As many of you know this was the last night of the tour, so my expectations were rather high for this show. I was not dissapointed by any stretch of the imagination. This was one helluva concert and I'm certainly glad I traveled from Philadelphia to see it.

Before I go into the actual show, let me just say that I met J. Spaceman himself before the show. I literally got out of a taxi and almost walked into him! He was getting his picture taken by some fellow Brit. I'm usually not very impressed or uncomfortable when it comes to famous people (not that I've met a whole lot), but when I recognized who it was I was quite stunned. Eventually he saw my friend (in a Spiritualized shirt no less) and I staring at him and he came over to greet us. I thanked him for the music and told him it really meant a lot. He was really cordial and extremely talkative. I'm not one for getting autographs, but my friend was. He signed her CD booklet "high times... ? Spaceman": typical Spaceman I geuss. He did say that he was heading home after this show and that aside from a few summer festivals they wouldn't be doing much. Good news for N. American Spiritualized fans: the Spaceman himself said he would be back in September to tour again. I can hardly wait to see them again.

The actual show was amazing! Radio City Music Hall is a sight to behold. It was my first time there, so I was really awestruck at how magnificent a venue it really is. I've seen it on TV on various award shows, but to be in the place is a sight to behold. The acoustics were perfect.

Spiritualized played a great set, although I wish they could have played for much longer..oh well. Here's what they played:

Cop Shoot Cop
Shine A Light
Electric Mainline
Electricity
Sway
Come Together
I Think I'm In Love
Walkin' With Jesus

The transition from song to song was beautiful. Cop Shoot Cop just kept building and building and then stopped for about a second only to continue into Shine A Light. Every song flowed into each other. I've seen Spiritualized once before and this was similar to what I had experienced only shorter and their light show wasn't there. There was actually quite a few Spiritualized fans on the audience, but about one-third of the seats were empty when they played. It was kind if disheartening to see such a brilliant performance minimalized by lack of attendance. Either way they were great and that's all that really counts. Walkin' with Jesus really jammed at the end and Electricity had that frantic pace that the song requires. I Think I'm In Love was beautiful as well...it just sounded so great. It's wonderful how Spiritualized can reinvent their songs for a live setting.

Radiohead?
The show that Radiohead put on was no less impressive. They played their hearts out. Thom was very talkitive and was outspoken about how happy they were that the tour was over (he mentioned it 2 or 3 times during the show). Basically Radiohead rocked like there was no tomorrow. They played every possible song that a Radiohead fan could hope to hear (IMHO). The lights went down about 9ish and Meeting In The Aisle, a b-side from one of the No Surprises singles, started to play over the sound system. For those who haven't heard it before, it's a bit of an ambient-electronic type song. Then they walked on stage and played this:

Airbag
Karma Police
Talk Show Host
Exit Music (For A Film)
Planet Telex
Climbing Up The Walls
Just
??? (I think this might have been "How's My Driving" but I'm not sure)
Subterranean Homesick Alien
My Iron Lung
Trickster
No Surprises
The Bends
Fake Plastic Trees
Bones
Paranoid Andriod
Lucky
---- Encore -------
Let Down
Polyethylene (Thom said this would be on the new EP)
Lurgee
Street Spirit

A few notes of interest: Thom played keyboards during Subterranean Homesick Alien. He also told us that they were going to play the Tibetan Freedom concert to as he put it, "fuck up Mr. Clinton's day." He also brought Nigel Godrich on stage during the show, thanking him for helping them record OK Computer. At first Nigel resisted and then Thom said, "Get fucking here right now" to which we all laughed. Paranoid Android was dedicated "to one of the most paranoid people of all, Bill Gates" Thom wasn't speaking too favorably about Mr. Gates Saturday night. Another funny thing that happened was that during one of the songs (possibly the new one, I forget) Thom walked off the stage onto the side walls in the venue....really far back. It was dark so I couldn't see much, but apparently he was saying hello to some lucky fans.

Their perfromance, as was expected, was flawless. Ed O'Brien was jumping around enthusiastically, Phil was amazing on drums (Talk Show Host saw him banging away as well as Airbag) Johnny was getting all those wonderful spacey sounds out of his guitar and played keyboards on Karma Police. The other Greenwood stayed near the drums as usual and played a mean bass throughout the show. Overall an excellent performance!

On a side note upon leaving Radio City I saw Debbie Smith, the longtime guitarist for Curve. If you've ever seen her she has quite a disinctive appearance so I made sure it was her and chatted for a bit with her. She's currently shopping around demos for a new band she's assembled called either "Motorcar" or "MotorCade" (I forget what she told me, sorry). I asked her if there would be US distribution for this project and she happily replied, "My name isn't Debbie Smith if it isn't!" For all the fans of her great guitar work this is *really* good news.

-Paul S. Marin

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