Radiohead/Other Lives in Santa Barbara

RADIOHEAD/OTHER LIVES

SANTA BARBARA COUNTY BOWL

12 APRIL 2012

Radiohead once again made the trip to Santa Barbara County Bowl on a stormy Thursday evening, serving as a warmup for their Saturday headlining spot at Coachella.  Fortunately, they seem attached to a place that they've far outgrown-this being their 3rd appearance there, and the audience braved the elements that turned the night into an unforgettable show.

One way to read the set is as a powerful response to the mixed reviews that greeted last years TKOL. My personal theory is that the avalanche of music available now and the amped up time cycle has led to sloppiness in reviews from not enough quality time spent listening, in the rush to judgement.
TKOL (to me) is the purest distillation of Radiohead, and really came to life the most in the live renditions of the songs.
To translate the rhythmic complexity of the LP, the band brought aboard Portishead's touring drummer, and the experiment definitely worked.  "Good Morning Mr. Magpie" was an unexpected full frontal assault.  The new songs that have appeared during the tour, "Staircase" and "Identikit", surfaced, as well as post King Of Limbs single "Supercollider".

The rain held off for awhile, and when it did make its appearance, it served to heighten the mood, notably during "Lotus Flower", and "These Are My Twisted Words".  It also served to remind one just how often rain comes up in Radiohead songs...The mood was lightened in the first encore during a breakdown in the intro to "Separator", as it was so eloquently put from the stage: "There's a mouse under my pedal".
They slipped in "Planet Telex" at the end of the first encore, and finished out the night with an always epic "Paranoid Android".  Not surprisingly, despite Mother Nature's best efforts, the seats were full of the hardy faithful to the end.

Setlist:
01 “Bloom”
02 “15 Step”
03 “Morning Mr. Magpie”
04 “Staircase”
05 “Codex”
06 “The Daily Mail”
07 “Myxomatosis”
08 “The Gloaming”
09 “These Are My Twisted Words”
10 “Pyramid Song”
11 “Supercollider”
12 “Lotus Flower”
13 “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”
14 “Feral”
15 “Little By Little”
16 “Idioteque”
encore 1:
17 “Separator”
18 “Nude”
19 “Identikit”
20 “Planet Telex”
encore 2:
21 “Give Up The Ghost”
22 “Reckoner”
23 “Paranoid Android”
 Also, here is the entirety of their Coachella set:

Other Lives, (from Oklahoma), carried out the opening duties with vigor.  Their last Santa Barbara appearance was at Soho, opening for The Rosebuds.  In the fall they opened for Bon Iver, and have spent the spring working across the States with Radiohead.  Their open, cinematic sound-which made such an impression in a small club, took on a new life here. 

Thinking Inside The Box...

The devaluation of music has recently reached a new low, what with Amazon pimping the entire new Lady Gaga LP for just .99 in a recent two day release special...And one can say it worked, shifting 1.2M 'units' in its first week, 600K of which were digital, & who knows how many of those were the .99 variety, because, along with paying taxes, Amazon is not fond of releasing sales numbers. Looks like the 'Opening Weekend' box office mind set is taking over what's left of the music biz...



But we come here today to dwell on the opposite, to celebrate 'value per dollar', and examine the last vestige of quality in the industry, the Deluxe Box Set! (or, the insane money grab from suckers like me, but fill in your own...)

So far this year, I've fallen for four ventures that fall into the DeeLux category...Here's the breakdown for the morbidly curious in order received, not, (ahem Radiohead), order ordered:




Decemberists: The King Is Dead comes in a lavish cloth box, (Bogart came separately), and includes: one LP on white vinyl no less, a hardcover book with session polaroids done by Autumn De Wilde as well as the CD and the bonus Pendarvia short film on DVD, a print by Carson Ellis, (wife of Colin Meloy), as well as one of the actual polaroids done by Ms. De Wilde.




That they did this under the eye of Capitol Records might be the craziest thing of all. The album itself, featuring guest spots from Peter Buck (R.E.M.) and Gillian Welch, asserts itself as one of their most musically cohesive collections, and if rumors having it to be their last are correct, the beauty and work that went into this box set are an impressive monument to leave behind.






Los Campesinos! have taken an entirely different turn with the first issue of Heat Rash. Their latest endeavor is a quarterly 'zine to fill in the gaps between records, and provide a more literary experience than blogs & files.

On the left is a 7" single of two new songs that will stand alone from the new album, recorded last month and being mixed as we speak. On the right is Heat Rash #1, (the Romance issue), full of lyrics, band poetry, essays, recipes, and closing words from Neil Gaiman!

Okkervil River went all the way with their newest effort, I Am So Very Far in every sense. Their box set, (which came before the CD street date-yay Jagjaguwar), lives up to the name, arriving in a wooden box!

Said wooden box contains: CD, bonus songs/demos on 7'' single, bound hardcover chapbook of lyrics, poster, laser cut cover art from William Schaff, (longtime affiliate of the band), and a signed letter from Will Sheff...



The main event, I Am Very Far, is stretched over three sides of vinyl, the fourth given over to a laser etching of Schaff's artwork. Very cool.













