Radiohead full concert (o una probadita)

Reminiscing Radiohead

I'm sitting in my Vancouver apartment, suffering from a terrible cold. I can feel the antihistamine drowsiness kicking in as the first notes of There There burst out of my speakers. The runny nose and persistent cough are a modest price to pay for one of the most fantastic weekends of my life: Radiohead TWICE in Mexico City!

Flashback to September 10, 2001. It's 9pm and I'm at the Santa Maria Novella station in Florence, waiting for a train that will travel all night to Berlin. I get off the train at Bahnhof Zoo at 5pm on September 11 and I see hundreds of people staring at the television screens. The Twin Towers are burning, people around me are shouting in German, and the only word I can register is "terroristen". A couple of hours later, I'm standing at the Parkbühne Wuhlheide with my friends Jan, Raúl, and Tatiana, listening to a very angry Thom Yorke singing "Come on, come on, Holy Roman Empire". The metaphor is too fitting. "Come on if you think, come on if you think, you can take us all." (This historic concert is now the I Might Be Wrong: live recordings.)

Fast forward to Florence, July 9, 2003. I'm at the Piazzale Michelangelo with Jessica, Aranzazú, and Andrés, desperately trying to find a scalper. Outside the concert fence there is a mass of ticketless fans trying to catch a glimpse of the stage by standing on top of cars and trashcans. We roam around the entrance like blood thirsty predators, until the music begins, forcing us to sit outside in resignation. The sense of community is unavoidable in this large group of outcasts, as we all tap our feet and quietly murmur the lyrics of the show we can't see. Thom is almost cruel when he says "There's a gap in between...where I end and you begin."

Then it's August 19, 2008. I cross the street from my apartment in Vancouver and arrive at Thunderbird Stadium with Pablo and Ignacio. A perfect new album and a great venue promise a perfect show. But the sudden combination of rain and an imperfect crowd make it all uncomfortable. O, wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? 

Not for long. 

It's March 14, 2009. I arrive unannounced at my father's 60th birthday party in Mexico City and my sister informs me that, by mere chance, Radiohead is playing this weekend. My heart leaps out of its chamber as I work through my phone list to get tickets (gracias Diana, gracias Pablo). Twenty-four hours later, I'm standing at the Foro Sol, listening to the opening beats of 15 Step and shouting at the top of my lungs. The concert is insuperable, the setlist tailored to perfection. A day later I'm at the exact same spot, next to the central console, listening in disbelief to How to Disappear Completely. I suddenly realize that after two years of living in Vancouver, I forgot what it's like to experience a concert in a Mexico City crowd. The amount of passion, the noise, the warmth are unexplainable... DF, "You're all I need, you're all I need". 

As I grab yet another tissue and blow my nose, I stop and remember the weekend. I close my eyes to relive the euphoria, the shouts and chants coming out of 55,000 voices. My cough interrupts the memory of the bright led tubes just as the last notes of Videotape echo from my ongoing playlist. It suddenly hits me that I will never listen to this (or any) song in the same way. 

(p.s. This is what a real crowd feels like. Or this. And again. At 1:38)

Waiting Impatiently in DF

My absence from this blog in the past week can be explained by a number of correlated factors that kept me away from my computer. There are many stories to tell and many posts waiting in line: the Andrew Bird concert in Seattle, Antony and the Johnsons in Vancouver, another post on The Watchmen, and maybe a joke or two. But today is not the day to write them.

Today, I'm in Mexico City waiting impatiently for my father's suprise birthday party. He's turning 60 and I decided that the best gift would be to grab a plane and show up at his party. Hopefully there will be a microphone lying around somewhere, because not only do I intend to sing, but my father is the funniest talk show host you can imagine when it comes to his own celebrations! Needless to say, I'm planning to make an explosive entrance that involves being concealed inside an enormous cake. I can't wait to see his face! (the interesting thing about surprise parties is that the surprise becomes perfectly reciprocal).

AND, by mere chance, I'm also waiting impatiently for the most anticipated and talked-about event of the year. Radiohead in Mexico City. I repeat, RADIOHEAD in Mexico City! As you may recall, I already saw this tour in Vancouver, but I can't even begin to explain how different this will be. In fact, I can't even say that it's the same tour. (I don't think I need to explain the difference between the boring Vancouver crowds that simply "chill" at concerts and the 80,000 screaming Mexican souls that sing each and every song from beginning to end) Mexico has been waiting 13 years for this concert and it took me only a minute or two of navigating through the radio frequencies today to realize that this megalopolis has high pressure Radiohead pumping through its veins. In other words, the history of Radiohead will have a before DF and an after DF. I hope Thom Yorke understands what he is up against tomorrow night, otherwise he's in for his ultimate surprise party.

Radiohead. In Rain.

Thunderbird Stadium. Vancouver. Rain. Moments ago.
































































(special thanks to Trucha and his waterproof camera)

Prelude to Radiohead

It's 12.07 am this Tuesday and I just saw groups of Radiohead fans already walking towards Thunderbird Stadium! In the darkness, I noticed tents, backpacks, and groups of fans getting ready for a night of waiting. I just got home from the airport and the only reason I'm here (in the blog) is to share that the only reason I'm here (in Vancouver) and ended my Mexico trip short was to see Radiohead in a few hours. But the guys camping out there, in the rain, with plastic sheets to cover them during more than 20 hours before Thom sings his first notes, make my little effort of booking an earlier flight seem insignificant. Hoorah Radiohead fans!

Connecting flights and other marvels

Oh man, I'm suddenly dreading the unlikely, yet ever menacing event of missing my connecting flight tomorrow and getting stranded in Phoenix. Not that I have anything against Arizona, its people, or its 40 degree weather. No. My terror is simply the result of planning a very tight return to Vancouver, trying to maximize time spent in Mexico City, yet arriving in time to see Radiohead tomorrow at Thunderbird Stadium in UBC. But, as I suspected would happen, tonight, the night before the flight, I'm counting the hours left to my departure from Benito Juárez and thinking of all the typically DF scenarios that could impede my scheduled arrival. This city has an almost poetic way of getting in the way.

And if everything goes right, if the traffic behaves, the "baches" don't kill my car, a 58642 ton truck doesn't get stuck in a Viaducto overpass (the clearance has decreased considerably over the years due to a new layer of asphalt added each year to mend the city's mistakes), and the "sindicato" of air traffic controllers doesn't go on strike, I still have to worry about my plane losing it's direction mid-flight when, strangely, everyone on the plane decides to simultaneously open their laptops, creating a sudden and disastrous magnetic field. Or an El Niño style thunderstorm in Phoenix that was mispredicted and re-routes my plane to Texas, or even deeper into the Bible Belt.

This is insomnia.

Your eyes, they turn me.

(simply...speechless)



All sessions from the Basement are being sold on iTunes.