Last night, on the first evening of Outside Lands in San Francisco, Radiohead took the stage as the final act. Playing to an absolutely packed Polo Grounds, the band tackled some new favorites and some old classics in what I thought was a pretty well balanced set list. Thanks to 58hours.com for the complete set list. The group came out promptly on time and rolled through their first songs. I thought the standouts of the show were “Videotape” and “Idioteque” followed by “Karma Police” and the ending duo of “Fake Plastic Trees” and “Everything in Its Right Place.” The problem, however, was that when everyone who wanted to see Radiohead at this three day festival paid $100 for their tickets, I doubt they thought that they would get a show with not one but two audio cut outs. Once in the beginning of the show and then, very unfortunately, in the middle of “All I Need,” the sound cut out completely for 20-30 seconds.
While Radiohead kicked ass in their set, turning dark and somber tunes into crowd-aweing pieces and their more upbeat tracks into high energy beautiful chaos, I have never seen a professional concert of this magnitude have the kind of inexcusable sound issues that they had last night. Yorke apologized for it multiple times, but for the price people paid to see them, there shouldn’t be issues like this.
Outside Lands continues today and tomorrow in Golden Gate Park with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers headlining this evening and Jack Johnson on Sunday.
