Radiohead at The Hollywood Bowl 2008

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing my favorite band in the world, Radiohead, perform at The Hollywood Bowl, one of the best concert venues I’ve ever experienced. This was my third time seeing Radiohead, the first being post Kid A, and the second being post-Hail to the Thief, the first time being one of my favorite concerts ever, the second being a pretty big disappointment, mostly because Hail to the Thief is crap. But last night could easily be described as one of the single best, if not THE best concert that I’ve ever seen.

The playlist was awesome, hitting songs from every album, and to my enjoyment, they finally didn’t play Creep, thank the gods. Of everything played the most surprising song was definitely Street Spirit, which I totally enjoyed, and was glad they played that instead of The Bends. The most improved song they played was The Gloaming, which is the second video above. I LOATHE The Gloaming, it’s probably my least favorite song ever, but they made it a little dancier, almost a remix of it’s original self, and it was pretty damn rad.

The absolute BEST part of the show though (and possibly the show-stealer), was the lighting. The top video up there is a performance of The National Anthem which should give you a taste of how extremely overwhelming and beautiful the effects were. The Gloaming was also really beautiful and helped to enhance the mood as well. The colors being shot out by those bars was absolutely incredible, I haven’t ever seen anything like this done to this level, it’s a pretty damn hard act to follow.

Hopefully some of you will be seeing Radiohead in the near-future, or possibly already have? I really hope they release a DVD of a live-performance, I’d snatch it up in a heartbeat.

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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August 25, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby

Nude Remix by James Houston

Artist James Houston was somewhat frustrated with Radiohead’s Nude Remix contest, as he put it, “Nude is in 6/8 timing, and 63bpm. Most music that’s played in clubs is around 120bpm and usually 4/4 timing.” So he went an entirely different route, drawing inspiration from the lyrics and alternate title, Big Ideas: Don’t Get Any. From that he recreated the song using some really weird shit, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, an Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer, a HP Scanjet 3c, and a Hard Drive array, turning these weird odds and ends into his instruments.

What he ended up creating is nothing short of genius. It’s not only the way the song came out sounding, but also in the way he shot the video above. Visually it reminds of the way that Scott Hansen colors his photos, like old sun-damaged film, as well as lots of steady close up shots of all the different pieces doing their part. Radiohead needs to get this guy on the phone and have him make a commercial or something for them, I mean the video has been viewed over 100,000 times in the last 2 days alone, that’s definitely saying something. Here’s hoping we see more from this brilliant guy.

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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June 6, 2008 - See more posts by Bobby

Radiohead Countdown Wallpaper: #7 of 7 In Rainbows


So here it is, the final wallpaper in the Radiohead Wallpaper Countdown.
This for the new album, In Rainbows, which I’m currently listening to in fact. I’m 4 songs in, and already in love with it.
The album so far sounds really lo-fi, and extremely jazzy. Thom Yorke’s vocals sound like a female, blues singer from the 40′s, and Phil’s drumming is completely jazz inspired. But at the same time, they’ve layered a lot of sounds, and samples into it.

I know I’m going to be listening to this obsessively for the new few weeks. I am so not disappointed, and was rather happy to give them my $10. If you were skeptical at all about this album, I’d say you have nothing to worry about.

As for the wallpaper above, it was pretty hard to come up with a wallpaper for an album I’d never heard. And though it looks pretty simple, there were a lot of weird things put into it. The background is a blown up picture of a diamond, with a rainbow gradient over it, then the mosaic filter, and darkened a ton. The bright colored rainbow page things are from a photo of a real rainbow, but obviously I tweaked the hell out of it. And the words came from something Thom posted on Dead Air Space, so I thought it was fitting to place it in there.

I hope everyone has enjoyed all of the wallpapers! I know next time I’m going to give myself a much larger head start, and not make each one of these each day I need to release them.
It’s going to be really nice to get back on a better sleeping pattern, haha…

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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October 10, 2007 - See more posts by Bobby

Radiohead Countdown Wallpaper: #6 of 7 Hail to the Thief


There’s only one more day until the new Radiohead album is released! Todays wallpaper, although extremely late, might be one of my favorites. It’s for their album Hail to the Thief, and happens to be my second least favorite album of theirs. Although it has a lot of great songs on it, it didn’t flow quite like the other albums. It reminds me of what happened with Travis. They came out with 2 great albums, and then decided to write a political-tinged one, and it wasn’t so great. But their new album is great… so maybe Radiohead will follow a similar pattern?

This album was completely influenced by the name of the album. Hail to the Thief indeed. I just love that he’s staring down some scary ass wolf (a reference to the last song). Although, he looks like he could be smart here, so that doesn’t quite fit. Anyhow, I was pretty pleased with how my drawing came out, so there’s that.

Tomorrow is the last wallpaper, and at midnight, the new album will come out!

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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October 8, 2007 - See more posts by Bobby

Radiohead Countdown Wallpaper: #5 of 7 Amnesiac


There are only 3 to 4-ish days before the new Radiohead comes out, so the countdown continues!
Today’s wallpaper is Amnesiac, one of my favorites, but not quite as good as the previous two albums. The main inspiration for this wallpaper was something how Thom Yorke described the album:

“I read that the gnostics believe when we are born we are forced to forget where we have come from in order to deal with the trauma of arriving in this life. I thought this was really fascinating. It’s like the river of forgetfulness. It may have been recorded at same time (as Kid A)… but it comes from a different place I think. It sounds like finding an old chest in someone’s attic with all these notes and maps and drawings and descriptions of going to a place you cannot remember. That’s what I think anyway.”

Tomorrow’s wallpaper is Hail to the Thief, which is sure to be politically tinged, I can promise you that.

Bobby

Bobby Solomon

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October 7, 2007 - See more posts by Bobby

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