Why Radiohead In Rainbows From The Basement Is The Most Timeless &Essential Performance By The…

There’s something about connecting with music, and the feeling of listening to something that moves you. Apart from grooving to music…

There’s something about connecting with music, and the feeling of listening to something that moves you. Apart from grooving to music, there’s an intimate connection & tryst that the artist and listeners have with each other. It’s the most unspoken & underrated aspect about music. The feeling. The vibe. And of course the memory invocation, if I might call it that.

Watching a live performance that’s spectacular can be an ultimate adrenaline & dopamine rush. From spectacular visuals & the music blasting through a supermassive sound system at Glastonbury & dancing with your girlfriend; music moves people.

In an earlier post I explored how valuable music & the arts are in our lives by listening to the accounts of holocaust survivors in this piece: Carrying The Light In Humanity’s Darkest Hours: Why We Must Re-Think The Value Of Music & The Arts

And in another post I explored why music is part of something greater than ourselves in: What Is The Point Of Music?

However, with the internet & YouTube it’s now possible to get a front row seat to your favourite band & watch them perform live from your bedroom.

One such performance, which according to me, is the most intimate, yet explosive & exposed performance of a band, that transcend boundaries & divides, a band that have worldwide acclaim, none other than Radiohead.

And this performance that I’m talking about is immaculate.

This performance borders on sacred for me, and one that is perhaps the greatest take of the band in their proverbial prime.

The reason that Radiohead have such worldwide acclaim is that they tell it like it is. Even the ugly, sad, monotonous & dreary & also the light, and love & ecstasy & emotions we face through the ebbs & flows of life; Radiohead capture it all.

In truth, this band Thom Yorke(vocals), Jonny Greenwood(lead), Ed O’Brien(guitar), Colin Greenwood(bass), and Philip Selway(drums), are the embodiment of a perfect band line up, with unrivaled chemistry who are ever so tight & might I add all geniuses in their own right.

Radiohead push technology, from gear to performance & production to deliver something that is so unbelievably inimitable & emotive.

The band from Oxford, stride genres, divides, and innovate, innovate, innovate. Their sound is the byproduct of years of evolution.

From the days of t their debut LP — Pablo Honey, which in conception, sound & songwriting was rather premature & nascent. But then with OK Computer, Kid A & right up to A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead touch upon and unravel a journey through life with all the elements in it; the good days & bad.

This performance, called ‘Radiohead — In Rainbows — From The Basement’ is the band coming full circle to deliver a timeless take of which is arguably their best album(for me at least) — In Rainbows.

This particular performance was introduced to me fresh in 2011, I’m guessing it was recorded in 2009 and made it’s way on to YouTube a bit later. But the summer of 2011, is when I first discovered this performance.

And the moment I hit play & watched & heard it, I was hooked. My college mates & I would gather in my room in our penthouse apartment, and my room being the biggest and the one that led to the terrace; we would play it on the 5.1 channel sound system I had set up around the bed, and we would find space to sit around in my room, and play this performance on the speakers. Over & over & over & just vibe out.

That was the summer of 2011.

It’s now been 11 years since then, and as I play this performance after nearly a year or so, I’m left awestruck again.

From Philip’s opening beat to ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’, & Thom’s riff to ‘Bodysnatchers’ & on piano on ‘Videotape’ & on vocals on ‘Reckoner’ & throughout, Colin’s bassline on ‘15th Step’, ‘The Gloaming’ & others, with Jonny on lead & operating the drum machine or sequencer and geeking out on the gear, and Ed chipping in with his bit, it’s a take of Radiohead, in their process & progressively unraveling emotion with every song that begins after one ends.

The entire set consists of all the songs on In Rainbows along with B-sides & outtakes. Radiohead nail every song, and put in a performance that’s both platonic & unmistakably their trademark sound.

It’s the crowning jewel in the vast sea of Radiohead performances & one that we can see the band up close do what they do best — play f*cking music that’s both surreal, pushes technology, & is innovative & relevant.

It’s the perfect performance of a band in their element & in their widely accepted prime.

Now, looking back, the performance is a live set that hasn’t aged at all and for me, is like catching the rays of the sun setting in the western sky of that 2011 summer while this set played, leaving embers of golden rays that travel at the speed of light that bend spacetime & slide into the present, & edge nearer to becoming part of every perfect sunset in the years since.

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