No. 714 – The Tourist

Performer: Radiohead

Songwriters: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, Colin Greenwood, Phil Selway

Original Release: OK Computer

Year: 1997

Definitive Version: None

I saw Radiohead about two weeks ago, and for a long time, I said that as soon as I saw everyone I wanted to see, I was going to retire from big-venue concerts. Radiohead was the last group that I wanted to see. Too bad I have tickets already purchased for five more shows, beginning next month with Seal (and followed by My Morning Jacket, Rush, Peter Gabriel and Grizzly Bear).

OK, so I’m now formally retired from going to see anyone—ever—at an open-air venue. It doesn’t matter where. I’ve seen shows at outdoor amphitheaters in Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit and Indianapolis. They all suck.

I mean, the venues themselves are fine, but I no longer can take the traffic—the lack of exits, the complete lack of organization in the parking lots and the resulting 1 hour waste of my life spent in an idling car while five southern ends of north-bound horses all create their own lanes because they can’t be bothered with waiting in line. (OK, if Robbie Robertson EVER toured, which he never does, and the only place he was going to play in the Midwest was an outdoor venue, I’d go. That’s the ONLY exception.)

The Radiohead show itself was great, very much like a full-on rave minus the ecstacy, although I would have liked them to play a few more guitar songs like this one, which apparently they’ve played at several stops on the current tour but not ours. Oh well. I don’t feel gypped.

Anyway, at Tom’s Bachelor party in June 1998, when I was listening to OK Computer for the first time, I was nervous the morning of the actual whitewater trip. As mentioned, I had been down the New River twice before, and they were both pretty hairy rides. It’s like an amusement park in that it’s an adrenaline rush, but unlike an amusement park, you’re in nature and nature is random. You have to respect that something unexpected could kill you.

The good news was although Tom was looking to have a little bit of an adrenaline surge, it was more about the fun, so we were going to take only the one-day Upper New trip. In other words, we would get out of the river before the river got too hairy. It wasn’t entirely a drift-and-swim trip, but it mostly was.

My favorite part was a stopping point called Jump Rock, which was as advertised—a rock maybe 15, 20 feet above the water that you could climb up and jump off into the river. What we didn’t know until we arrived there was that our whitewater guide company was filming folks jumping to show back at the visitors center.

So that meant everybody in the bachelor party got their comedy gameface on. Steve turned to me and said we got to do something, what? The choice seemed obvious: We have to Butch Cassidy it. We did, to some mirth at the rock but more mirth when we got back to the ranch and saw ourselves properly setting it up and completing it with the s-word cutoff as we hit the water.

The rest of the day—and trip—was something of a blur. I had the worst run of poker luck I ever had after the rafting trip—all second-best hands. You know what happens when you have the second-best hand in poker a few times in a row, right? Yep, you get wiped out, so that meant I didn’t have anything to do after dinner, which would make for a long night of just drinking and watching porn—not my preferred activities.

A few guys were staying at a camping site, and they were having a cookout that night, so I stayed longer than I might have to hang out around the bonfire while everyone else who stayed at the cabin went back as soon as dinner was over to play cards.

It wasn't the best weekend I ever had, but it was all right, and after feeling left out for most of the previous decade due to being away from home most of the time, I was happy just to have been included.