Radiohead/ Black Keys
MadisonSquare Garden Theatre
New York
June 13, 2006
I hadn’t seen Radiohead in several years before last night’s performance at the medium-capacity Theater at Madison Square Garden. I was prepared for a similar religious experience, one where the evening concluded with me comatose in a seat, dazed from a dazzling rendition of “Street Spirit” and wondering why I can’t sing like an angel and front the world’s greatest rock band.
What I mostly got was a reminder that I’m getting older, and my desire to spend most weekday evenings on a couch watching Mets games outweighs even the most alluring of live-music experiences.
For certain, isolating the performance alone, Thom and the boys were stellar, flawless and invigorating. Their new material, which dominated much of the first set (two encores comprising nearly 10 more songs would ensue), was heads above much of their last two records, and, heavens to Betsy, often revolved around rocking guitars. Elsewhere, riveting renditions of classics like “Paranoid Android” and “Just” bounced their way around the powerhouse sound system, eliciting passionate singalongs and frenetic light shows.
But the most moving moments at any Radiohead gig center on Yorke and his vocals, most memorably during “Spinning Plates” on this particular night, in lieu of early career ballads like “Fake Plastic Trees” or even “Thinking About You.” Over the years, Yorke has also learned to use his body as its own instrument, gyrating, contorting and dancing manically with the disjointed rhythms of their newer material, creating movements that border on interpretive dance. Aloof as he may be to the public and press, there is no doubting the man’s connection to his music, as you could witness it nearly possessing him.
Ironically though, something was lost by staging the set in the relatively cozy confines of the Theater. I can recall being seated in the boondocks of MSG’s main arena the last time I caught them, feeling an appropriate detachment from the band, one that weirdly suited their epic tendencies and kept things at a surreal clip. Being squished into a few-thousand seater and forced to endure the distracting behavior of the drunken masses diluted the intimacy somewhat. At this stage in their career, Radiohead might be better suited for Wembley than Warsaw.
Which brings me to the crux of my experience. Nowadays at shows, I’m more liable to be distracted by the people, sights and sounds irrelevant to the stage. Or perhaps my desire to sit down and spare my aching back. By the time the second encore had worn its course, all I could think was that next time, I watch a live Radiohead DVD in my apartment on a kick-ass sound system, or hope half the people sitting in spitting distance of me choose the same course. Let me share a few observations I gleaned from my night, perhaps to give some insight as to why I’m in such a cynical state:
1. Everyone at every show priobably thinks the biggest morons in attendance are seated square in front of them. But this time, I truly hold that honor exclusively. From the moment they arrived during openers Black Keys, trouble was eminent. Giggling and happy-hour dancing abound, pictures flashed every five seconds of girls, well, giggling and dancing. Beer was being spilled, chatty girlfriends were interrupting Radiohead’s most beautiful moments to whine to their significant others that they wanted to go home. All I could visualize was the out-of-luck diehard fans begging for tickets outside the arena, locked out of contention so that a crew of college buddies could come and hear “Creep.” I spent roughly 85 percent of the set watching some girl do her variation of the hippie slow-motion dance. You know, the one where it looks like they’re trying to reel in the moon or summon some kind of deity to overtake them. For all Yorke’s spastic convulsions, at least his interpretive gestures felt in line with the ominous rhythms of the songs. I’m not even sure what Radiohead’s appeal is anymore for frat boys and sorority sisters, but I suppose I underestimated the band’s bizarrely elastic appeal to mainstream audiences.
2. White people are ridiculous. At the risk of sounding self-loathing or hackneyed, and being a bit redundant of the above ramblings, I’m sorry, they just are. From the aforementioned wastoid sorority clan to crazy looking quasi-hippies with bad hemp necklaces, to even crazier old dudes air drumming with all the deftness of Animal from The Muppets, white people are totally insane, and recognizing their collective absurdity made it all the more difficult for me to get lost in the moment.
3. Cell phones and digital cameras are evil. One the one hand, I couldn’t help but laugh at how many fools felt that just because they have a high-tech Razor, they were suddenly Annie Leibowitz, despite the obvious impediment of incessant strobelighting. It’s also worth inquiring just how many pictures someone can take of them and their friends arm in arm, making, “Wooooo!!!!” gestures to the lens before it gets old. Do you think they’re going to look back at all those shots the day after and say, “Wow, that one wasn’t so great, but this one really captured the essence of our youthful vigor in one unforgettable photograph”? Probably not. But I will still be rubbing my eyes and trying to recover from the flash going off in my face every five seconds.
So there you have it. A mostly magical night of unparallelled music and performance from arguably the planet’s finest band. And a sideshow featuring a few thousand New Yorkers who should possibly be banned from leaving their homes and engaging in public behavior.
Kenny Herzog