On 9-28-03 Radiohead kicked my balls off.
That does it, Radiohead is now my true favorite band. The concert last night was proceeded by listening to 94/9's pre concert radiohead show in thick traffic. Then followed by Kate and I doing very heavy beer drinking at the trunk of the Volvo. Beer inside the show was $7.00, so we saved well over $400. We sat drunk, eating stale stone ground corn chips and cheese dip and occasionally I would leap away to pee on the vegitation in the expansive dirt parking lot. We missed Supergrass and stumbled in an hour late.
Radiohead took the stage and everyone stood up. They didn't sit down again for the whole show. I have never seen an entire concert crowd stay at its feet for a whole show, much less sway in perfect unison in an a truly shared moment of musical bliss as blue lights behind the band sofltly waved. I felt as if we were having the same collective thought if we were a giant backup chorus for the band as we all sang as one. Radiohead don't always play pretty music and are often paint a picture of a reality that is thoroghly depressing, which in fact it really is. The feeling last night was yes, we all feel that way and while we may never get over what ever it is that keeps us from a perfect and easy existence at least we know that others are there with you, chanting in unison "this is what you get...when you mess with us."
We exited the show en mass in what My friend Lee calles "group fantasy phase out" still thinking about the show experience yet not quite feeling the reality of a horrid traffic jam that awaited. We got to the car and Kate fell asleep in the passenger seat. I opened the trunk, got another beer and sat on the hood watching the sea of stationary tailights and sillouetted human figures in the dim light and dust. I offered beer to the guys stuck in the car next to me and we talked about the concert, kyaking and music in general for an hour. The ride home was surreal and a sence of overwhealming accomplishment came over me once we finally reached the freeway, as if I had personnally walked and conquered those many miles on foot. The whole way home in the back of my head was that chorus of fans, still endlessly chanting the last line from Karma Police "for a minute there, I lost myself...I lost myself." and I realized again how much I want to play music and how it makes me live and breathe and how deeply I want to feel exactly what I experienced last night again and again and again...but be on the other side of the stage, looking out, sparking it, controling it watching it as it all goes down.