Freak Like Me
July 2nd, 2006 | Posted by Shannon
This is a long one. Get yourself a drink. Before I get into Friday let’s go back to Monday.
OK. This ten-minute snippet of the Monday night show is kind of trippy because these dudes were standing right next to me for the first part of the show. If you watch it, when Radiohead come on and start playing There There, those two fat arms waving on the right belong to the mountainous one who sang every lyric to practically every song and sort of ruined the show for me and probably many others. If you make it to You and Who’s Army you can actually HEAR her lame-ass voice. It’s pretty bad. I love youtube just for the fact that somehow PROOF emerges from it. I mean how crazy is it that that bitch can be heard by thousands of people from coast to coast? I hope she hears it and never sings another note at another show EVER.
Heh heh. On to Friday night. CRAZY. The whole night, not just the show. I walked up to the Greek from my hotel two miles away and it was HOT. When I was walking up the hill I ran into Juan Carlos, who was looking for tickets. He and his friend Erica got in line at 11:00 A.M. to try to get some box office love, and here it was 7:00 P.M. and they still had forty people in front of them. Scalpers were asking $400 for seats in the back, and there were numerous skanky L.A. ho types trying to seduce tickets out of lonely Radiohead nerds. One of said chicklets (blond, pierced tongue, early-eighties punk-ho look) tried to get a ticket out of Juan Carlos and he didn’t even have one yet. In fact she was kind of stupid trying to look for tickets along a line of people who didn’t have any. “Why don’t you go down to the box office where people are actually PICKING UP tickets?” I asked her. I mean, DUH. Juan Carlos had already promised Mariella, a Chilean girl we met outside the box office, he would sell her one if he scored any, so he told the ho he had already promised any extras to someone else. Mariella was cool – and she is coming down for Muse at SOMA this month so we are going to get together and get spots on the wall and then protect them for each other in case we have to go to the bathroom. ANYWAY. Juan Carlos and his friend were finally first in line and then the tickets were gone. So they did not get in. Mariella FOUND a ticket on the ground. Interesting since I have been thinking about something like that happening to me all week, and have been playing with it in my head. Like, if you find a ticket on the ground, do you use it, or take it back to the box office? I mean, what if it belonged to someone who really loves Radiohead and you are like, destroying their life? But then, what if that ticket belonged to a scalper or someone who was just going to say they went to a Radiohead show? It’s a dilemma. Mariella used it. I’m not sure what I would have done. But then I had a ticket.
Once in, I got in line to buy a bottle of wine and I heard someone call my name. It was Elizabeth who has burned some shows for me. She knew me because of my Poptarticus T-Shirt. So that was kind of cool. It’s so funny how you make these random connections with people solely because of the music you love. Juan Carlos I knew from the Sigur Ros show in Austin, and Elizabeth and I both had our Sigur Ros hoodies. And now all three of us were in L.A. to see (or in Juan Carlos’s case, hear) Radiohead.
After two shows of standing on my tiptoes close to the stage, it was kind of cool to have a seat where the space around me was mine alone. It wasn’t the greatest seat, to be totally honest. I was in the farthest possible seat to the right of the stage up in the terrace. I couldn’t see Phil or Colin at all. On my right I looked down at beer stands and an ATM which ALWAYS had a line. What could people possibly need money for when Radiohead is playing? I was pretty close to the stage though, and could see, once again, Ed, Thom and Jonny well enough, and it looked like the pit was full of lame industry people. So I was happy where I was. I had a hard time taking my eyes off Jonny Greenwood this time – the guy is so enigmatic. And I absolutely love it when he spazzes out on his guitar. Thom had a ton of energy and was dancing all over the place. There was a point during Myxomatosis when he stood over the pit with his arm out over them and he was practically SPITTING the lyrics at them and it was OH SO INTENSE. That guy has POWER. Thom Yorke for PRIME MINISTER, he’ll get some shit done. Anyway.
The crowd around me was very cool and very into it. I think we all paid around $200 for our ebay-ticket-bought-from-a-record-company-employee-who-got-it-for-free so we were all there to actually see the band and not to see who was looking at us. There was one tool a couple rows down from me who talked during all the new songs and on all the others, did that white-boy hip-hop dance, you know the one, where they move one hand up and down and move their scrawny ass back and forth. He even did this during Like Spinning Plates which is not exactly a dance number. I wanted to flick a quarter at the back of his neck. But other than that the people around me were cool. And it was watching the rest of the crowd at the Greek was wonderful. All kinds of celebrities were there, but I didn’t see any, all I saw was a sea of heads and they all appeared to be loving it (key word – appeared. This WAS Los Angeles after all.)
Some highlights of the show: During Exit Music, a bunch of people start hooting (they do this every time, I don’t get it) and Thom said “SHUT UP” and they DID! They SHUT UP. Ha ha, that was classic. Being told to shut up by Thom Yorke. I wish he would have said that to the mountainous one. Then during Fake Plastic Trees, the entire audience seemed to be WHISPERING the lyrics. 7000 people whispering, “If I could be who you wanted… all the time…” that was so totally awesome. I have absolutely no problem with people whispering. There was another killer Down is the New Up, got Climbing up the Walls, Pyramid Song and Like Spinning Plates for the second time this week, My Iron Lung practically ripped my head off and you can see for yourself HERE. Then we got True Love Waits which morphed into Everything in it’s Right Place and I was sort of sad, because that meant it was all going to be over soon.
So then it was over. I waited until all the people were outside (from my vantage point I had a fine view of this) and then started my descent down the hill. Halfway down I realized that me and the same dude had been walking together for a while. This is how I met Scott, a tall, skinny 23 year old transplant from Queens who is a Radiohead freak like me. First we started talking, then we started partying, which went on pretty much all night. Well not all night but certainly very late. Once you get two Radiohead freaks going, it’s pretty hard to get them to stop. It was really, really fun and took the sting out of Radiohead week being over.
Now I can’t wait for the new record to come out so I can hear Videotape, House of Cards and Down is the New Up in their studio form. I think my neighbors are getting sick of hearing me play a gazillion different live versions on my computer.
Scott said he has a friend who will only sleep with Radiohead freaks. I think that I am going to, henceforth, make that my number one criteria as well. Or maybe, just people who LIKE Radiohead. Although the freak part is pretty awesome, let me tell you.
Back to real life. Which is: hanging out at The Vine and daydreaming about Britt Daniel. Summertime. It is hot.
There is an incredible recording of Friday night’s show here. Awesome…
