Radiohead
Roseland Ballroom
New York
October 11, 2000

Radiohead's Kid A is the Number One album in this country. This album - the one with nary a proper rock single, the one that hundreds of thousands of fans swiped from Napster long before its release, the one backed by puzzling, shambolic, and strewn promotional tactics - is the Number One album in the country. And many, many others as well. That's what I was thinking Wednesday night as I saw Radiohead play New York City's Roseland Ballroom. But something strange happened as the show progressed: the sense of staggering disbelief faded into utter hypnosis, and finally, into an apex of complete and total clarity. Granted, Radiohead is one of the great live rock bands. But Kid A, while staggeringly brilliant, is not for all practical purposes, a rock record. And so there were reservations-as to whether they could pull off, in a live context, the multi-layered electro-texturization that makes the record so hypnotic, so lush, and so unbelievably enrapturing. Well, they did.

What made the performance truly remarkable was the seamless manner in which, by a faultless level of skill and intensity, these five musicians are able to translate a studio record into something both euphoric, and technically crystalline, on the stage. Opening with Kid A's haunting, though infectiously sinister "The National Anthem," Thom, Colin, Phil, Johnny, and Ed were backed by a seven-piece horn section, which blared like Coltrane on crack whilst a frisky Thom jilted and seized in the foreground. The grandeur was unmatched, and so it went from here on out. Yorke's vocals on "Morning Bell" spiraled about, weaving yearning into solid beauty. Songs like "In Limbo" and "Optimistic," which unroll with steadfast ease over countless layers of sound on record, unroll with equal grace and, if possible, even more depth and pristine severity on stage. And there were moments, my friends, where the implications of this were genuinely staggering. For starters, Kid A's "Idioteque." I don't know where Phil learned to play drums like that, or where Thom learned to dance and duel along with them in such a way, but I've never heard anything like it. "How To Disappear Completely" worked like some kind of otherworldly opiate - again and again and again, you wanted to melt. Other orgiastic moments: "The Bends," which will never cease to swell into something rock music may never, ever find again; "Talk Show Host," quite arguably one of the best Radiohead songs ever, and when played live, is not unlike an early Christmas present; "Paranoid Android," making the world safe once again for power chords and a mean hook - something is indeed happening; "Karma Police," which, though you've heard it a thousand times over, can only get better. After a four-song encore including two new tracks (five were played in all), one tentatively titled "I Could Be Wrong," and the other, "Pyramid Song" (Thom: "This is for all the people who have heard it on Napster"), the band came out for one last hoorah, ending the night just as they do the album - with "Motion Picture Soundtrack" and a touch of unwavering nostalgia.

Despite all of the dreadful complications and hassles and brown-nosing and superfluous hoopla that surrounded the show, at the end of the night it was about this band - this band that has grown into a masterpiece of studio wizardry and unparalleled live brilliance. When first I heard Kid A, I thought surely, the fine suits at Capitol Records were holed up in a boardroom somewhere wetting their iron-pressed pants. But after Thursday night, I bet they're kissing the sky.

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