Radiohead is incorporating new songs into the setlist almost every night so they have extensive rehearsals every day. Sometimes we watch them rehearse. It’s almost as inspiring as the live show. The first time we heard them try out Paranoid Android it sounded good, but rusty, in need of some polish. Then they played it that same night at the show and it was perfect.
Almost every show on the tour has a day in between it and the next show, which is quite handy for Other Lives, since we’re in a van and I don’t think we’d make some of the drives (Austin to St. Louis, Denver to Phoenix) if we didn’t have that extra day. But at the beginning of the tour, there were two back to back shows: Tampa and Atlanta. This turned out to be quite a challenge for the Radiohead crew because they have an extensive stage, light, sound and video setup.
Amazingly everything ended up in its right place that day in Atlanta, but we were behind schedule as a result of the time crunch.
That day, Jesse and I watched the Radiohead soundcheck, which was running behind schedule like everything else. But we didn’t care, we were happy just to watch them rehearse. Thom, however, gentleman that he is, was very aware that their rehearsal time was eating into our setup time, and so, at one point in their rehearsal, he looked over at Jesse and I, sitting in the audience, and he made this expression:
which, we both knew to be “Sorry guys, we don’t mean to be running late, but everything else is running late today, and so what can you do?”
Jesse, in kind, made this expression:
which we both knew to mean “that’s okay, Thom, you’re the best, and what can you do? It doesn’t bother us in the least.”
At the same time as Jesse, I was making this expression:
which was an attempt at “Oh, please don’t worry about it, there’s no need to apologize at all” but I think ended up more like “give me a high-five! wait, make that a high-10 and let’s both act mildly surprised that we even know each other” and/or “awwwwww yeah! look at my hands, I got a reverse manicure, Thom!”
I’m sorry to everyone involved in that interaction. Radiohead is brilliant and I am an awkward, awkward man.
