One song is not enough at all to pay tribute to one of the most inventive, adventurous and creative contemporary bands.
I know it sounds like the 1000 guys who claimed to have been at the first Velvet Underground gig (that took place in front of 20 people), but I really saw Radiohead for their first –or almost first– concert in France when they raised the curtain for James, a half forgotten band from the Brit Pop wave, which still gains by being listened to.
Opening bands are often mistreated by the audience, but then after 30 seconds, a religious silence had gripped the theatre and everybody was wondering "what the fuck, who are these guys?". It was just before the tidal wave of Creep.
They could have been resting on their laurels after such a success and cook the same recipe (a guitar band with perfect melodies) again and again, but they chose the courageous way of a perpetual reinvention.
It's not surprising that they collaborated with other artists present in my own private landscape: Björk of course (I’ve Seen It All, 2000), PJ Harvey (The Mess We’re In, One Line, Beautiful Feeling, 2000), and Sigur Rós, whom they invited as guests in 2000 for a European tour that helped launch their careers.
That's probably the band I've seen the most often. I particularly remember a show at the Café de la Danse, a small venue in Paris, with a beautiful wall of nude bricks as stage background. It was like a cathedral and the show like a communion.
More recently, I've been to Glasgow for the TRNSMT festival. The open-air stage was so huge that the one of Café de la Danse was tiny but the magic still worked.
