What's THIS For...?!

May 16, 2008

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.]

11:12 AM | Permalink | click to add a comment | Tags: Music; Radiohead

So the first stream of my post-Radiohead thoughts are in the previous post. In their unwieldy glory, they continue here, with more specifics about some of the songs played...

When the Live Experience Shows You What You Missed

As for the concert details itself ... they mixed throughout the set a whole lot from their latest, freely downloadable album, In Rainbows. I've liked this album but not yet gotten totally immersed in it. I figured hearing and seeing the songs played live would change that for me, and indeed, it has. When the multitudes of Radiohead fans first woke up and downloaded the much-anticipated album, everyone knew the cracking "Bodysnatchers" would be a hit live. Indeed it was.

But several of the other, slower songs from the album also resonated, with excellent piano, acoustic guitar and machine-beat effects combining to give us a little window into each song: "Oh, so THAT's how they constructed that song!" Which always seems to happen with Radiohead (heh, "always" ... I've now seen them only twice ... but I think it's telling that a friend, quoted below, came away with the same) as their recorded efforts have gotten more and more into experimental sounds and self-sampling.

It is the 21st Century

"Has the light gone out for you?
'Cause the light's gone out for me
It is the 21st century
It is the 21st century
You can fight it like a dog
It brought me to my knees" 

the frenzied "Idioteque" off of

the album Kid A -- and a fan of it and perhaps environmentally minded as well --  you can skip the next few paragraphs. After you skip, the setlist appears below along with some much more concise thoughts from another forementioned Radiohead fan.

I hesitate to ascribe too much explicit meaning to someone else's lyrics, but it's my personal experience, so there: As someone who grew up reading about global warming and the effects of carbon burning on our planet ["Who's in bunker who's in bunker? Women and children first and the children first"], someone who wondered as a child why long-term planning -- from the civic to the planetary scale -- is paid only lip service by the majority of leaders both political and corporate ["take the money and run take the money and run"]; someone who watched in awe as W. the Bush essentially pledged in 2000 that we were going to sit out the next planet-pivotal 4 to 8 years as far as rethinking our energy future, 'cause you know it's just uncertain and we should always trust in unfettered business anyway ["We're not scaremongering, this is really happening, happening!"]; someone who's watched corporations fund junk science to intentionally confuse the general month-to-month-bills-focused public ["Ice Age coming, Ice Age coming -- let me hear both sides, let me hear both sides..."] ...

... For this listener, it was a special, chilling moment to hear Radiohead visit a few tracks from the near panic-infused album "Kid A" -- which Thom Yorke once explained is partly about the generation that inherits the Earth after we've wiped everything out. It captures the paranoia and helplessness about the direction human nature's lowest common denominator -- money and greed -- is taking us despite mounting evidence of the risks of pretending status quo is fine. Thus he introduced "Idioteque" as one "we dusted off from Kid A, because it seems even more relevant now."

What can I say? If this is your personal zeitgeist of this era in history, it's moving to see it verbally and musically expressed. It's a moment I won't forget for as long as my memory still functions. After that, perhaps in an interstellar burst my particles will be born again, back to save the universe.

I want to add more -- so many thoughts on individual moments running through my head -- but I think I'll stop here and get this posted now. I may add more in the coming days as I digest everything [editor voice in head: "or probably not, slacker"]. But I'll close for now by excerpting what my friend Lee shared, who was also at the show, seeing Radiohead for the first time:

"Possibly the most amazing sonic experience of my life.  The closest I can think of in terms of technical wizardry delivered in a way that also fires up my emotional, creative core is Roger Waters.  In fact, it was similar to a Water's concert in that a group of musicians created a layered, brilliantly executed, sonic foundation which combined with an alternately haunting/piercing/unsettling voice and/or lyrics to transport me to experiences of beauty, insight, and ecstasy rarely glimpsed outside of interpersonal relationships.

I was consistently blown away at how five guys used synthesizers, pedals, loops and lots of stuff I couldn't identify to create a seemingly never-ending stream of complex and stunning symphonies of sound.  Add on Yorke's voice, the most sublime instrument of them all, and the result was devastating.

