To those of you who weren't lucky enough to score tickets to Radiohead in the 0.0029 seconds before they sold out (and those of you who weren't crazy enough to pay the legalized scalpers a bazillion dollars to get in anyway), I can only say this: rest assured, Radiohead is still the best fucking band on the planet, period.
For the record, I was one of the crazy ones, not the lucky ones. But I'm OK with that because, despite the too-short setlist, it was worth the $210 I paid to an also-crazy friend who had bought them from StubHub.
Why? Because the new stuff is great. Great, I tell you! Great! "Open Pick", the second new song, got everybody clapping and cheering, and the band and the song were so tight I got goosebumps just knowing there was a new awesome Radiohead song that I was hearing for the very firstest time. "Down Is The New Up" was mind-blowingly superb, too. And the other six new songs were merely excellent.
When they weren't busy wowing us with new songs, they were wowing us with old ones. Thom opened up with "You and Whose Army" while tottering at the piano and peering into a camera, with his face projected onto a fractured collage of rhombus-shaped screens on the stage set, and everyone loved it. "Paranoid Android" (the quintessential Radiohead song, if there is one) got everybody singing and hooting and hollering, but my second goosebump-inducing moment was when they ripped into "There There" to close out the main set. In-fucking-credible.
Outside of the new stuff, the set list was liberally sprinkled with Amnesiac and Kid A. (Not quite enough songs from Kid A, though--I still haven't heard "Optimistic" or "How to Disappear Completely" in concert. When will you play them for me, Thom? When?!?!? I digress.) If I was an amnesiac, I might have thought I was seeing the Amnesiac tour. Still, I can't complain--they gave us a cutting "Knives Out" and served up an awesomely mellow "Like Spinning Plates" (on piano, as it should be), and they even threw us a "Bones" in the first encore. (I've always thought "Bones" was an under-rated song. At least, by Radiohead standards. Then again, what do I know? I didn't get into them until relatively late. I tend to confuse bands that have similar names with one another, so I thought Radiohead was Motorhead. Why is everyone talking about Motorhead in the late 90s? I wondered. Then I realized--different band. Again, I digress.) Other established artists play the old stuff to placate the crowd; here it felt more like something they were just doing for the sheer enjoyment of being together and back on the road.
Through it all, when he wasn't sitting with piano or acoustic guitar, Thom jumped and jerked and did his crazy little Thom dances. And everyone else...well, to be honest, I didn't pay them any heed, because I was busy watching Thom. (What makes Thom so watchable? To be honest, maybe I like him because he reminds me of the me I used to be when I was an awkward, spastic, uncomfortable junior high kid. Like me, he retained that persona. Unlike me, he became a super-incredible musician in the process. Dorkiness plus complete awesomeness. How cool is that? An inspiration for us all. Yet again, I digress.) Except for a muffed vocal at the beginning of "Morning Bell," he and the band were damn near perfect. Near the end, I actually thought they were finally going to falter; Thom launched into a distorted, tired "True Love Waits", and everybody kind of sighed, but then mid-opening he segued into "Everything in its Right Place," and once again, it was the truth.
Setlist as published on radiohead at ease. * indicates new songs.
01 You and Whose Army?
02 The National Anthem
03 15 Step*
04 Morning Bell
05 Exit Music (For A Film)
06 Open Pick*
07 Videotape*
08 Knives Out
09 The Gloaming
10 Nude*
11 Down Is The New Up*
12 Paranoid Android
13 Bangers 'N Mash*
14 Like Spinning Plates
15 Spooks*
16 Idioteque
17 There There
Encore 1
18 A Wolf At The Door
19 4 Minute Warning*
20 Bones
21 Lucky
Encore 2
22 House of Cards*
23 Everything In Its Right Place
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