Radiohead/ Asian Dub Foundation
Nottingham Arena
Nottingham
November 29, 2003

If you are a regular visitor to this section of BBCi, then there’s a good chance you are familiar with The Beat, a programme that goes out on Radio Nottingham every Saturday evening.

The show is all about music - and impressively for someone who actuallyy works as a biology teacher during the week, presenter Dean Jackson regularly bags exclusive interviews with some of pop’s biggest names.

Over the years he has interviewed pretty much anyone who’s anyone, from Kurt Cobain to Noel Gallagher.

But his greatest coup of all arguably came at Nottingham Arena on Saturday, when he ‘jammed’ on-stage with the mighty Radiohead in front of an audience of 10,000 fans!

This will probably be news, however, to Dean himself - for at the time, he was actually ensconced in studio presenting his show!

If you’re reading this though, Dean, then a cacophony that heralded the beginning of ‘The National Anthem’ - a song from Radiohead’s fourth album KKid A – saw guitarist Jonny Greenwood create sound affects by fiddling with the dial on a radio… and for a brief few seconds, your dulcet tones floated gloriously across the cavernous venue!

Of course, the fact that Radiohead now do things like fiddling with radios to make their music has divided fans. Some have embraced their progression over the years into increasingly challenging territory, while others have felt alienated and yearned for them to go back to their roots and make The Bends Part Two.

The latter camp would have been better off staying away from this gig - as Radiohead played a set dominated by their recent, more leftfield material.

For me though, being part of the former camp, it was a fantastic show. When playing songs from their current album Hail to the Thief such as ‘The Gloaming’ and ‘Backdrifts’, Radiohead sounded like absolutely no other band on earth… and coupled with a fantastic light show, they were simply mesmerising.

The aforementioned Jonny Greenwood in particular peppered the band’s songs with the kind of noises you’d never expect to hear coming from a guitar - and that’s just when he wasn’t hopping off to play the piano, xylophone, kettle drums, and a whole range of unidentified electronic boxes!

Needless to say though, most eyes were on enigmatic singer Thom Yorke - a man who has clearly been liberated by his band’s voyage into more experimental musical waters.

Any fans expecting Yorke to be the pillion of misery he is often portrayed as would have been surprised - as he actually spent much of the gig danccing around the stage manically like a ‘special school version of the Happy Mondays’ Bez’ (as one bloke stood behind me memorably described it!)

Yorke also did a hilariously shifty facial impersonation of Tony Blair during the Government-baiting ‘You and Whose Army?’, and later had a sarcastic dig at the Stereophonics - who had played the same venue the previouus week.

Besides this though, he seemed largely content to let his music do the talking. In fact, practically the only time he introduced a song was before ‘Airbag’, when he leant into his mic and solemnly uttered a single word - “Rock.”

And rock Radiohead certainly did - so much so they the crowd called them back for not one but two encores.

These would have ensured that even ‘old school’ fans would have gone home happy, with blistering renditions of ‘The Bends’, ‘Just’, and a beautifully fragile ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’.

Naturally though, none of this quite toppled the unexpected cameo by Dean Jackson as the gig’s overall highlight..!

Rich Fisher

BBC Nottingham
02.12.03