Radiohead Glasgow

(June 27, 2008)

Walked from our Travelodge in Glasgow's "hood" down to Glasgow Green: where Radiohead would be performing. The walk down was amid on and off again showers---it was looking like we'd be having a wet night.


Glasgow Green is along the River Clyde, with a bellowing smokestack in the background across the river. The grass wasn't muddy, but it was definitely saturated. The umbrellas, and £3 (pound) ponchos were out in full effect. We took care of business first and went to the souvenir stand and bought our symbols of participation: T-Shirts. £80 later (that's about $160 dollars!! for 4 shirts! Bloody hell!) we garbed ourselves up in our new shirts (Ari & I doubled-up on Radiohead shirts since were were buying extra ones for Tee & Paula; Jeremy wore just his own).

We then staked out a patch of waterlogged real estate as close to the stage as we could get with out bumping into too many people's paper pints. Here we chilled to machine-like electronic music for about an hour before the first band took the stage: Bat For Lashes. This band was interesting. Drummer was in tights and had wings. The three women of the band looked like pixies. The violinists/flutist/saw-twanger looked like a Snow White elf. The lead singer had red dots painted on her face, played the key board, and percussion. The guitarist sang back up, and also played percussion. They were a good opening band.





Radiohead took the stage in the gloaming with a constant mist downpour. This is when the crowd became more raucous, but it wasn't too bad. As the band finished their first song, the rain was a downpour (we've have several throughout the show). Thom Yorke (Radiohead frontman)commented on the rain, and exclaimed, "You all need to move down south!" To which, most of the hearty Scottish grumbled! :) They then broke into another crowd-rousing song.


Next to us was a true Radiohead-er, who reminded me of the little girls who wet their pants when the Beatles hit the stage back in the day. He was jumping up and down, screaming, dancing, and splashing his wet air into Ari's face. Compared to him, everyone around us was pretty tame. "Why aren't ya bloody jumpin' people?!" he proclaimed.




As the show, progressed Radiohead continued playing songs from their current album (In Rainbows) as well as many oldies and other favorites. Additionally, as we went from song to song, the beer got to many of fans. This is when I think we had our first taste of what Scottish "hooligans" are like. These big bruisers, and a drunken funk, plowed through people and whirled around like tornadoes, and I'm sure they didn't know where they were going. That's part of it though.


All in all, it was a great show with the band giving the Glasgow-ites a solid 2-hr show.





Here's the Playlist for the night:

Main
01 - 15 Step
02 - Airbag
03 - There There
04 - All I Need
05 - Nude
06 - Arpeggi/Weird Fishes
07 - The Gloaming
08 - The National Anthem with Hunting Bears outro
09 - Faust Arp
10 - No Surprises
11 - Jigsaw Falling Into Place
12 - Reckoner
13 - Just
14 - Bangers and Mash
15 - Everything In Its Right Place
16 - Fake Plastic Trees
17 - Bodysnatchers

Encore 1
18 - Videotape
19 - Paranoid Android
20 - Myxomatosis
21 - Optimistic
22 - Karma Police

Encore 2
23 - Like Spinning Plates
24 - 2 + 2 = 5
25 - Idioteque