There are so many reasons why Radiohead is considered one of the world's greatest rock bands.

It expresses more courage to go outside industry borders than any 21st century band should, considering the pressure to produce hits for impatient recording labels these days. Yet Radiohead does virtually anything it wants musically, from writing hits to producing epic and emotional masterpieces in sonic experimentation that rely on few rules. Its studio work is legendary, inspiring respect from even those who don't like it or admit they simply can't understand it.

But if a band can't pull most of that off live, the title is empty.

Radiohead can and it did Tuesday night at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, even though its material sounds so layered and semi-complicated on record that one expects it to be almost too much to replicate live.

But that's where Radiohead's rock band instincts take over. Underneath what some consider an aura of pretentiousness in those multi-faceted records, beats the collective heart of an absolutely dominating, enthusiastic, pounding rock band.

The material loses nothing in the translation. It's even better once propelled by those rock band instincts that want to accelerate things on stage. One gains more appreciation for the music after witnessing it live, which is the true mark of a great rock band.

It's not necessarily a technological thing that makes Radiohead so great live. With a background in making complicated records, it would be easy to assume that 21st century technology and a willingness to sample and pipe in sounds would make it easy to replicate records.

But these guys can play. It's the band members' passion that pushed them over in the live arena.

Despite the deserved artistic reputation of singer/guitarist Thom Yorke, the band's other two guitarists - Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien - power Radiohead live, with an attack melding massive power chords, bare string screeching and everything in between. It can be about powerful melody or just noise - whatever it takes.

They dictated the pace early Tuesday with the first song "2+2=5," which happens to be the opening track of the band's latest record, Hail to the Thief. The building dynamics, which go from Yorke's stark high-pitched nasally warble to an empty couple of bars when the music goes away to a slamming down of noise like a two-ton anvil being dropped on someone's head. It's a perfect song to pump up a crowd early.

So it made perfect sense then to play the record's second song "Sit Down, Stand Up." The song goes off in other creepy-yet-gorgeous areas, under the guidance of melodious piano and electric drum clicks, building into a techno chant that powered some in the crowd into a dancing frenzy.

With that framework established, it became all the more potent when Yorke sat down at the piano and sang the soaring ballad "Sail to the Moon," (much later in the show), which again set up a tense, vicious build-up on "Paranoid Android," helped immensely by a superb and vivid blue, red, orange and purple light-show. The back and forth continued all night.

The evening's only slight disappointment was the band's refusal to go anywhere near its two biggest hits - the post-grunge "Creep" and MTV-fave "Karma Police." With a bit of tedium setting in over the long-buzzing build on "The Gloaming" and a few other spots, the band would have served fans better by spending time with at least one of those two songs. The success of "Creep" more than a decade ago helped push Radiohead in other directions, helping to distance itself from the Nirvanas of the world as much as possible. Yorke even semi-apologized before playing "Lurgee," off debut record Pablo Honey. "We don't often play songs from the first record," he deadpanned, pausing. "There are reasons for this."

Yorke no doubt has reasons for everything he does. And contrary to his apparent sullen demeanor elsewhere, Yorke can be a whirling dervish onstage, spinning, bouncing and dancing like a little kid. On top of all the supposed seriousness, the band emits the aura that its members really enjoy themselves onstage. Imagine that, the kings of artsy Brit-pop having fun. It helps make them the great live band they are.

Tony Hicks

Contra Costa Times
25.09.03