Friday night, we went to the Outside Lands festival mainly to see Radiohead. I used to see a lot of concerts back in the day but, like everyone else seemingly in existence, the older I got, the less shows I saw. I also used to go to those big, festival shows a lot, either things like Lollapalooza (btw-- it turns out that spell check is aware of the word "Lollapalooza" as it is not warning me I'm spelling something incorrectly) or shows by a certain hippie-ish band that I refuse to acknowledge ever being into. Now the thing about the concert is that I kinda skewed old. Like really skewed old. Yes, I was the old guy at the concert hanging out with people almost half my age and pretending that I was still "hip".

The thing is I didn't really feel old. I looked at the crowd and said to myself "these are my people" and felt transported back in time. Like I could go casually strike up a conversation with anyone in the crowd as if they were my peers. Except, of course, I wasn't. Which made me feel both young and old at the same time.

At the concert my friends and I were really concerned about being as close to the stage as possible. So we got there pretty much when the doors opened and spread out all of our blankets so as to make sure we had claimed our territory, much like settlers traveling out west. We were so concerned about being close to the stage that we bailed on seeing any other acts at the festival lest we lose our spot, and that includes some band (Black Mountain) which was described as being a psychadelic 70's rock-styled band and that's the kind of musical write-up that makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. We also bailed on Beck, who I really wanted to see as I have yet to see him, because Beck ended about ten minutes before Radiohead came on and as the thing was a complete cluster fuck, there was no way to see both without missing part of each other's acts and/or be trampled to death in the rush of people going from one act to the other.

Well, we got our positions up close to the stage as we wanted but as the band came on and the crowd rushed to the front, we were pretty well crushed in our positions. Whatever room we had carved out for ourselves no longer belonged to us as everyone pretty much just trampled all over us.  Because of all this, we also couldn't really see the stage (which is the whole point of being close to the stage) nor the video screens that were set up because they were too many people in front of us to really see. I could kinda see but Harlan couldn't as she's a bit shorter than me.

For various reasons that I wont' get into, at the beginning of the third song (and right after an awesome version of Reckoner), we had to leave our spot and head towards a spot where we had room and a place to sit, somewhere considerably not near the front of the stage. So we found our spot, a nice spot where we could sit, have elbow room, and not feel trapped and quickly realized that by not being as close to the stage as possible, we actually had better positions. No, we couldn't see the the stage but neither could we see it before. Instead, we had a clear view of the stupendously awesome light show and the video screen. No, it wasn't like seeing the band but more like watching a laser show.  As one of the reasons why I love Radiohead is because they tend to be the kind of band that works well as a laser show, this made me quite content.

One more thing about the show-- somehow Radiohead has become almost a stadium rock band, as evidence by nearly 60,000 people paying $80 mainly to see them. People sang along to songs and one couple even did a nice, romantic dance to "Fake Plastic Trees." The fact that they have achieved such stature is quite remarkable considering they've intentionally done everything possible to not achieve that stature, doing the standard stunts like refusing to do interviews and releasing albums with the complete intention of pissing off all the people who liked the previous album. Yet, still, despite all this, they've somehow become a band that plays to huge crowds, crowds that hold up cell phones during ballads, sing along, and dance.

The amazing thing about it all, other than what was previously mentioned, is that they are not the type of band that lends itself to sing alongs as their lyrics are either completely non-sensical or so drenched in alienation and isolation that singing the lyrics in a crowd feels wrong.  Like it's completely not the point of the song. You cannot disappear completely or feel trapped in a body that you can't get out of if you are surrounded by 60,000 people all saying the same thing.