Worth the wait, Radiohead's King Of Limbs (newspaper LP edition) finally arrived after much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. Heeding to their In Rainbows random announcement here it is strategy, they notified the world, released the download a week later, then we who ordered the physical package settled in for The Wait. Like the music itself, it's no so much understated as distilled.
Not overflowing with a million goodies, but it does contain the newspaper, the cd, the traditional out of control artwork, and the LP done as two ten inch clear vinyls, mastered at 45rpm, and it sure does sound swell.









What i haven't fallen for yet, although truth be told I had one in a cart and backed off at the last minute, is what might be the piece de resistance of all of the above...Only the Flaming Lips would conjure up the idea of a gummy life size skull enclosing a USB drive with new music. If you wondered exactly how Wayne Coyne would top last years tour posters done in part with his own blood, well, let this be your answer...



And we can't close without mentioning the continued good works of Mr. Jack White, whose latest endeavor is the Third Man Records Rolling Record Store, a mobile truck equipped equally to sell records, merch, and whose custom sound system allows it to do gigs on the go! Someday i'll run into this wonder on wheels, and I will be taking pictures.

Even with the industry in a state of flux, it's nice to know that there's folks out there doing things a little differently...

Radiohead Releases The Hounds...

'Lotus Flower' is the first video from the new LP The King Of Limbs, and as it so happens, that download code is effective right now!!!

Radiohead strikes again...

Seems like just a year ago, (January 2011), Radiohead was in LA doing some recording. And then...nothing. Until this morning that is, when upon waking to shake off the Grammy hangover, one was greeted with frothing on the internets.

"The King Of Limbs" will be available Saturday 19th Feb as a download, and the deluxe vinyl version will follow in May. Download is 320K MP3 or WAV file, Deluxe is 2 clear 10" vinyl, cd, artwork & choice of download file, and it's billed as 'perhaps the first Newspaper Album'. Hmmm, we shall see...

Radiohead, II

Never did up my bid...tickets ended up at $475 when the auction closed. Ended up raising $572K according to preliminary reports...Celeb attendees apparently included Daniel Craig and Charlize Theron, amongst others...

Set list (Via At Ease):

01 Faust Arp
02 Fake Plastic Trees
03 Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
04 The National Anthem
05 Nude
06 Karma Police
07 Kid A
08 Morning Bell
09 How to Disappear Completely
10 A Wolf at the Door
11 The Bends
12 Reckoner
13 Lucky
14 Bodysnatchers
15 Dollars & Cents
16 Airbag
17 Exit Music

Encore #1

18 Everything in Its Right Place (Thom)
19 You and Whose Army?
20 Pyramid Song
21 All I Need

Encore #2:

22 Lotus Flower
23 Paranoid Android
24 Street Spirit (fade out)

Radiohead Haiti Benefit...

Crash announcement yesterday from Radiohead that they would be coming stateside, specifically LA to play a benefit for Haiti (via Oxfam America) at the Music Box/Fonda Theater in Hollywood Sunday night. To see them in a venue of this size at this point is obviously a fighting proposition...How fighting remains to be seen.

Ticket sales were set up as auction only on Ticketmaster, with a min bid of $100, and sold only in pairs, max 2. So the default read 0 or 2, nice touch! The auction remains open until 11am Saturday...fascinating to see how it develops. Nice of Radiohead to break up their recording sessions to come over...more than likely a major price driver is the thought that they'll preview new material...

Of course I jumped in @$300 Thursday evening and held my breath...Informed @ 2.48pm today that the word was officially: FAIL! Min Bid now $350 and rising...WAHHHHHHHHH!
But good for them...I'm really glad that all the cash that normally would have gone to scalpers will be redirected for good. I'm unsure of the specific seating capacity for the Fonda; i would guess it to be 900 to 1000. Should be a happy little fundraiser...

for what it's worth...

Andy (The Importance of Being Andy) has addressed a topic near and dear to my heart, which i feel compelled to glom onto, (i.e. whore off of...), that being, 'what, my dear friend, is music worth to you'? What is a "reasonable" price for music, and to whom should we pay it? (My personal threshold is mostly based on directness of artist involvement...i.e. directly from the artist at an indie show, i won't even flinch about paying at or over retail, knowing where my $$$ is going...), where on I Tunes, i thought 99 cents was a nice round price point, but there subsequent price raising strategy leaves me less amused...(yes, price dropping too, but you can bet less so, considering the source).

Not to mention, how do you consume? I think i can safely say that my family accounts for everything from wax cylinders to 78's to aluminum transcription discs to 45's to 8 tracks to albums/tapes/heavily encrypted files...virtually any format you can think of...but what's your preferred method of consumption these days, since we have so many options?

I am totally biased, so i'll recuse (or is that j'accuse) myself, save for some pithy observations, which would seem to be the whole point...

I just finished reading Steve Knopper's 'Appetite For Self Destruction', which makes a far greater case for the industry killing rampant arrogance and stupidity than i ever could...

Essential companion to Chris Anderson's 'The Long Tail' in terms of analyzing the shifting paradigm, and worthy successor to Fred Goodman's 'Mansion On The Hill', or Frederic Dannen's 'Hit Men', (among others), as industry dissections.

