And so the Radiohead Big Top rolls into London town amidst much expectant clamour. Some here tonight have heard most, if not all, of Kid A, the forthcoming new opus from one of the most important guitar bands on the planet.
Some say it's difficult to get into. But then Thom Yorke and co have never been ones to make their music immediately easy on the ear. And tonight they're not going to make it any easier, with an uncompromising set which mixes old and new in good measure. Testing times then for both band and audience.
A woman speaking on her mobile phone in a portaloo outside the Big Top is heard telling her mate on the other end, "It's a bit strange, they play all the old stuff and people are really getting into it. Then they play a new one and everyone seems to switch off."
Which pretty much sums it up. For the new material scattered throughout the set tonight does reveal an all-new Radiohead, who would rather make melancholy, mellow, electronica-tinged soundtracks, hitched to loops and low-slung grooves, than the strong rock melodies of yore. And yet while radically different in sound, they still bear the distinctive hallmark of the band which created them.
The dark and moody, fuzzy-bassed groove of 'The National Anthem' kicks things off. From then on it's pretty much sporadic bursts of crowd frenzy for the old and lulls of chatty disinterest for the new.
Which could have something to do with the sound system's depressingly low volume, which struggles to reach the middle of, let alone the back of the tent. Sometimes it sounds as though they're playing in the room next door.
The urge to lose yourself in the huge emotive swells of the like of 'Let Down' is lost as the sound fails to swallow you whole, while the gorgeously sparse melancholy of such songs as 'Exit Music (For A Film)' are almost drowned in drivel.
That said, Radiohead's performance is immaculate and hugely moving tonight. Alternately, gooseflesh creeps and seeps slowly over your body with excitement, or hot tears of uncontrollable emotion ooze up from deep inside, as their music touches every nerve, bone and sinew. Everything seems to make sense.
Yorke is freed from his guitar for most of the new material, spending time hunched over keyboards or dancing, a trance-like mass of flailing limbs like Ian Curtis Michael Stipe or Tim Booth of James.
He barely speaks apart from dedicating 'Karma Police' to the Czech police who have he says 'been stopping people at the border coming to the Prague Jubilee 2000 demonstration against the IMF and the World Bank' next week.
Other highlights tonight include the spartan chiming beauty of new songs 'Morning Bell' and 'Everything In It's Right Place', the desperately urgent guitar frenzies of 'My Iron Lung' and 'Just' and the slowly-building, all-comsuming 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)'. Notable by their absence sadly are 'Bulletproof' and 'High and Dry' but hey you can't have it all.
What Radiohead have proved to these ears tonight is that they're still moving forwards, still testing themselves and their fans' loyalty while still making intense, heart-rendingly beautiful music. It's not easy obviously but it's well worth the effort.
-Gary Crossing
Dotmusic
25.09.00