The set list:
All I Need (In Rainbows)
Jigsaw Falling Into Place (IR)
Airbag (OK Computer)
15 Step (IR)
Nude (IR)
Kid A
Weird/Fishes/Arpeggi (IR)
The Gloaming (Hail to the Thief)
You and Whose Army? (Amnesiac)
Idioteque (Kid A)
Faust Arp (IR)
Videotape (IR)
Everything in its Right Place (Kid A)
Bangers + Mash (non-album track)
Bodysnatchers (IR)

Encore 1:
Exit Music (for a Film) (OK)
Myxomatosis (Hail)
My Iron Lung (Bends)
There There (Hail)
Fake Plastic Trees (Bends)

Encore 2:
Pyramid Song (Amnesiac)
House of Cards (IR)
Paranoid Android (OK)

Now, if you had told me that would be the set list in advance, I would have been crushed.  Out of 17 songs that I would have rated (prior to the concert) as my favorites off The Bends, OK Computer and Kid A, they played four songs.  And to not get a single song from the following list: "(Nice Dream)", "Sulk", "Street Spirit", "Let Down", "Karma Police" and "How to Disappear Completely"- Yikes!

In retrospect though, I am thrilled with the song selection.  First of all, it was awesome to hear all the "In Rainbow" songs - I am really into that album right now.  But on top of that, hearing some of the songs from other albums that I haven't completely "gotten" until now in concert completely changed how I feel about them.  It was almost as if the band was saying, "OK, you hook-addicted philistine, meet us half-way on some of this stuff and we just might blow your mind" - goal achieved!

I could go on and on about various moments like the multiple times I said to myself, "THAT sound comes out of a guitar" to "Where do they go from here? OH THERE!!!" to realizing a have a man-crush on Jonny Greenwood..."

Oh, how I understand...

Part I | Part II | Part III

11:45 AM | Permalink | click to add a comment | Tags: Music; Radiohead

More random Radiohead impressions that continue to ebb forth... I’ve got to jot these things down now because the funny thing is: while I love Radiohead, I can’t listen to them all the time. That level of morbid/paranoid songs (even the uplifting ones!) mixed with unconventional song structures takes the right mood for me to be able to take. I’ve got to be in a position to positively apply the depressive nature of it, or else it just becomes a pure downer. By contrast, where Killing Joke deals with some of the same themes, their relentlessly driving beats and orchestral guitar chords can form the soundtrack to a wider variety of my moods.

Anyway, more on the concert …

RFT blog review here | Post's rather generic yet praising review

Backing vocals
I hadn't realized how great guitarist Ed O'Brien is at backing vocals. That's far from a backhanded compliment. Parts of songs on In Rainbows that I assumed were Yorke singing over himself are actually part of a sweet harmony or accompaniment by O'Brien, and it was a treat to discover that at the show particularly on Weird Fishes/Arpeggi. While Yorke's high voice is now treated almost as much as an instrument as it is a "vocal," O'Brien's lower, rich voice provides a great complement. Watching him rear back from his mic and carefully put his all into just the right pitch was just another sweet detail of the show. His howl on Weird Fishes is not something I expected to be faithfully recreated live.

About that crowd
On a slideshow of photos at the RFT, you could comment on each individual photo. I saw one photo with a comment. The person (username: ____inKC) raved about the show and then added something like: "one thing to keep in mind about seeing shows in St. Louis, the people talk over the freaking show." Wow, thanks for commenting! I love random blanket regionalism, particularly from someone in a mirror town in the same state. But I really wonder how many life music shows -- oh the variety! -- you'd have to see before concluding that audiences in a certain area like to talk over the show.

Incidentally, that's one thing I hate about Riverport: except for a jam band's show, the lawn of this self-proclaimed "amphitheater" is worthless. You're completely disconnected from the stage, and the roof of the pavilion in front of you only adds to the feeling that your watching a TV through a periscope at the end of a tunnel. It's completely unfulfilling, so of course even devout fans will be tempted to talk over the show as they essentially watch it on TV.

