Radiohead live | 14 May 2008 | St. Louis |Riverport Generic [some bank or such telco inc.] Amphitheater
I found it's impossible to restrain or edit myself when unloading thoughts after seeing Radiohead live in St. Louis from the pit, about 4 "rows" (if there were seats) back, so I'll start with the universal-audience concert experience, and then move to specific impressions for the setlist-familiar Radiohead fan.
But as a sidenote, my coworker who runs Playback:stl magazine needed a couple shots for his review before their professional photographer's stuff came in, so for a little while my pics appeared with their story here. For more pics from my little point-and-shoot, here's the photostream.
As a concert experience, the show was one of the best in my life. All the dream variables were there:
a beautifully crisp night and incredibly close tickets with two equally psyched friends;
the necessary height to see over everyone in the pit;
a 25-song setlist that spanned all but one of their albums and pushed me into areas that weren't my first choice;
sincerely beautiful light effects enhanced by 100 different camera angles cycling up on the screen; and
a truly inspired, professional-yet-hardly-stiff band that was visibly as happy to perform for us as we were happy to see them.
Without being a jerk about how close we were, the light effects from our low angle created a different picture than what I had expected after seeing clips on YouTube from earlier on this tour, on videos shot from much further back. What I thought were a few side curtains of light were actually perhaps 50 individual, industrial-looking beams hanging down from the ceiling.
Each seemed to be lined with LCD rope lights that changed colors on program, enhancing but not competing with the music. Some of the beams may have also held the inconspicuous cameras that provided us a hundred brilliant angles of the performers (behind the mic, over the pianist's shoulder, right next to the floor tom head, a wide shot of the bass player and drummer visually interacting, etc.)
Simply, this was my ideal of what a rock show should be:
the performers are well-practiced yet passionate;
they bring a diverse mix of musical backgrounds and interests into their collaboration;
they swap instruments according to song (no, or very few, prerecorded tracks);
the lighting accentuates the feeling; and
the screens in the back show not guitar solos and bulging cucumbers in the crotch, but closeups of the artists' hands at work, of their faces emoting, of their instruments singing, of the crazy laptop and loop/distortion effects gizmos that Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien toy with when they're not playing the guitar (or in J. Greenwood's case, any number of other instruments like the ondes Martenot).
On a personal level, the lyrics -- and the inflections with which they're sung -- resonate to my very core. The songs themselves carry long-held emotional associations dating back to when OK Computer came out at the perfect part of my life to receive it. Add it all up and it encapsulated in one brief evening why being on this planet is worth sticking it out through the whole term of my lease here.
How to sign, "We Hope that You Choke"
One of the first things we noticed was the two sign language women (sign linguists?) at the far right in front of the stage, who we first spotted during the opening act. Since we couldn't understand a single word the opener's (the Liars) vocalist sang, we were quite impressed to see the linguists signing -- 'g' before 'n' -- along, seemingly in time. (Do they get a lyric sheet beforehand? An earpiece with the vocalist's channel piped in? Explainer should tackle this.)
Being tipped off to these women, who truly boogied while they signed, I made a point to look their way during Radiohead's set. I figured it would be a particular joy to see the sign language version of lyrics like, "We hope that you choke" (from "Exit Music (for a film)") and "We'd be a walking disaster" (from "There There"). The sign for "Gloaming" was ... undefined. I can't describe it, but ask and I'll demonstrate my new signing vocab the next time I see you. You can figure out the choke sign.
Which also got us to thinking, "How many deaf people go to concerts, I wonder?" But when you feel vibrations of live music channel through your body, you immediately realize that live music is as rich an experience for a deaf person as it is for anyone else. For Radiohead, particularly so.
First there was the visual spectacle, which the pics do not do justice.
But on top of that, the bass at a Radiohead concert is so permeating that you feel it in your prostate. (Sorry, women folk. But it's true.) It's not hoopdie-trunk subwoofer look-at-me show-off bass, either: It's pure, often fuzz-style, articulate bass tones from the guitar complemented by electronic low sounds and distortions made by Radiohead's two guitarist-slash-gadget freaks.
Because Radiohead is a band I've liked very much since I was a teenager, and because they have had regular output over the last 15 years, their albums serve as sort of mileposts for the most recent half of my life. The universally revered OK Computer came out when I was in college, at a moment in time when my personal philosophy had solidified and meshed with an understanding of how I might survive the human experience. Sonically and lyrically, it then -- and still now -- hit me like a whallop, a succinct capture of life in my generation, in this civilization, at this time in history.
So when they played the beginning chords from OK Computer's opener, "Airbag," a few spontaneous tears inched their ways out of my eyes. Here we are with those signature sounds that for the last decade have triggered for me the beginning of an incredibly poignant 45-minute listening experience, and I'm hearing them live with 20,000 equally excited people. That's community. That's why it immediately ignited an emotional, brain-stem kind of response.
How great is it that music can do this to one's soul?
[Because I have no idea how this much text and photos might trouble the site, I'll break this into two posts. Part 2 continues here.]
As you may have noticed, the site has changed. Sampa, the free-site host, did a version 2 of some sort.
Despite an FAQ that made it sound like allowing one's site to go through v.2 surgery would be okay, there were several flexibilities that surprisingly disappeared with the click of a button. (e.g. I cannot believe sidebars like this one are even narrower than before.)
And I'm told -- miraculously! -- that the conversion cannot be undone. Truth be told, I'm actually quite pissed. But free is free. Sampa has otherwise been good to me.
So I need to sort through site "features" to see how I can make do. Except that I don't have the time at the moment, in the middle of graduate classes and Lighthousehockey.com. (btw, I've removed that Lighthouse RSS feed so that you're not clogged with random Islanders hockey gibberish).
But I promise to touch up the accessories when I get a chance, and return to irregularly scheduled blogging.
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needed a couple shots for his review before their professional photographer's stuff came in, so for a little while my pics appeared 
As a concert experience, the show was one of the best in my life. All the dream variables were there: 
Each seemed to be lined with LCD rope lights that changed colors on program, enhancing but not competing with the music. Some of the beams may have also held the inconspicuous cameras that provided us a hundred brilliant angles of the performers (behind the mic, over the pianist's shoulder, right next to the floor tom head, a wide shot of the bass player and drummer visually interacting, etc.)
Which also got us to thinking, "How many deaf people go to concerts, I wonder?" But when you feel vibrations of live music channel through your body, you immediately realize that live music is as rich an experience for a deaf person as it is for anyone else. For Radiohead, particularly so. 
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February, 2008