I know have a permanent kink in my neck from the amount of times i shook my head reading this...let alone casting it aside into the fireplace screen, scaring the bejesus out of the dog...That being the literal approximation of Dorothy Parker's great gem...
(For her review of a novel by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Parker wrote "This is not a book to be cast aside lightly. It should be hurled with great force.")
Which is not to be misconstrued as a comparison, merely a sad attempt at humor.

Oh yeah, pithy observations...behold the discbox, ah sweet discbox, bringer of life. This of course, being the physical manifestation of Radiohead's great industry experiment of October 2007, 'In Rainbows'...in which the band with very little notice, dropped their new project on an unsuspecting, and very suddenly freaking out, audience. The choices were 1) pay what you wish for a download, or don't pay...since you will be underwritten wholly by the freaks, (c'est moi), who plump for option 2) the deluxe box set (which was worth all 40 pounds, thank you), or option 3) wait until Jan '08 for an actual domestic CD release. Everyone and their brother and Trent Reznor weighed in with their opinions, which can be parsed pretty easily on line...(i'm way too tired to google 'In Rainbows Pricing Debate', but that should keep your behind out of trouble for awhile), but for me it was just cool to see someone take a chance & shake things up.

If i have a format of choice now, it's anyone who puts out an LP and includes a free download code, thereby allowing me convenience and pleasure in all their forms...This is a trend i saw with a number of releases in '08, (mostly Indie & punk rock), that hopefully will continue.

That the battle is now shaping up between ITunes and Walmart for the music industry is kind of sad...much as i am an Apple devotee (or long time sufferer, take your pick).

And finally, i couldn't get out of this without mentioning the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger.thing, that if nothing else, got congressional testimony out of Billy Corgan...hee hee!
Once again, my feelings will be pretty obvious, it's just morbidly fascinating to me to see who lines up on what side...

'08 cleanup, pt I: best shows...

Akkk, it’s already February, and I still haven’t cleaned up last year…Live shows started out on the down, having to miss Coachella for the first time in five years, but after a quiet summer (dodging fires), I made up for it with a vengeance in the fall…
In order, the best shows I saw last year:




#3) RADIOHEAD, Santa Barbara County Bowl, August
Finishing off a two stage US tour at the smallest venue right in my backyard, what’s to complain about? Most years this would have been THE show, hands down, and it speaks to the others that it wasn’t. Tour sharpened, and obviously smelling the finish line, Yorke & co. rocked with a vengeance, surpassing their previous two night stand here years ago…fun trivia, NPR offers a podcast of this show free, so hear for yourself…



#2) NICK CAVE & BAD SEEDS, Hollywood Bowl, September
Crisp fall night at the granddaddy of them all with a bill that didn’t stint on value for the dollar: opening w/Cat Power followed by Spiritualized, making way for the big man himself…the Bad Seeds were razor sharp, and the setlist spanned his whole career…highlights included a vicious reading of ‘The Mercy Seat” from ‘Tender Prey’.
But the spotlight was on the man himself…when the book is written on stage presence, he will have his own little chapter, all to himself. Absolutely galvanizing…by the second song I just started laughing, it was so ridiculous.
The vision that came to mind was not music, but Samuel L. Jackson, in the scene near the end of 'Pulp Fiction' where he reclaims his wallet from Tim Roth's character...("it's the one that says bad ass m@#$@$r")...a man in such complete control of his craft.
As fate would have it, not long after this show, Mick Harvey, Cave's right hand man of 25 years, decided to retire from the band...his fiery counterpoints throughout the night now take on the patina of epitah...



#1) MY BLOODY VALENTINE, Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, October
What do you do when your dreams come true? More than I ever could have hoped, (and had given up hoping for), My Bloody Valentine returned to the states for the first time in 15 years, and picked up right where they left off, in a hazy narcotic swirl of harmonies and feedback. Noise, glorious noise.
The story to date: in the early nineties, MBV solidified their lineup, dribbled out a few EP’s, one album, then unleashed ‘Loveless’, their masterpiece…then promptly disappeared for a decade and a half. Guitarist Kevin Shields made some guest appearances, did some soundtrack work (Lost In Translation), and signed to Island, only to record & scrap a record, slave to his perfectionist tendencies…
Then, an appearance was announced at ATP in NY, and fortunately, before I could buy a plane ticket, a short tour was booked, ending in LA.
And, so, one would say, it ended on a high note…
The set drew heavily on ‘Loveless’, with a smattering of ‘Isn’t Anything’…Belinda Butcher was captivating, and Shields stayed out of the spots, letting his guitar communicate…
And what has now passed into legend, the climactic ‘You Made Me Realize’, a couple of quick choruses, then into a 17 minute lockdown feedback frenzy, that chased the weak and earplugless from the floor, reduced the rest into grinning idiots, and even from the seats at the top of the auditorium grew into a vibrating shimmering thing that you could feel.
My only description to those not there would be to imagine laying down on a runway at LAX & having a plane take off over you;)))
…then back into a triumphant chorus, and goodnight & goodbye America…