Radiohead and Rain
Every time I’m meant to see Radiohead, it rains. I don’t mean a drizzle. I mean serious rain.
I was invited to a Radiohead concert a few years back and while we were driving to the concert, the heavens opened up. It didn’t look good. The sky was black. We were optimistic, though, when the rain broke as we arrived at the venue. We were out of the car and into the concert when we were hit by further torrential downpours and heavy thunder and lightning. The concert was an outdoor event, and was soon cancelled. I was disappointed not to see the band, but more to the point, that was the wettest I have ever been in public in my adult life. Even London rain hasn’t been so bad to me.
So, bring on Glasgow. When Paul surprised me with Radiohead tickets for the Glasgow show, I thought nothing could be as bad as my previous experience. Being that it was in Glasgow, I was positive they wouldn ‘t cancel because of a wee bit of rain.
How right I was.
It rained, it poured. It was wet and dreary, and it ended up being that Glasgow was the perfect place to see Radiohead. For the second time in my adult life, I’ve never been so wet. And it was fabulous. And utterly worth it.
It all boils down to the fact that Radiohead are an excellent band to see live. They have such a large catalog of music that they were able to play for 2 hours, with quality. You wouldn’t expect them to be able to play their music live with the same quality as it is recorded, but the case is that they can. It’s really impressive. Songs that came along during the night were Weird Fishes, Karma Police, Fake Plastic Trees, Bodysnatchers, and my all time favorite, No Surprises. Surprisingly, they didn’t play Creep. It really was one of the longest playing concerts I’ve been to, which was a pleasant surprise.
The night was full of highlights. Not only was the music excellent, but Radiohead were a sight to see. Thom Yorke wore some funny, skinny red pants (that’s trousers to you Brits out there -- now stop laughing!) and at one point in the night did a funny little dance on stage. He hopped around and did a jig which was highly entertaining.
The light display behind the band was quite neat as well. Very basic, just long lines of lights which reflected different colors while the music played.
Have a little taste of No Surprises which Paul shot with our little Sony camera. It’s only 23 seconds, but it’s worth a look.
I also have to mention that one of the other highlights of the night was something completely unexpected. The toilets were AMAZING. I have never seen such an efficient system anywhere. Essentially, they were just port-a-johns, but the way it was set up was genius. The line was enormous, but it moved quickly because they had attendants that kept things moving along. They were also the cleanest toilets ever seen at a concert of this size. The attendants made sure the toilets were empty and clean before they moved the next person along. I don’t know if they do this everywhere (this sure wasn’t the case when I went to see U2 at Twickenham), but it was the best concert toilet experience ever. Ok, I’m done using the word toilet now.
Simply put, Radiohead rocked. And as I said, they were so cool; people were going bananas over them. It was definitely worth the rain.
