This was my first Radiohead concert, and what a fuckin great concert!
Les eurockeennes is one of the biggest french open-air festival and Radiohead already played there in 1997.
I stayed during the whole festival and I have to say that there hasn't been more people than for this concert during the whole three days!!! I was pretty close to the front and I met a lot of people absolutely crazy about radiohead (like me in a way). It was amazing to see how many people came only for this show and didn't really care about the others scheduled the same day (even though some big band like tricky or massive attack were planed..). In fact, friday july 4th was the first day beeing sold out.

But let's get to the real stuff.

Like all of their recent gigs, Oxford's greatest band began with There There. The whole crowd was screaming and when the band finally appeared EVERYBODY took a picture of them. It was pretty impressive to see all those flashes (kind of like when Beckham would shoot a free kick in Japan during the last world cup...)
Thom's voices was so nice and we could tell that the band was glad to be back. A guy came to me during There There and told me that "they're simply the best band in the world, they're really the best". At the end of this song, Thom sayed "merci tout le monde" and showed that he knew some french words... Ahah.
The next song was 2+2=5. When Thom got to "Pay attention", everybody jumped everywhere and went crazy. We couldn't control our moves and I lost my spot next to the front, ARG.
Then, Morning bell (Kid A's version). All the people sang along with Thom and I was impressed by everyone knowing the lyrics (even if they re not really hard to memorize...).
When Lucky came, everybody screamed like babies. For this song, not a lot of people sang, everyone was listening to Thom like he was God...
The show went on and the 7th song was the National Anthem. Thom acted like a soldier. Making fun of the "stupid-patriotism-thing" raising all accross the world?After this song, a bit of Hunting bears was played, a sort of transition to The Gloaming.
During this song, the sound was SO loud and we could bearly hear Thom's voice...
Then, I was actually very surprised by the fact that Radiohead played a lot of there old songs.
They played songs taken from the bends which is now 8 years old!!!
Everybody was still knowing them very well and was happy to hear them again.
I had rained from a time to another during the evening but it was funny to see that when Thom sang "Rain down" from Paranoid Android, it began to rain again! A bit like the weather also was listening to the gig and put some rain drops for Paranoid Android!!!!
Not a lot of people (including myself) did know After A Goldrush (Neil Young Cover), but this song showed us again how Thom's voice was wonderfull! It was actually an introduction to Everything in it s right place witch closed the first part of the show.

30 seconds of encore and the band came back.

Exit Music (for a film) was welcomed like a real gift and we could feel the emotion in the public.
Kid A was really fantastic, it sounded really less electronic.
But the best part of this show was Karma police, not only because this song is wonderfull but also because at the end Thom sang an “a capella” version of the chorus with the public. It was so beautiful and I think that it showed how Thom was happy to be here.
Between the songs Thom didn t speak a lot, saying only some "merci tout le monde" in a bizar way!
The only time he sayed more than 2 or 3 words was to say "Thank you for beeing a lovely audience, we'll see you soon"
The only "bad" thing is that the festival planned 1.30 hours and so Radiohead couldn't play more. There hasn t been a second encore but the a capella version of karma police was really worth it!!!!!!
This concert has definitly been the best of my life. Anyway, the only fact to see Radiohead nowadays is a big chance !!!!

PJ