I Will Decide What to Do with My Hands, Mr. Franti (All Points West, 8/08/08)

I had never seen Radiohead (myspace), now I have, now I don't have to see them again.

Their show's conception and execution is top-notch, this is a great band, no arguments.  The set list was pretty much what I expected, if not what I'd hoped.  My bad for not seeing them back when they were making records I loved; it wouldn't make sense for them to include more than five songs that are over ten years old, right?  When they actually got to Bends material in the encore, "Paranoid Android" was one of the few songs delivered dully (the crowd reaction made up the difference).  They're not that band, anymore, I shouldn't expect them to be, my fault for not seeing them back when we were more like-minded.

So I'll let the rest of the internet go gushy over this performance.  I liked when the staging - staggered vertical lighting slats, quilted video of extreme close-ups from fixed onstage cameras - got minimal; "Nude" came from under amber icicles, "You and Whose Army" had Yorke mugging mock-ominously into a lens mounted on his piano.  Radiohead's very much a rock band, and Yorke is a warmer, more active presence than I'd expected (though between-song crowd interaction was pretty much limited to him trying to say "New Joisey" in an appropriate accent).  But so much of their material over the last ten years, including much from In Rainbows (which took up more than 2/3rds of the 2+ hour show) falls on me like filler.

I was talking with someone before the performance how, if I wanted to hear all the songs I wanted to hear, I'd pretty much have to see them a dozen times, now.  But I left tired - and a lot of that was fatigue from the venue and the day - and not wanting to see them again.  Great band, not my band, carry on.

*

Before Radiohead, Columbia U Prof and Uma-Dad Robert Thurman came out to talk about Tibet and... came off as a total flake.  "Tibet is a major thing happening now," was his opening line.  Then he said, "Oh, look at the moon, it looks really nice."  Which it might have!  But.  He paid a lot of lip service toward selling a charity CD that includes tracks from Sting and Vanessa Carlton, and got booed when he mentioned one of his books.

*

The rest of this festival's line-up consisted of opening acts for Radiohead.  I wasn't feeling jumpy/dancey, so wound up sticking with lower-keyed acts.  Quickly:

Duke Spirit (myspace) - They're exciting, energetic, the material really isn't anything special.  Passable fun.  Stayed for three songs, would have come in earlier and caught more of them, only I didn't.

Forro in the Dark (myspace) - Took a while for things to catch, but they did.  Entirely pleasant, you would want to be stuck in SOB's with these guys for an evening.

Michael Franti and Spearhead (myspace)- Haven't listened to anything from these guys since that "Hole in a Bucket" song (which they did not play, despite the appropriate economy).  Franti used up all his audience directives in the very first song - everybody jump, wave your arms, clap your hands, let me hear you sing la la la - and then repeated them endlessly.  You know, I appreciate the invitation to jump, nice to know it's out there, I will feel free to jump from then on when I fucking feel like it.  Pat your head and rub your tummy while making some noyeeeeeeez!

Anyway, good-spirited stuff, delivered with a lot of positive energy.  Okay mid-afternoon material.

Whoever did the video should be shot.  Crowd hoochie ogling, distracting ten cent f/x (during a protest song dedicated to our troops overseas, a giant hand of Zuul came up and crunched the singer's image), and throughout the performance, there was a half-beat delay between the live act and the video, a clap-along nightmare.  Luckily, the main stage was the only of the three to have video, and Franti and Radiohead were the only acts I saw there.

Duffy (myspace)- Was she the reason the middle stage was running a half-hour behind?  I only heard two songs, while I was in line to pee, which seemed the ideal circumstances for her act.

Grizzly Bear (myspace) - These guys make music that's very pretty or pretty dull.  The less straightforward they are, the better the cause.  The only other time I saw them was at the Bowery Ballroom; they were my third show that day, after Jerry Lee Lewis and Rodrigo y Gabriella, and they made for an engaging wind-down.  At that show all five musicians - Owen Pallett was playing with them - were looping themselves, and it worked.   This performance had much less of that.

One of the positives about APW's sparse line-up is that acts got longer-than-usual festival set-times.  Grizzly Bear got a full hour, only used half of it.

Andrew Bird (myspace) - So we waited a long time for Bird, because you need to be up close to totally enjoy what he does.  I'm a little angry at him, because when I saw him at Southpaw a few years back he declared that venue a good luck charm and said he'd always play it; he hasn't returned since.  Now he's playing the Beacon Theater.  And headlining a stage, here!  Good for him, but squeeze in a Park Slope stop please.

Bird's an incredible musician and watching him (and drummer/keyboardist Martin Dosh) loop together his lush stuff doesn't get dull.  Since I've last seen him he's gotten more confident and assertive; at Southpaw he had to restart a couple songs.  Here, full steam ahead.  He's even added a pair of completely superfluous backing musicians.

Bird's gotten bored with his material to the extent that much of it is too radically reworked.  By necessity, his songs change live.  Before, they were merely elongated.  Now they're stretched and picked at in odd directions, and you're sometimes deep in before you realize what you're listening to.  Which can be a fantastic display of creative restlessness!  And he remains a must-see act.  But it's also really nice to hear a song that you love exist just as you've loved it.

As I rushed by Girl Talk (myspace) on the way to squeeze in for Radiohead, there were giant inflated condom-like tubes being passed over the ecstatic crowd, and Gillis' chipmunked version of "The Weight" was pumping out of the speakers.  When you're not game, it sure does feel like a fanny-load, don't it?

*

I really don't want to talk about the commute.  I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.

One aspect was a major let-down:  Festivals like these bring together a lot of different and different-sized acts... but from what I saw yesterday it never felt like APW brought any of them together.  Just allowed them slots and space.  Collaborations, crossovers, covers... nothing.  Just regular, solid sets.  Nothing extraordinary or special to warrant the inconvenience and discomfort of a "festival" experience.  It felt like a musical shopping mall.

tags: all points west  radiohead  other bands  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    reddit