andrewdewaard.com

RAD IO H EAD_ CO/N C ER_T!!

last time i saw the mighty rhead live was in new jersey, and a full day of rain couldn’t get us down (elliott smith, liz phair, beth orton, spiritualized, underworld, and the beastie boys helped thom and co in that regard). when radiohead sang ’stand up sit down,’ with its 46 “the raindrops,” i think everyone in the crowd was having a shawshank redemption moment, arms outreached into the rain for the aerial camera shot. this time the rain came down again, but a vancouver crowd isn’t exactly in any position to complain. fittingly, the rain didn’t start until just before the band came on, giving a certain pre-storm energy to the pre-show beer tent (or maybe i need to ease up on the red bulls).

from rvnix on flickr

25 songs and 3 shirts & a jacket soaked thru later, it’s hard to pick any definitive highlight… either ‘you used to be alright, what happened?’ from 15 step (and my ‘new’ 40 dollar tshirt made from plastic bottles liberated from landfills)… or thom saying “we know its raining and that’s a bummer, but fuck it this is Optimistic”… or “i’ll be waiting with a gun and a pack of sandwiches” from talk show host… or you and whose army… or every song from in rainbows… or thom telling the crowd surfers “Take it easy guys, Its not fucking Rage Against The Machine”… or the opening notes of everything in its right place (and the greatest album of our generation?*)… or the hacksaw buzz of ‘exit music for a film’… or thom telling someone, mid-sentence, to “Shut the fuck up, you’re not funny you just don’t get out much”… or the shuffle start of reckoner, my favourite tune from in rainbows, to start the second encore…

or the rainbow spectrum lights/video for planet telex…

(50 seconds in)

or the communion of ‘This is what you’ll get when you mess with us’ during karma police

or the finale of paranoid android’s ‘come on rain down on me / from a great height’ while the rain picked up one last time…

* i used to always say it was ok computer (fuck nevermind), but maybe that’s just nostalgia. i think kid a is the money melon. either way, it’s radiohead vs radiohead.

edit: AHHH! my favourite neil young song!

Radiohead :: “Tell Me Why” (neil young cover) from gorilla vs. bear on Vimeo.

stellar entrance

someone’s about to get a stern talking to…

flash could not have gone off at a better time…

i think this was the second time we requested ‘dollar wine’ by byron lee, this time hiking our pants up and replacing ‘dolla. dolla. dolla.’ with ‘donna! donna! donna!’

bella is really reefin’ on ian’s pants here…

weddings are so much fun… if only another of our polish friends would get married…

coming soon: the reception!

me and ian drove down to detroit, and met my oldest buddy dan (who will soon feature as the groom in a set of wedding photos), for the free broken social scene show, part of the comerica cityfest, which is a sweet festival the city puts on, with a whack of tasters food vendors and free shows on 3 stages for like 4 days over the july 4th long weekend. we celebrated the american day of independence with an obama-praising canadian indie band.

kevin drew had apparently thrown his back out and nearly called off the show, so he played sitting down, with an obus form backrest…

…until the valium kicked in, presumably, and he got up for a few numbers. seemingly in a bit of a haze, he would debut a new song (which the other dudes in the band didn’t seem to know they were gonna be playing) and then end the show with an impromptu solo version of almost crimes.