Well, that was an interesting experience. Seems all the complaints to Pitchfork make it one that was not exclusive to me. This had to of by far been the worst concert experience of my entire life… and then there was Radiohead. A little bit of positive sandwiched between a whole lot of negative on one rainy night in May in Bristow, VA. Cue the flashback sequence.

Mother nature was not on her best behavior that day. Roads to the venue flooded and closed, the parking lot and bathrooms flooded and a damp chill in the night air led to three hours of traffic to test the patience of even the most laid back person. Then I get there to be told someone had already picked up my ticket… interesting way to cap off the trip.

If it wasn’t Radiohead on stage I would of turned around after the first hour of traffic, and most definitely when the first chills from my soaked clothes set in, but in the end it certainly turned into one of the audio/visual experience for the ages. After a lot of hype, and a wait for many years, this was my first Radiohead live experience.

The set went heavy on their latest release “In Rainbows” for the main portion of the set, including my favorite track from the new album, “Reckoner”. Occasional back catalog detours were taken for tracks like “Lucky”, “Idioteque”, “Paranoid Android” and a few others before really hitting into the old school fan favorites for the double encore. “Optimistic”, “Karma Police”, “Planet Telex”, “Fake Plastic Trees” rounded out the encore highlights.

I’ve always been a sucker for big production (minus pyro unless your Rammstein). While bands like Radiohead musically stand on their own and could do without it, the attention to detail and set design was a unique and eye catching to say the least, providing a visual compliment and mood setting help in the smallest of detail. It is hard to describe exactly what it looked like without sounding semi-stupid talking about “light poles” in the process, so check out some photos here.

My final thoughts on what was an epic evening in both good and bad ways are this… fantastic performance, but I’d rather see them in doors next time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 9:24 am and is filed under Live Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.