“It was so…Thom York-ie”
I forgot my camera, so my friend's iPhone had to suffice.
It was some combination of dumb luck and benign universal energy that allowed me to score tickets to Thom Yorke’s secret show at The Echoplex on Friday night. Well, secret insomuch as L.A. Weekly tipped readers off to rumors of the show last Wednesday, and on Friday morning it was officially announced that tickets—all things considered, reasonable at $20—would go on sale at noon. Cut to: frantic text messages between my friend Luisa and myself, multiple browsers open to TicketWeb.com, and serendipity intervening to finalize the sale. A verbal stream of “Holy shit!” was all I could muster afterward.
By 7:30 PM, the line snaking around The Echoplex had reached critical proportions—long and filled with antsy fans muttering “Fuck, can we get in already?” My guess is that the unusual holdup had to do with crowd control and the CAA and VIP lists up front. Because, make no mistake, this was one of “those shows”: suited industry stiffs with ear plugs were peppered throughout the crowd, awkwardly shuffling their legs alongside the likes of Kim Gordon, Daft Punk, and the moody girl behind us who yelled something about needing a milk crate to stand on because we were too tall. The hype machine (figuratively speaking, not the website) was working overtime. I was more preoccupied, though, with the fact that we were actually there and about to see Thom perform for a crowd of a few hundred. “This will never happen to us again,” I kept uttering incredulously to Luisa. Granted, I can be hyperbolic at times, but when you’ve grown up listening to Radiohead and are about to see its lead singer preview new songs with his freshly-formed supergroup (including producer Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, Mauro Refosco, and Flea), “excited” doesn’t cut it as an adjective.
His set consisted mainly of tracks from The Eraser, which he went through in order. Live, the band went light on the album’s pervasive blips and bleeps and overally sleepiness, and made them much more danceable. I’ve seen Thom play Eraser songs prior, at least in fan-captured YouTube videos or the odd TV appearance, but I’ve never seen him so effervescent as a performer than Friday night, not even with Radiohead. We’ve all witnessed his frantic “Idioteque” moves, but imagine that flailing, crazed energy consistent over the course of an evening, punctuated by a schoolboy’s grin. What happened to our sulky Radiohead frontman?
I had heard none of the new songs before that night, and the immediate standouts were “Skirting on the Surface” and “Judge, Jury, and Executioner.” Post-show I’ve settled on “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses” as my favorite. I blame the sexy, ominous bass line.
Driving back down Sunset after the show, Luisa and I could only describe the experience, the songs, and his palpable exuberance as so “Thom York-ie.” I count myself lucky to have beaten the odds, the wily scalper/hackers, and a catastrophic TicketWeb crash to have witnessed it.