Did I Mention Coldplay Sucks?

In a city of the future
It is difficult to concentrate
Meet the boss, meet the wife
Everybody's happy
Everyone is made for life
In a city of the future
It is difficult to find a little space
I'm too busy to see you
You're too busy to wait
But I'm OK, how are you?
Thanks for asking, thanks for asking
I'm OK, how are you? I hope you're OK too

Every one one of those days
When the sky is California blue
With a beautiful bombshell
I throw myself into my work
I’m too lazy I’ve been kidding myself for so long
I'm OK, how are you?
Thanks for asking, thanks for asking
I'm OK, how are you?
I hope you're OK too

-Palo Alto, Airbag/How Am I Driving EP

A couple of weekends ago, I attended the All Points West festival. Radiohead headlined. I arrived fairly late in the day and only got a chance to see a pretty impressive Roots performance before the main event. Black Thought and ?uestlove along with their ever-changing but always tight band are single-handedly legitimizing (large venue) live hip-hop. I've seen Radiohead a few times now, and I get excited the way you would when an old friend comes to town. The concert didn’t rank in my top five live music experiences, but it was still sublime. Don’t get me wrong, I sang along with practically every song and worked myself into a dancing frenzy for a good part of the set.

The problem is that New York Radiohead fans tend to be so passive. If the band only had OK Computer under their belts then I’d understand, but the last few albums have had some really good grooves on them full of jams with compelling bass lines (e.g., I Might Be Wrong, National Anthem, The Gloaming). I think frontman Thom Yorke agrees, because he frequently breaks out into his own spastic dances for a number of songs. If he can do it, so can you. It's that element that really propels a rock concert to the upper stratosphere for me. It's why Bjork at Coney Island in '03 and practically every Flaming Lips show remain the gold standard.

I hadn’t checked the setlists too closely from the previous shows on their North American tour, so I was surprised they played In Rainbows in its entirety. Bold move. Not many groups have a fanbase that would let them get away with such a feat. I wasn’t bothered since I think the album is their most fully realized work since Kid A. Radiohead is such a cohesive unit; the set feels very polished if a bit rigid. Still they manage to at least appear to enjoy what they're doing up there. Thom doesn't banter much, but the crowd eats up every little quip ("This is dedicated to the Kings of Leon. If we were that good-looking, we'd be famous."). I'm glad he survived OK Computer.

Highlights included a great version of The Bends, Bangers and Mash, No Suprises, Fake Plastic Trees (30,000 people singing in unison: "And if I could be/who you wanted/And if I could be/who you wanted/All the time/All the time...un-hunnnnhhhh"), and Weird Fishes. They opened with a beautiful rendition of Reckoner that showed off the best instrument in the group's formidable arsenal, Thom's at times ethereal falsetto. They book-ended the set (second encore--digression: perhaps we should just do away with the "encore" since it's pretty much an expected part of the setlist at this point; people didn't even bother clapping all that hard the second time) with Idioteque, a song from Kid A that showed the band at their (so far) creative peak.