Radiohead - 051108

So, Radiohead at Nissan Pavilion yesterday. Yes, on Mother's Day, but we ended up celebrating it the day before.

Anyhoo, to sum up how I feel today. My shoulders, ass, and thighs are sore; my throat is burning and the sight of rain positively makes me sick to the stomach.

Yeah.

Don't get me wrong, the Radiohead performance was amazing. From what I've read, it was probably their best setlist so far on the tour. They did all of In Rainbows, even a song from their B-Sides, Paranoid Android(!) and Green Plastic Trees(!!) and other awesome stuff, playing for about two and a half hours. Plus, Thom was rather snarky, giggling when he messed up on "Faust Arp" twice and even though we were relegated to the right side of the stage, we got a good view of Johnny, who is equally as interesting to watch as Thom Yorke. The set looked amazing and the crowd went nuts.

But, as someone as succinctly put it on last.fm, this was probably the best and worst concert experience in my life.


So, everyone who lives in the DC metro area knows about the ridiculous rain that we've been getting lately.

And Nissa Pavilion is an outdoor venue. Put the two and two together.

Okay, let me recap the day.

My sister and I are usually notoriously early for any concert that we manage to get general admission tickets for and Radiohead is no exception. So we ate around noon and headed off towards Bristow, VA, which is an hour drive from my place. We get there around 1, expecting a line but surprise! The PARKING LOT wasn't open until 4, so we were promptly turned around and went off to search for a shopping center to distract us until 4.

After a brief romp through the nearby Best Buy and Target, we finally ended up at Starbucks and chilled there with books we bought at Target. About an hour into it, we met up with a girl from Jersey that was also going to the show but got turned away as well (she got dropped off in a cab!). So being good people, we offered her to ride along with us to the show.

We get there, the rain starts to pour and Nissan figured they let us in a half hour earlier since there was a queue of cars, ours included, waiting outside of the lots. We got to the gate and waited around for 3 hours, bonding with people over our love for Radiohead (it's great meeting other people!).

We were pretty fortunate to be in the front where the gate was, because there was a tiny roof over it and me and my sister stayed relatively dry while we waited outside. Everyone else was getting SOAKED. All that is about to change, however...

The gates opened at 6:30. Well, actually, some douche guard took his time opening OUR gate and we managed to fall behind about 10 or so people, which sucked. Then, always the best part of trying to get front row, the RUNNING to the stage, which was a really, really long way, but they STOPPED us to the pit, making us wait about another 10 minutes in the rain. I was already bogged down by the rain, got seperated from my sister, met up with her at the stage (at a really bad spot too) and found that SHE got knocked over by some other douche.

We were inside and we had cover over our heads, but it was still an outdoor venue. We were pretty much soaked to our skin, our clothes completely wet and the chilly wind did not help. We shivered like crazy, my legs and fingers were numb and... yeah, it was just terrible. Throughout the show, the weather did not let up and we were probably suffering from hypothermia by the time Radiohead came on.

During the show, some dude behind us noticed how we were shivering really violently and offered us to come under his blanket ($15 blanket they were selling there, btw). I declined, but my sister was far worse off than I was at that point and gratefully went under the blanket. Then he proceeded to dryhump her the entire time. I was alarmed at first, but (as my sister revealed to me later), my sister let him do it because all she really wanted was the blanket. She got the dude's number but she laughed it off.

As the show ended, I was relatively damp as opposed to being super soaked but we had to venture out into the rain again. The paths were veritable flowing rivers when we walked out and apparently, a lot of roads around there were flooded to hell. As we tried to get out, a random guy asked if we could take him somewhere where he could grab a cab. Since we were dropping that girl we picked up earlier off at the Best Buy, we took him in as well. We later found out that he was staying at Gaylord over at National Harbor (he flew in from Cali for business) so we just dropped him off there.

All in all, Nissan proved, yet again, to be a venue made of fail and the weather did not help it at all. Last time we were there for Coldplay and ended up staying in traffic for about three hours, missing the opening act completely. This time, I heard people stayed in traffic for 4-5 hours and missed the show completely. Not to mention that the parking lot was a complete mess. GUH.


I probably had a lot more to write but my shoulders hurt.

Also, I managed to score As in classes that I never though I would get (anthro! digital photography! argument!) because my attendance has been terrible. Yays!