Radiohead!

Just got home from seeing Radiohead in Indianapolis. Yours truly was lucky enough to score an orchestra pit ticket, so I was all up in the band's grill. For most of the show, there were just two people between me and the stage. Well, between me and the barricade that was about 5 feet in front of the stage anyway. I could actually hear the sound coming from the band's amplifiers on stage. Actually, the pit is a bit of a dead zone acoustically, because you're sort of behind the main speakers. I'm sure the sound wasn't as good as it was back in the seated area, but I'm not complaining. I'll make that trade-off any time.

It was amazing to be so close to the action, to actually see what's happening on stage up close. For instance, I saw that on "15 Step" Ed O'Brien uses the same Boss sampler that I have. He also uses a Line 6 delay to loop Thom's voice on "Everything In Its Right Place," while Jonny Greenwood uses a Kaoss pad to capture and manipulate bits of vocals. Jonny is a hell of a multitasker as well. He's always bouncing around, playing guitar, piano, synths, and whatever else, often within the course of a single song. There was even a point (I forget which song) where he was playing his guitar and a keyboard simultaneously by using the guitar's headstock to push down the keys.

So many good tunes were played. Click here to see the set list. One last thing I have to mention is the lighting. My God, the lighting! Sigur Ros had previously set the bar for me in terms of the total experience, but Radiohead just might have them beat. Whoever designed Radiohead's lighting for this tour is an absolute genius. The version of "The National Anthem" they played now easily ranks as the most intense thing I've seen live in concert. The song is bad ass enough on its own, but the lighting was jaw-dropping. The lighting engineer clearly pulled out all the stops on that one, as if to say "if you thought what I've done so far was cool, check this shit out!" I could seriously go on and on about the lighting. It was that amazing. Musically, Radiohead kills it live, but with that lighting it could have Barry Manilow singing "Copacabana" for two hours straight and I still would have been mesmerized.

Now, off to bed.