On wednesday I went to see Radiohead in Osaka. After class was over I went down to the dorm and got ready to leave before dashing of towards the busstop with the bus that would take me to Hoshigaoka station. After leaving the bus I went down the stairs leading to te subway. Of course at this point there are bound to be two old ladies blocking the stairs down, walking at slow speed because, oohf the left lady has had this hurt in her leg since last saturday 10 years ago and she can’t for the life of her
remember why. Well anyway. After a painful stair-walk and entering the subway at high speed almost not catching the ticket coming out, I am finally at peace amongst a club of salarymen talking about what happened at work. I sat. Finally at Nagoya station I manage to screw a bit up. I have never taken the shinkansen or any similar trains before. Or rather I had never experienced putting two tickets at the same time inte the ticke machine… Anyway I got through. And miraculously ended up walking back an forth looking for the right shinkansen entrance, ignoring all the big obvious signs saying “Shinkansen ➡”yeah yeah. I did actually find out in good time for the train though.
The shinkansen platform is very easy navigating and you feel really cool standing there for the first time. Once the train rolls in to the platform, a fierce looking long and slender train, you instantly feel that “yeah! I am going high-speed.”. And that’s exactly what you do as well. You enter the train which is actually more roomy than what you first thought. Once sitting down on the train you feel really comfortable and you have got nice space for legs and luggage. Almost like taking a first-class airplane.
The train starts to accelerate out of the station and continues well out of the station as well. You can really feel the acceleration in the train and notice the gradual increase in speed just by watching out the window.
Now I thought I had some time to do my homework as travelling 170 kilometres would take some time. But I was wrong. It took 40 minutes, through which I sat playing with my iphone, an amusing instrument, before we reached Kyoto and had a brief 1 min stop. And by that i mean 1 min. The train accelerated again and I could soon hear that we were arriving at Shin-Osaka. I hurried to take on my shoes and see if I had lost some values on the train, said goodbye to the girl I had sat beside, she was going to Kobe, and got of the train, which immediately started off again. Well in Shin-Osaka I had to find the special rapid service i would take to Osaka. Easier said than done. Well I found out that almost all local trains, even the subway stops by Osaka. Anyway I boarded the rapid service it took 5 min. and I reached Osaka. From there I had a hassle finding my way to Asashiobashi, because of transfers.
In Asashiobashi I knew my way. As I had familiarized with it on google maps. At first I thought “Hm, is it supposed to be a Radiohead concert here?!” I could not see any people around but as I came closer to the gym, I could see that a whole mass of people had gathered.
I took a tour around the waiting area to find out what it looked like, then I went to the closest convenience store, a 7Eleven, to buy myself some food. Upon coming back to the waiting area I could see that a lot more people had gathered up in the queues. I sat down in front of all the queues to have my lunch. And had a nice view of everyone from the bottom of the stairs. After finishing my lunch I started wandering up and down the queues to see if there were someone I knew there whom I could sneak in there. For I actually did know some people who where going but I didn't have their phone number unfortunately. About one hour before the concert I stalled myself at a stand close to the queue A selling CD's. My ticket said Block A so I reckoned it was the right queue. I stood there for some time pretending to wait for someone. The reason why I snuck in the queue was because by the time I had gotten back for the "convi" there were already 1 000 people queued up in that queue. I did all the right things when sneaking into a queue and nobody seemed to take care or notice. Only a pair of girls discovered. But it seemed they were too immensely taken by my looks to even take notice of what I did.
I had bought myself a pack of Pocky's that I was supposed to
eat while waiting for the concert to start, but however unfortunately I had to throw them as they were not allowed in the hall. I got into the hall as one of the first people. And to my great surprise I saw that the ones with block A tickets had front row stands. I got myself a nice spot, put my bag down and started waiting.
The hall filled slowly up with people. People passed by me and I don't think I even have numbers for how many stupid people that managed to park in the security walkway. No matter how many times the security said that they had to move. This was also the case for two girls who found out that they wanted to stand close to where I was. And managed to stop in the walkway. And when they were ordered away from there they immediately took place in front of me instead. For what reason I don't know..
Anyway. The concert started after a while.
Electronica had been warming up for the concert and it didn't come as a shock that the warm-up band was a Hip hop/Electronica duo from Germany called ModeSelektor. The reason for them warming up was simply because they are one of Thom Yorke's favourite bands. I have nothing to say to his taste however as the duo was quite good.
They played for a good 40 mins. and managed to get the crowd quite warm.
After some time to rig the Radiohead's scene and make sure everything was OK, it was time for the main act:
Radiohead opened the concert with some electronic background music while entering the scene and started immediately playing the opening song of their new album; 15 Step from In Rainbows.
The song switch the crowd on immediately and everybody started dancing, including Thom Yorke who seemed well more prepared than the audience.
Now it is hard to explain how the concert went on, but I can say as much as the setlist was a real good one. I'll post a link with it further down the page. And fortunately but at the same time unfortunately it was a quite a special setlist as it contained lot's of Radioheads more unheard songs. It sometimes took the Audience a while to recognize the intro of the song. But once they did they knew the song in and out.
Radiohead did two encores the first one being a really good one. I really liked the end of the first encore which ended with all the band members leaving the stage one and one after having played "Everything in its Right Place" and keeping the music alive.
The concert was an amazing one. And I truly recommend people watching them live as they in my opinion are more of a live band than studio band. And especially Thom Yorke seems to like stage.
I will definitely start listening to more radiohead after this concert. It is a really good band. Although it may take you some time to get accustomed to the music.
When it comes to my travelling back to Nagoya. I ended up walking up and down Umeda and Yodobashi in Osaka looking for a Manga Cafe. After finding one I spent 5 hours sleeping in a chair at the cost of 2 000 Yen.
I woke up at 5 the following day and got my way to Shin-Osaka and took the 6 o'clock shinkansen back to Nagoya, arriving 7 am in Nagoya and 7.40 at my dorm. The time at which I usually get up in the morning. And I went to school as normal the day after.
Tired but feeling really good!
じゃ、それでけっこう。またこんどね。おやすみなさい。
Links:
Setlist
My favourite song at the concert bad sound quality but:..
Everything in its Right Place