Anyway, during the beginning of a quieter song – perhaps it was “Fake Plastic Trees,” which starts with acoustic guitar and Yorke singing softly before, typically, breaking into a chill-delivering crescendo, many in the crowd screamed and whooped their general approval. But in this instance, whichever song it was, many recognized the delicacy – and the fact we were MISSING OUT on the sounds – and started a wave of “shhhhhhhh”-ing to get people to pipe down. Considering it was a beautiful rendition that put a new face on (if “Fake Plastic Trees”) a song that was a hit single in the middle of the ‘90s, I’m glad the shhhushing worked. F-ing St. Louisans. *snorts*

More about those video screen
I was describing the stunning video screens to my wife, and she said "so, like the Arcade Fire show?" That's when I realized I hadn't made it clear yet. At Arcade Fire, they had a similar set of camera angles displayed on screens throughout the stage. But while instructive, that was more of a stylistic feature. The screens were each in little pedestals suggestive of old-fashioned TV sets.

Radiohead's screen, on the other hand, was larger, was at the back of the stage, and had a constant mix of shots and illustrative angles of various band members. These black-and-white images were then enhanced by the different colors that lit up the rest of the stage through each song.

The effect was such that, while you watched in person as Thom Yorke played guitar or Jonny Greenwood played the ondes, that real-life visual was almost superimposed on the background, which displayed giant views of their fingers actually moving on the strings/keys, next to a shot of the rhythm section keeping each other in time with eye contact.

I can't overstate how significant these screens were. As Radiohead has evolved, its members have toyed with many tools beyond the traditional rock setup to the point that many of the sounds on their albums, while working beautifully, leave you scratching your head wondering where THAT sound came from. Sometimes it's just a guitar effect or the result of them strumming the tight part of the guitar strings beyond the neck; other times it's an undefined noisebox distortion thingy or an obscure French instrument (Self-taught guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Phil Selway apparently have been delving into programming tools since the beginning of the decade, while classically trained, multi-talent, BBC composer-in-residence Jonny Greenwood does a bit of everything, including resurrecting the versatile Ondes Martenot -- which explains much of the variety of keys in the Kid A/Amnesiac sound).

Whereas The Bends has classic Radiohead experimental sounds, its songs are still very much the traditional rock 4:4 beat. But beginning with OK Computer and exploding with Kid A, the beats have gotten funky, techno, improv, jazzy – all over the place, really. And even when the “drum” beat is still 4:4, it doesn’t feel that way because the massive amount of layering the other instruments (including Yorke’s vocals upon vocals) add in create a beautiful collaborative rhythm that is unique to each particular song.

All that said, It makes it very challenging to mimic drums to, and for the life of me I don’t know how Selway keeps up proper drum time for some of those songs while the mixture of other beats and sounds is playing at the same time. There were several moments in concert the other night – the stomach-punching “Idioteque” was one -- where in my head I knew the conflagration of wacky beats that was coming up, and I started to fear for drummer Selway as to whether he could pull his part off while Jonny Greenwood messed with all the gizmo beats to his heart’s content. Of course he nailed them – though again, a nice detail was to see him truly concentrating on hitting it right. But that would be why Selway is a pro drummer and I’m not.

A quote from Jonny Greenwood about recording Kid A applies :
"I don't remember much time playing keyboards. It was more an obsession with sound, speakers, the whole artifice of recording. I see it like this: a voice into a microphone onto a tape, onto your CD, through your speakers is all as illusory and fake as any synthesizer - it doesn't put Thom in your front room - but one is perceived as 'real' the other, somehow 'unreal'... It was just freeing to discard the notion of acoustic sounds being truer."

No really, I think this band is good. Seriously.
The more I think about this stuff in the aftershocks of thoughts flooding my head, the more I’m theorizing about just how technically impressive Radiohead truly are.

Easy to impress an untrained music fan like myself, I suppose. But I’m thinking about the number of times I witnessed two band members on stage visibly concentrating as they coordinated their parts. And that makes sense: some transitions happen not so much on a count or beat but rather on an almost untimed moment when, for example, a fading synthesized tone reaches a certain pitch.

My hat is off to them for actually mastering and playing complex songs that could have easily been left in the category of “brilliant on a studio recording but way too impossible to pull off live.” I’m remembering now how I was in awe at my first Radiohead concert, because they not only played songs I thought couldn’t be done live, but they were sincerely played (not sampled)!

*takes a breath*  I’m starting to feel very grateful that I can see this band now, in its prime, like some of those bands you old folks rave about from the ‘60s and ‘70s (hee hee).

Damn, I wonder where they’re headed next.

11:22 PM | Permalink | 3 comments | Tags: Music; Radiohead