from a radiohead message board, about the nissan show:
Here's one for you. My wife and I left Central PA at Noon that Sunday. We got to Nissan at approx 330. We walked a mile or so up to the gates in a light rain to hear the soundcheck. We heard them play 2+2=5, Jigsaw, Super Collider and then LSP. Sometime during the soundcheck, it began pouring, and it might still be pouring in Bristow for all I know. I remember during LSP, we were standing by the porta potties and met this guy who had flown in from Chicago. We started talking about setlists from the Grant Park 01 show and the Alpine Valley show in 2003 (which the young man from Chicago had attended). My wife thought I was nuts, cos I had knowledge of the sets without having attended either of the shows.
After LSP, we walked the mile or so back to our car in the heavy rain, and got drenched. We sat in our car and cranked up the heater to try to stay warm. At 6 , we walked the mile or so back to the gates. It was raining sideways. It was cold as hell, and little streams and lakes were forming everywhere. I was (and will always be) a Bull Run survivor, so I knew what I was up against. In fact, we stopped at the Bull Run rest stop coming to and from the show, just to pay our homage to the ghosts. The Bull Run Rest stops were quite spooky on 5-11-08, let me tell you.
We finally found our seats in the 18th row, and sat there like zombies and shivered. For months we had tickets for the lawn, but that previous Wednesday, I was able to snag great seats on Ticketbastard.
They arrived UPS on Friday morning. Anyway, The Liars came out, and they were just what we needed. They were the perfect opening act for the context, and their weirdness took our minds off of the miserable conditions.
I remember going into the bathroom before Radiohead came on. No one was speaking. It was just stunned silence. I remember just running warm water over my hands for minutes at one of the sinks, and thinking, this must be what hell is like on Chistmas day. Anyway, Radiohead came on stage, and it was like 2 hours and seven minutes of heaven in the pits of hell. It was strange, beautiful and utterly other worldly. I knew we would never experience anything like it ever again, at least not in this world. After the show, in the bathrooms, everyone remained silent. As I ran the warm water over my hands, I thought of the Hank Williams song-I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive.
The walk (run? mad scramble?) back to the car was a nightmare. It was lashing, and we lost our sense of bearings in the dark. We walked through rivers, waded through new lakes and dodged impatient cars, all at the same time. We had to scale a wall before we figured out we were on the right path.
At 3am, somewhere south of Fredrick on 270, I began to fall asleep at the wheel. I cranked up the AC and the radio. I instructed my wife to find songs I could sing to, so I would not fall asleep. She found Dancing Queen by Abba, and I sang along in mad joy at the top of my lungs (It was a real Gummo moment). Dancing Queen was the perfect song for the moment, and it may have saved our lives.
At 330 am, we stopped at a small redneck mini-mart just off of Rt. 15, near Thurmont. We told this clerk with a southern accent that we were not drunk or high, but rather we had just been to a Radiohead show in VA. He said he had never heard of them and only listened to country music(It was a real Ghost World moment).We got back in our car, and I stuffed a three pack of chocolate Tasty Kakes into my mouth, as we drove down the long, lonesome highway.
The Tasty Kakes woke me up just in time to feel our car die just south of Gettysburg on Rt. !5. It was still lashing, and we had no cell phone. It was fucking freezing and windy as we tried to flag someone down. We were out in the middle of nowhere, and cars and trucks just kept whizzing by. Finally. a kind, conservative looking man on his way to upstate NY stopped, and let us use his cell. My inlaws and my two year old son came and picked us up and took us out for the best breakfast we ever had in our lives. As we sat in the small town diner, my wife and I looked and felt like two strung out heroin addicts.
At 11 am-23 hours after we had left-we arrived back at our apartment. Go Slowly was playing in my head, still haunting me from the night before.
