7000 people standing at the

Aug 01 2001
7000 people standing at the 20th century re-birthplace of the KKK listening to the chaotic sounds of an English band known for their anti-corporate and anit-globalization views,
finally!!
it was a surreal experience and it rocked. Those who made it to the Radiohead show were rewarded for their tedious search for tickets. The opening acts were the Beta Band and Kid Koala, who were both good, though Kid Koala was rudely cut off before he was finished. It should be a crime to cut a DJ's sound.

Radiohead finally took the stage around dark, as was expected, and played a well-picked set list (staying away from older songs like "Creep"). The crowd was truly into it, which was probably due to the determination required to get tickets. You could hear the crickets chirping as they launched into their more quiet songs like; Exit Music, How to Disappear Completely, and Pyramid Song/Egyptian Song. The stage was flanked on both sides by two really cool mega-vision screens.
the minotaur
Throughout the show, we were all treated to a real time collage from cameras mounted in various places on the stage. Ninety percent of the time, the action was grayscale with a slightly jerky refresh rate, but during Idioteque it changed briefly into over-saturated color. I was a little disappointed that the minotaur failed to make an appearance on the screens, but you can't carry video artists with you everywhere. The stage lighting was a nice contrast, being comprised of a rather primitive array of rectangular shop lamp type lights and Christmas like running lights (and one sporadic and infrequent strobe in the back that seemed fire only at the end of songs). It was a show well worth the ticket price, which was probably kept lower by their intentionally playing a state venue.

But today, of course, I had to waste all my new enthusiasm at work. Our tight schedule leaves little room for anything other than coding, but I did manage to catch up on some biased news over at www.indymedia.org. I was shocked that images of the dead protestor at Genoa were all over their site. I just can't help but to lose a little faith in both sides when something like this happens. One has to ask: Even if one buys the argument that the police serve as the 'guard dogs' of 'Capital' and that they must be removed as obstacles in the path to reform, how is a jeep stranded against a barricade in the middle of a phalanx of protesters providing much resistance? And how does shoving a 2x8 and throwing a fire extinguisher into the jeep get the protestors any closer to their goal, which was the Red Zone (where the G8 summit was taking place)? Then again, perhaps this has been prophesized: "…so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property."

Basta!

As I was coming home tonight, somebody was welding on the tenth floor of a new office building and the sparks were raining down onto the concrete supports that will one day hold people up on the ninth floor. I really need to be more efficient.