I Lost Myself, I Lost Myself
Last night Mrs. Rants and I got to take advantage of some babysitting and we went down to Great Woods/Tweeter/Comcast Center to see Radiohead. It had been years since I was last at that place - tearing up chunks of sod to the sounds of Thieves and Liars no doubt. Anyways, $8 beers were quaffed during the opening act. Was it fuzzy bear or Grizzly Bear the name of that act? I wasn't paying attention. The place was sold out and it was nuts to be in that much humanity. I was waiting for Obama to come out and sing the national anthem. The Radiohead stage was good. I think its amazing how many creative minds are out there designing interesting stage lighting configurations. The China Olympics opening ceremony comes to mind.

Radiohead managed to string together all their odd sounding B-sides for their 1st act. At big venue concerts I always drift between two thought experiments: 1) What the hell are the ushers thinking when they hear this music. For instance, does the kindly older man who scanned my ticket at the section seating appreciate the caterwauling musings of Thom Yorke? Or will he be more agreeable to the Toby Keith show scheduled for the next day? 2) Would the hippies have shit their pants if Radiohead timetraveled back and played at Woodstock? I just can't see them handling this kind of music. Where's the verse chorus verse man????????????

I wouldn't say that Radiohead is anthemic. Yet thousands sang aloud to the melancholy lyrics of out-of-sorts unresolve. Again, I'm back to thinking about that kindly usher saying to himself "What the hell are they singing along to?" I wonder if there's some kind of commentary there - thousands of fragile souls from the recent generations coming in droves to pay big money for a musical celebration of despair. Get Ourselves Back to the Garden this isn't. More like getting back to the DMV for another vision test. Life is humdrum bittersweet.

The whole contrivance of live popular musical appreciation: Parking Lot, red party cups, drunk, go through admission, head straight for a piss, buy more beer, sound check check check, roadies disappear off stage, 5 more minutes of wait, lights go down, spliffs ignite, lights go on, mad cheering, songs songs spliffs songs songs spliffs songs, finale, cheering, roadies, encore, final finale, roadies, lights up, march of the lemmings back to the car, 2 hours of inchworming one car length at a time to leave. Woohoo the highway! Rinse Wash Repeat.

None of this actually addresses the point that I enjoyed Radiohead. House of Cards on their new album is perfectly breezy and there's another tune off that album which reminds me of prime John Cage Velvet Underground. Both were done well. But then the next songs they played made me feel bad about myself again. For a minute there.