I nabbed a couple of tickets to see Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco (the only member of the bizarro supergroup I’d never heard of before) at the Orpheum last night. I was able to get rid of my extra ticket (to someone who’d driven up from San Diego in hopes of finding an extra ticket to buy), and I think the policy Ticketmaster put in place — tickets are only generated at the moment you hand the attendant the credit card you bought them with, at which point they’re printed on a portable printer and you take them inside — probably reduced the scalping for the show, though looking on Craigslist and seeing tickets going for $300 or more made me wonder…
In a matter of a few weeks, Thom Yorke seems to have assembled a crack band, and the presence of Flea on bass, as energetic and jumpy as ever (see some else’s video), made all the difference. Though we were sitting down for the first few numbers, as though we were “at the cinema,” as Thom said, we were up on our feet from then on, and the songs had an extra punch they don’t have on the record. They played all of the songs from The Eraser, as well as a few new, unfinished songs, some of which may become Radiohead songs in the future. The middle of the set, “And It Rained All Night,” “Harrowdown Hill,” “Cymbal Rush,” followed by Thom solo on “Lotus Flower (Moon Upon A Stick),” “Open the Floodgates,” and “Super Collider” — was an amazing stretch of great, great songs. I’d never been so entranced by completely new, unheard material before. He can do the the loud, wild near-screaming stuff and then go to the most delicate, light falsetto vocals, pitch-perfect, in the next song. It was a great night in the beautiful Orpheum. I brought my old pocket camera, but the results weren’t that great. The camera has, though, developed a weird color-fringing sort of deterioration that gives it a bit of a washed out Polaroid look, which is something.
In other news, I went to my second L.A. Roadrunners Los Angeles Marathon Training Run this weekend; two weeks ago, I decided to sign up for the marathon (March 21, 2010) and see if training with a group for the first time would help me out. It’s already a plus in the motivation department, and helps get me up for a long run at 6:30 on Saturday mornings. We’re getting tips on nutrition, injury prevention, and other stuff, which I pretty much did without in my first marathon (which, by the way, was five years ago this week, yikes). I did my first run with them two weeks ago, then missed last week’s while I was in New York, and now am back for the duration, at least until Christmas. We’re at 8 miles on Saturdays now, which is fine, but adding in a 6 mile “recovery” run on Sundays is interesting. I ran about 34 miles this week, which is a bit of a leap up for me of late, but I feel pretty good. Check back in December when things start ramping up a bit more, and we’ll see how I feel then.
My Photobooth.net partner Tim and I were interviewed in an AP story on photobooths — someone seems to write one of these about once a year — and gave our opinions on the present and future of the dying/re-emerging contraptions.
Aimee and I resumed our weekly hikes with a trip to Calabasas and the Calabasas Peak Trail, a nice hike on a crisp morning, or at least as crisp as they get around here. More photos here.
We also took advantage, briefly, of the free museum admission day on Saturday and visited the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica. It was housed in a beautiful old 19th century residence, and featured a lot of nice furnishings and such, but the exhibition space was in between shows, so there wasn’t much for us to see.
