Saw a show

We saw Radiohead at Budapest’s Sziget Festival.

What to say? Um… Well, they remain my favorite band. Knowing that I went in with this bias, perhaps the following should be taken with a grain of salt.

I couldn’t have dreamt up a better set list then the one that was played on Saturday night. I remember the “Kid A/Amnesiac” tour fondly. I saw the Garden State Park show in 2001. I still think highly of the albums that the tour was promoting, and of course the show leaned on them heavily. The Sziget show, however, pulled from nearly every album, as well as throwing us a couple of new songs.

I fell for this band in ’97 with “OK Computer”, and I’ll admit to having hoped that Saturday’s show would draw heavily from that album. I figured it wasn’t unrealistic, seeing as the band isn’t promoting any specific album on this tour. So when they opened with “Airbag” I felt certain that there exists a concert genie who heard and granted my wish.

I was actually walking into the festival’s main stage area when “Airbag” sounded the beginning of the show. (Mark, Charlie, and I had been awed by a little four-piece Hungarian blues combo doing Rolling Stones covers, and we waited until the last minute to get to the big show.) The stage itself was enormous, and very far away. The audience was shoulder-to-shoulder all the way out to the food vendors. Dora and I had broken away from the crowd we were with. So, as we made our way closer to the stage, Dora was texting those we hoped to meet up with. As the band started “National Anthem” we found Donnie and Agi (Dora’s co-workers). If you know the song’s bassy distorted opening guitar riff, you’ll understand what got my blood pumping. I told the group that I didn’t want to spend the entire show looking for other people. They all agreed, and we made our way to a decent vantage point off to the right of the stage. We weren’t close, but we weren’t too far either.

We didn’t need to shove our way up front because the staging and sound were phenomenal. And besides, I’m tall; if I pushed my way to center-front, I’d ruin some short person’s show. The one drawback to being on the fringes: the audience out there was composed of the less-avid fans, people happy to chat through the two new songs, “There There” and “15 Step”. This was compounded by the festival setting, because a lot of these people weren’t fans really. They were festival goers who knew it would be foolish to turn down an opportunity to see Radiohead. I liked the new songs, but I was distracted.

When “Exit Music” started, however, I kind of got lost in the tune. It is one of my favorites. It was at this point that Donnie, who didn’t really know the band, pointed out, “This music is really very beautiful.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

They moved right into “Karma Police”, and Agi got excited because she knew that one. Dora told me that she was pleasantly surprised at how many songs she was familiar with, and I knew then that I’ve done my duty as a husband.

The show was just one good song after another. “I Might Be Wrong” followed by the new “Nude” and then “Paranoid Android” (the song that really caught me of guard in ’97 and made me listen to rock with a more discerning ear) and then there was a wonderful mellow-down with “No Surprises”. That song always makes me happy that I’ve found a woman like Dora who’s asked me to make life an adventure.

“The Gloaming” was creepy, as always, and it was also the point where the show separated the fans from the on-lookers from the music connoisseurs. The fans know and love it all. The on-lookers start looking around and thinking, “I though this was a rock band?” And for the connoisseurs, while they might not know Radiohead, it is difficult to deny the beauty of these more low-key songs. It went from “The Gloaming” into “How to Disappear Completely” and then “Pyramid Song” and “Lucky”.

For those looking to pick things up again, the band closed up the main set in an appropriate way. They reached all the way back to ’95 for “Just”. Then they jumped forward and back again with “Idioteque” and “Street Spirit”.

Well, when they left us on that note, the crowd demanded more. It was when the encore started that I realized I was at a festival, but I was listening to a full-length show. Nearly two and an half hours, and those last twenty minutes were spectacular: “You and Whose Army?”(Yorke didn’t have a lot to say politically during the show. I think with the bombing plot and the Israeli-Lebanon affair this was an appropriate call. But this song’s feeling says a lot all by itself), “2 + 2 = 5”, a real surprise with “Fake Plastic Trees” and the big close with “Everything in its Right Place”.

It will be a long time before I see a show to match this one. If you get the chance, see them on this tour.