TWO MONTHS AFTER this rehearsal, the guys find themselves setting up their gear at Station Four, a hard-rock bar near the river in downtown St. Paul. This is a place where Pabsts are bought two at a time, where whiskey is poured rather than mixed, where the crowd is mellow if only one of the three urinals gets puked on by night's end.
Nick Vlcek
Nick Vlcek
Rehearsing inside the Lake Vadnais church
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Getting to the music room requires one to step down a short set of worn wooden stairs. It's nothing more challenging than stepping down into a garage, but the level of intoxication among patrons makes this endeavor the most difficult part of the night for some.
The band is trying an experiment tonight. They want to play a single two-hour-and-20-minute set, no breaks, and minimal pauses between songs. It's a test to see if they can keep an audience glued. "We noticed people leaving between sets," Marc Z said before the concert. "So we thought we might as well just play one giant one and push ourselves to see how far we could go."
As the band rocks through their first few songs, Fox no longer hides. Instead of sheepishly singing the vocals, he gives angst-riddled winces just behind the mic, spreads his arms wide, and passionately imbues emotion into every lyric. At times, he looks more like Michael Stipe than Thom Yorke, but no matter, his soul is in it and his movements elicit whoops from the crowd.
One listener goes nuts when the band leads into "You." Toward the back of the room, two guys bounce in place, shaking their heads on beat while singing along to the tunes without missing a word. One turns to his friend and shouts over the music, "These guys play all their hardest songs!" The other guy nods. Upon approach, he reaches down and lifts up his pant leg to show off a Radiohead tattoo on the back of his calf: the bear logo, a cuddly Ursus with bared teeth.
The guy introduces himself as Joey Kearney. Two years ago, he waited for eight hours in the middle of Chicago's Grant Park to watch Radiohead play the Lollapolooza music festival. It was scorching that day as he stood in the sun in a grass field without trees. By the time Radiohead finally took the stage, another 75,000 people had joined with him to see the same act.
"But when they finally came on, I forgot about standing all day with no room to move my arms," he recalls. "It was the best live show I've ever seen. I'd do it again."
For Kearney, it doesn't matter that the song is being recreated live by guys with backgrounds in accounting and data analysis. "Look, if I was Thom Yorke and saw these guys playing my own songs in the manner they play them, I would be pretty happy."
He mentions how Radiohead encourage their fans to mess with their music. With In Rainbows, the band made stems of each instrumental track available for download so fans could remix the songs on their laptops. And recently, the band announced the winners of a music video competition that had fans create their own animated interpretations of songs off the album. The band was so impressed by the quality of the submissions they provided an additional $30,000 in prize money and awarded first place to four videos.
Back inside the St. Paul bar, a small group stands beneath the stage to watch Fox flail his arms. Behind the keys, Marc Z has his eyes shut as his hair bounces around his head. On the bass, Kee continues to concentrate on the beat patterns along with Hill, who is busy keeping rhythm along with Hussain. Meanwhile, Wycoff focuses all his attention on his guitar, punctuating each note with self-assured control.
It's not Radiohead, but tonight, it's the next best thing.
