Close encounter
Radiohead's light show overcomes SkyDome
Radiohead
SkyDome
Toronto
October 14, 2003
So just how tight a band is Radiohead?
Well, the much-admired Oxford quintet can stop dead in
the middle of a raging rocker - in this case it was the new
song "Myxomatosis" - and help out a fan in trouble, and then
immediately pick up again as if nothing happened.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!" yelled concerned frontman Thom
Yorke last night during Radiohead's sold-out show at SkyDome's
Concert Hall.
"What's going on here? This guy's having
a fit! His eyes have gone out! Get security! Get an ambulance!
Get him out of here!"
As soon as Yorke had finished
uttering that last command, the band - rounded out by
guitarists/multi-instrumentalists Ed O'Brien and Jonny
Greenwood, bass player Colin Greenwood and drummer Phil Selway
- were back in full-swing without missing a beat.
It
was lightning fast, and astonishing, to say the least.
"That looked really scary," Yorke said afterwards. "I
hope it wasn't something he took."
Yorke even gave the
audience of 18,000 an update on his condition three songs
later: "That kid's okay. He's sitting up now."
Given
the awesome light show that Radiohead fans were treated to
last night, it really wasn't all that surprising that some
audience members might have "taken" something beforehand.
Last night's spectacular lighting display was the
concert equivalent of seeing Pink Floyd at the planetarium, as
the band offered up a major treat for the eyes as well as the
ears.
Still, despite their Close Encounters-like
backdrop - which lit up like one big sound board - and two
video panels on either side that picked up images of
individual members via cameras mounted all over the stage,
Radiohead was sometimes fighting a losing battle.
The
cavernous surroundings swallowed up much of the group's energy
during some of the slower new songs like "Sail To The Moon" and
"A Punch Up At A Wedding", and made for lulls in the concert,
pretty-sounding though they were.
Radiohead's original
date at the Molson Amphitheatre on Aug. 16 was postponed due
to the massive power outage and the group opted to play
SkyDome as opposed to the Air Canada Centre in order to get as
many fans as they could out in front of them.
On the
plus side, the art-rockers were in fine, chaotic form as they
opened the evening with four excellent songs from their latest
album, Hail To The Thief - "The Gloaming", "There There",
"2+2=5"
and "Where I End And You Begin".
Meanwhile, Yorke was a
ferocious little dancer reminiscent of both Martin Short's Ed
Grimley character and a prize fighter on speed when he wasn't
alternating between playing guitar (both acoustic and
electric) and piano.
He even made a rare display of
his sense of humour mugging into a camera mounted on his piano
while singing "You And Whose Army?" during the encore - the
first of two.
Other song highlights, with the
exception of the exquisitely performed ballads "Fake Plastic
Trees" and "How To Disappear Completely", were mostly of the rock
or rhythmic variety: "My Iron Lung", "Paranoid Android", "Karma
Police", "Idioteque", "The National Anthem", "Everything In It's
Right Place", "Myxomatosis" and another new song, "Sit Down.
Stand Up".
Jane Stevenson
Toronto Sun
15.10.03