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Radiohead Live: Victoria Park London

27th June 2008 | by Ross Riley

For Radiohead this had been the most interesting of years, and as it turns out that's not interesting in the sense of the famous Chinese insult.

After completing their contractual obligation, and how many bands ever make it that far, they decided to move away from the label structure and release their own material.

Few envisaged the success they would have with the self-released In Rainbows which vindicated the digital delivery business model by allowing fans to pay what they wanted for the album.

At Victoria Park on Tuesday and Wednesday night those fans paid back just a little more with 40,000 selling out two nights of performances by Radiohead.

It's not often you get to see Radiohead with this amount of time to play, in all they are on stage for over two hours, playing 25 different songs and the breadth of their back catalogue really shines through at tonight's event.

Obviously tonight the new material takes centre stage, most of In Rainbows got a live outing and it immediately becomes obvious how impressive the new material is.

Opening up with Reckoner and 15 Step sets the show off on its way in great style, also appearing in the first half hour of the set are All I Need and Nude, but along with the very new there was also plenty of Radiohead's greatest in the set list.

Lucky is spectacularly brilliant live, a song which the band originally recorded for a charity album has grown into one of their best. The first half of the show also features Myxomatosis and National Anthem.

Then comes 'No Surprises' a song that on record feels introspective and almost claustrophobic but somehow still manages to feel at home in the expansive fresh air of Victoria Park.

The live highlight of the show has to be Idioteque which the band play just before the encore. It's the perfect combination of the setting sun and the bright stage lights that create the setting for this electronic masterpiece, Thom Yorke's rollercoaster vocals swarm around the loop projecting an incredible buzz around Victoria Park.

As the band take a brief respite before the encore you can only marvel at the tricks they still have up their sleeve and tonight Radiohead definitely don't disappoint.

The encore kicks off with House of Cards which shows off Thom Yorke's vocals as the incredible sound reverberates around the park, then an older track 'The Bends' gets the crowd even more excited.

So how do you finish the perfect gig, well what could be better than My Iron Lung, 2 2=5, Karma Police and, of course, Paranoid Android all appearing in the same encore? That should tell you all you need to know.

That a band at the peak of their career creatively can still connect with an audience of this size really says a lot about Radiohead at the moment. Tonight's show was a perfect demonstration of how not playing the record industry game makes sense both artistically and financially and we now have a new poster child for the modern world.

Welcome to the 21st Century, now let's make ourselves at home.

Comments

Gareth

commented 4 months ago

Gotta say well done to Radiohead for proving the business model works, and showing that the live perfomances can be improved with the lack of having preassure form a record label. Only wish i could have been there.