My Fake Plastic Love

I went to see Radiohead on Sunday night. Today is Thursday afternoon, and it took me about this long to recover. Not from the show but from Nissan Pavilion. Getting to the concert was a huge debacle, due to the mix of torrential rains and traffic. I found out later that one of the two roads into the venue had flooded, so people were getting detoured. I think we were one of the few to make it in when we did, and we got onto the pavilion to the sounds of "Lucky," which is what we were. Thanks to Google, I was able to find out later that we had only missed two songs.

Nissan Pavilion is a rain or shine venue, and there are some covered seats. We, unfortunately, did not have covered seats. We had lawn seats and spent the entire concert huddled under a golf umbrella trying to see over or around all the other poor concert-goers standing out in the rain. The umbrella definitely helped keep my upper body dry but my jeans were soaked through. It didn't help that the grounds were already muddy from the day before.

The concert itself was really good. Hearing Radiohead live is an experience to be had, and their stage/lighting setup was very visually engaging (at least, the parts of it I could see). Their setup made it look like they were performing in the Fortress of Solitude. They played mostly their "In Rainbows" stuff, with a few extras thrown in here and there. They did two encores, and even dedicated the first song on their second encore, "Fake Plastic Trees," to the people that missed the concert (which didn’t actually help them, but worked out for me). Radiohead has gone a long way from their "Creep" days and I think I had forgotten their mastery over simple melodies and lyrics post-"Kid A." But "Fake Plastic Trees" was a good reminder of that.

It took us about two hours to make what should've been a thirty minute drive out from Nissan to Vienna. Which was ridiculous. But, the drive to Rockville from Vienna, which usually takes about forty minutes, only took thirty. That was small consolation for the fact that I didn't get home until 2 am. And then had to get up at 7 to go to work.

So, long story short: Radiohead live -- good; Nissan Pavilion (and torrential rain) -- bad.