Virginia is for Lovers

We drove for over three hours in the pouring, blinding rain to see Radiohead last night. The venue, Nissan Pavilion in Bristow, VA, is only 40 or so miles from DC, but due to flooding and general hickishness, roads were awfully crowded. Somehow we got to the show in time to catch more than half of Radiohead's epic set (see below):

All I Need
Jigsaw
Lucky
15 Step
Nude
Pyramid Song
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Myxomatosis
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Paranoid Android
Just
Reckoner
Everything In Its Right Place
Bangers + Mash
Bodysnatchers

Like Spinning Plates
Optimistic
Karma Police
Go Slowly
Planet Telex

Fake Plastic Trees
The National Anthem
House Of Cards

Now, I could spend hours complaining about the terrible traffic patterns and disappointment I felt at having missed such an undoubtedly memorable first ten songs. I could tell you for days about how frustrating it is to drive stop-and-go for 7 hours just to see the greatest band on Earth play music for roughly 1 hour.

But those are not my overarching memories of last night. In fact, our exodus through the rivered streets and mucky highways of rural Virginia led us to a Garden of Eden, adorned with shifting camera projections and hanging lights, ruled by five Gods and Devils on a stage. Seeing Radiohead on stage for the first time was something so surreal, so religious, that it is hard for me to put into words.

For years, Radiohead has existed solely on my car radio, on CDs, on my iPod. When we took our seats in Row 19 in between "Paranoid Android" and "Just," the band was doused in white light. They looked so...human. These machines that lived in my electronic devices were there, real, making music for me. As soon as "Just" began, in a flurry and flash of bright lights, Radiohead became much more than a band. They were, in spurts of a few minutes at a time, entities all their own. In between songs, the human light brought them back to Earth. Thom Yorke even casually chatted with the capacity crowd. He was personable, fun...even humorous. He humbly thanked the crowd on the lawn, the masses willing to stand in the thunder and rain. However divine the musical performance was, the rehumanization of Radiohead between songs was tangible.

And then "Reckoner" started.

The dangling LED lights, fading from purple to blue to white, and the honeycombs of spotlights and video screens lifted the band to a new level of Godliness. As the drums pounded out the opening beat, tens-of-thousands of people were silent, in awe, waiting. Yorke's breathy falsetto started softly, tenderly and continued unabated through verse and chorus until, at the most transcendent of moments (2:23 in the MP3 on the right side of the page), the band fell out and Yorke was alone with his guitar, wailing, imploring, declaring, "Because we separate, it ripples our reflections."

And the drums were back in, driving the song forward toward its inevitable end. The crowd remained in a reverie, grooving and bobbing to the music. My eyes were wider than they've ever felt, and for just that one breakdown we all felt so connected.

The high was maintained for a few more songs and then, in a flash of blood red, Radiohead ripped us from Heaven and showed us the depths of a fiery angry Hell. From the opening chords, "Bodysnatchers" was a flailing, angry rant by Yorke. He was yelling, he was screaming, and his awkward scrawny body was writhing, as he preached to his loyal followers, "Has the light gone out for you? Because the light's gone out for me. It is the 21st Century. It is the 21st Century...I've seen it coming."

It scared me to feel so drawn to this leader, this God or Devil (or whatever the Hell Thom Yorke really is) on stage who seemed to bring thousands together, bring us to spiritually musical heights rarely known, and then leave us standing there dumbstruck in his wake. People sang along as if chanting to their supreme cult leader, carrying them on toward the afterlife. For the hour that I saw them on stage, they could have led 25,000 young adults willingly to drink the Kool Aid.

It is rare that a band can reach out to so many and grab them all at once, losing no one in its grasp. Somewhere between the human light, which revealed their instruments so clearly to me, and the reds, greens, and blues that accompanied me to Heaven and Hell and back, lie five real people with an incredible power.

"I really hope it was fucking worth it," nudged Yorke as Radiohead left the stage last night. And though my ratio of car-time to Radiohead-time was 7:1 instead of 2:3, I can say that no concert that I have ever been to was more worth it than last night's. To be Baptized by Radiohead in a deluge the likes of which I've never seen was worth it. To actually feel transcendent from listening to music was worth it. And to know that it was only a preview of what I'll get at All Points West on August 9th made it more fucking worth it than Thom Yorke could even imagine.