moody. Then they did “Paranoid Android”.
I think Radiohead occupies roughly the same evolutionary niche in 2003 as Pink Floyd did in, say, 1974. They’re at the top of their game, and they’re going to be a big touring act for the forseeable future, barring any foolish breaking up or anything like that. Just as Pink Floyd has to do “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Time” at every show, so too will Radiohead be stuck doing “Paranoid Andriod” for the rest of their lives. This may sound harsh, but that’s not how it was intended. But big bands sometimes visibly resent having to play that song again, and will just go through the motions because they know they’ll get a rise out of the crowd no matter how crappy it sounds. And that was what was so encouraging about “Paranoid Android”–they really sold it. They’re still into doing it, despite the fact that it has obviously become that song, and it showed.
From there on out, the band was on fire. “Go to Sleep” and “I Might Be Wrong” were stunning. I have a respect for guitarist Johnny Greenwood that I didn’t have before. His work on the end of “I Might Be Wrong” was just stunning–a sort of atonal, random brilliance that put me in mind of Andy Summers or late-period John Coletrane. The lights were very well designed and tasteful–not the point of the show like the aforementioned Pink Floyd–and revolved mostly around two vertically rectangular screens on either side of the stage that showed severely-tortured feeds from several remotely-controlled digital cameras. For “Idiotque”, that was replaced with what looked like a stylized oscilliscope readout, which proved to be really cool because you could see the square waves from the bass synth. “No Surprises” had the biggest applause line of the night when Thom modified the lyrics to “Bring down the government / They don’t speak for us” Then he railed against Clear Channel for a minute (“We’re not playing this show for them, we’re playing it for you.”) and dedicated “There There” to us poor schlobs on the lawn “who we can’t even see.”
The first encore was “Pyramid Song”, which was beautiful, “Just” and “Mxyomatosis”, which both totally rocked, and one of my favorites “Climbing Up the Walls”, which featured some amazing theramin playing by Johnny. For the second encore, they totally threw down for “National Anthem”, which turned into a huge sprawling mess with radio preacher samples thrown in next to everything but the kitchen sink. Then Thom sat down at a Yamaha electric piano and played a couple of verses of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush” which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up before segueing into “Everything in it’s Right Place”. The show ended with big psychedelic loops and samples, courtesy of Johnny, and about 10,000 satisfied customers.
I felt like Lisa Simpson: “Let’s go again!”