First things first! I am officially retiring from attending music festivals. The idea is nice, but the experience is more lame than a beer convention serving Red Dog. All Points West was no exception. Let’s start with the lineup. I pride myself on being able to find the best unknown artists, but who are these bands? Where is Tapes N Tapes? Where is Saul Williams? Compared to the impressive lineups of Lollapalooza, Virgin Music Festival and even the Pitchfork Music Festival, the lineup left me shaking my head in disappointment. Add to that the $90 price tag to get in. On a day where two of my favorite bands (Radiohead & Animal Collective) were playing on the same stage, the price didn’t bother me so much.
Three stages were set up as well as can be expected, and the sound from each was actually very impressive for a large outdoor venue. Anyone wanting to drink needed to get their ID checked on a 45-minute line and then wait on another 20-minute line to access the “over 21″ area. Then, you had to wait another 20-minutes on the actual line for drinks. I’m sure someone could have come up with a better way to handle this. I do have to admit giving everyone five tags on the bracelet kept the obnoxious drunks to a minimum, even though some people were spotted scalping wristbands.
Radiohead hit the stage on time, as most of the acts did during the day, to play their second headlining night at about 8:30PM on Saturday. The crowd went absolutely crazy, as did I, in anticipation for what promised to be a great set. Being too far away from the stage and despising large venues like this, I had my doubts about how much energy the band would find to play and how the audio would sound. My concerns were immediately silenced when Reckoner began to play. The sound was amazingly clear, crisp and loud. No instruments were drowned out, as the band was mixed to perfection. Hats off to the sound crew for making Radiohead sound like they were playing the Music Box in Atlantic City!
I was interested to see what kind of setlist they were going to play, considering this was my fifth Radiohead show since 2000. An a show two years ago, I was privileged to get a sneak peak of most of the tracks off their critically acclaimed In Rainbows album at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia. Remembering how amazing that most recent show was and enjoying the new release immensely gave me hope that the setlist would dig both near and far into their impressive catalog. They absolutely did not disappoint. They immediately broke into the new album’s opening (and most danceable) track 15 Step. At that point, you could see an ocean of fans moving to the hypnotic beats of one of the strongest tracks on the record. Next, they played favorites from 2000′s Kid A. Moving back to songs from In Rainbows and then back again to tracks from 1997′s OK Computer and 2004′s Hail to the Thief, the mix of old and new was a music fan’s dream.
The set was longer than anyone could wish for (about 2 hours). After pleasing thousands with 17 remarkable songs, the band left the stage only to be urged immediately back on by the night’s first encore. During these five songs, the band treated the crowd to a jaw-dropping version of Airbag (my personal favorite), the opening track from OK Computer. Lead singer, Thom Yorke announced the song was for Kings of Leon, the band that preceded them. The band once again left the stage but was brought back for one final three-song encore. The last encore was highlighted by crowd-favorite Idioteque, which ended the night with no complaints whatsoever. The long, two-mile trek to the train station was eased by the ethereal sounds of what many consider the best band on the planet.
