No, really. This show made me seriously consider it.
Let me set the stage. I meet up with Tori in front of Trinity college and we take a train that gets progressively swallows more and more people until it's about to burst and until it heaves us all out onto the street by Malahide Castle. We stroll through beautiful green grounds, past the giant castle, and onto the awaiting field where people are beginning to sprawl out and wait for the opening band. Bats for Lashes, our first group, sounds like a combination of Portishead, Bjork, and Lorenna McKenna (sorry if that spelling is wrong) and is quite entertaining, but people are only mildly enthusiastic and cheer most when the lead singer announces that "Our beloved Radiohead" will soon be out. As we wait, the rain begins to fall and a double rainbow appears, appropriate given that Radiohead's latest album is called "In Rainbows." We can see both ends touch the ground on opposite sides of the venue. Perfect. Out walk Thom Yorke and the boys, greeted by cheers from the crowd that has now grown to who-knows how many thousands. He asks if we saw the rainbow. The crowd replies in unison.
Thom Yorke is a rock star. He could've been a one man show himself by just dancing around, making funny faces at the crowd, and rocking out with his guitar, regardless of the amazing light set up or what the rest of the band was doing. It seemed to me that he loved what he was doing, loved playing the music he was playing, and when he played a new song with just him and the piano, he still seemed a little bit nervous about how it would be received, despite the fact that he knew that the crowd would eat up pretty much anything he threw at them. He did seem to take a bit of advantage of the situation, often waving to the crowd just to hear the screams or standing on the stage lapping up shouts and applause, but man, if you had thousands of people singing along to your songs and just loving your music, wouldn't you do a little bit of that, too? I want people to sing along to my songs.
Radiohead's newer stuff is a little bit lower key, and the audience's energy seemed to reflect that. I had some raucous guys behind me, but that was more due to a loss of balance caused by imbibing than it was their desire to dance around. They did know the words to pretty much every song, though. Still, we finally got a higher energy song (I think it was Mixamitosis?), and they were jumping a bit, and since I had needed some rock out time, I jumped in, and we all started jumping and bouncing off of each other, and soon we had a good sized pit. It was just what I needed.
The stage itself was brilliant. Long tubes of lights hung down from the stage ceiling and would emit the color of choice, or flash in sequence with the music. High spotlights came down from behind, also emphasizing whatever color was in particular use for the song. The back panels were video screens showing up close images of what was happening on stage from various angles. The best use of this was when Thom Yorke played his piano and the lead guitarist backed him up, just the two, on "You and whose army?" and the camera was right on Thom's face. He winked, made eyebrow gestures, and facially played with the crowd as he sang and played one of my favorite songs.
Radiohead played almost all of their new album, but managed to play some of my absolute favorites, breaking out extra drums for "Tree Fingers," rocking out to "My Iron Lung," (of which I would have an awesome video if I could get videos up, and finishing their second encore with their amazing performance of, what else, "Paranoid Android." The lights on that last one were absolutely phenomenal, with the very last chorus having everything burst into radiant rainbow colors after having limited themselves to mono-colors for the rest of the evening, the contrast was perfectly timed and left me quite elated. I will have videos when I come back, because trust me, you should want to see them.
I wish that they could have played for hours more, but the show eventually had to end. It had been quite the ride, and left me thinking about the emotional power of music, its power of expression, and about trying to reach people in that way. Music holds such a special place in my heart, and I've been thrilled that Harry, my latest and greatest host, has had a guitar at his place. For now, I am left to reflect on the amazing show I've recently been party to, accomplice with, and a witness of. It was a brilliant experience in every respect and only left me wanting to play more, watch more, and live more music.
No comments:
Post a Comment