We have seen perfection, and it goes by the name of Radiohead.

We've been looking forward to this for months. I have a couple of days off, and yesterday morning we set out for Manchester to see the best band on this planet play for about 30-40,000 people at an outdoor show. It absolutely poured on the way up, which didn't bode well for the evening, but the sky cleared and we ended up with a perfectly sunny afternoon and evening, albeit a bit windy, which made the sound a bit funny now and then.

MGMT opened first, and they did a fine job whetting our pallets. Short set, no banter, decent music. But, my goodness, the second band took us by surprise a little. They go by the name of Bat For Lashes. Think Enya with a bass line, someone trying to sound like Bjork, all of the lyrics having to do with wizards and pixie dust and a lot of "once upon a times", plenty of spoken parts like in Leader of the Pack, and a stage presence not unlike Marty's dance cycle in The Big Lebowski. In a word, crap. In a few words, a fresh, steaming pile of crap. How Radiohead wanted them to open for them I'll never understand.

With that over with, we waited for the stage to be set up, I got my £4 hot dog (which tasted like 4p), and we prepared ourselves to be amazed. The crowd went mental when they appeared as they launched straight into 15 Step without saying a word.

Now, I really like Radiohead, and Myra simply can't get enough of them, but you really can't appreciate their talent until you see them live. It's like seeing a picture of Everest and then actually being there. There is something about being in the actual presence of it that pictures cannot communicate. I really cannot put into words how good they were. They played a fair bit from In Rainbows, but mixed it in with tons of their older stuff. All the good'uns were there (see www.ateaseweb.com/2008/06/29/radiohead-live-in-manchester-live-report/ for the set list if you wish), including an absolutely killer version of Idioteque (see a clip below), and they closed with Pyramid Song, 2+2=5, and came out a third time (because, as Thom said, "we still have time left before we turn into pumpkins...") to finally close with Lucky.



The lights they brought with them suited them to a T, and were quite different and super cool (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQvqxIFSxIg for a good example). Johnny was rocking right out, and Thom reminded me of the kid from "Where the Wild Things Are" as he got right into it, running around the stage like even he didn't know what to do with all this good music. I'm telling you, there wasn't a face there that wasn't grinning away, and it felt like the whole second level (which we elected to sit in rather than stand with all the commoners) was going to come down on the people below as it was bouncing up and down so much from all the people unable to sit still.

Right. Another great experience here in the UK. We're off to London tomorrow for the Canada Day party in Trafalgar Square. Stay tuned.