HOW GOOD IS THIS!!!??? – NUMBER 24 | THE RECOMMENDER | Brighton's essential new music blog

Photo by Rony Alwin

This section of our blog is for those individual surprises that don’t warrant or qualify for their own ‘Gig List’ or fully fledged ‘Recommender’ sections, but they are still such magical gems that we really can’t help but share them with you…

And so to a very special moment, (although admittedly a slightly self-indulgent one). This is precisely just that – a moment.

Yeah on this blog we are all about new music and recommending new things, but we have a respect for those things that give us the rockbed of the world’s music. One of the key pieces of that column in which all other bands stand is RADIOHEAD.

Moody, shoe-gazing, paranoid, off kilter, depressing bastards that they are. It is undeniable that they create magical, emotional, move-you-to-within-an-inch-of-your-soul music.

We are listing for you today an mp3 picked up from Chris Bradford, (a big music fan and very much an inspiration when it comes to selecting the coolest stuff life throws up), of a live performance by Radiohead that they performed in South Park, Oxford, back in July 2001. It was a homecoming gig in every sense from the most successful band ever to emerge from that city.

Both me and Chris were there in the moment at South Park. This mp3 joins us at the end of one of the most outstanding gigs you’re ever likely to view. A true ‘we were there‘ moment’.

Usually rain at an open air gig is sure to ruin it, but at a Radiohead homecoming the opening heavens never seemed a more appropriate thing. We were running for cover knowing that the rain would drench us, right as the set was coming to a close, but as we turned to hear this tune start up, cover seemed the last thing we required.

We stopped in our tracks and stood there in a torrential pour, fully open to the elements and arm in arm as the band played out a tune that had evaded their live sets for years. A fans favourite – the classic song – Creep.

As they plucked those first few notes, it went on to be a true show-stopper. Totally unplanned by the band prior to the gig, (In fact, now on their 3rd encore, they were starting the track ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’, but the rain had created such havoc on stage that they had to abandon it after a false start). Thankfully it was the song Creep that they then turned to for an end of show climax.

Any fan of Radiohead will enjoy this, particularly at 3 mins and 24 seconds in, when Thom Yorke holds that single note well beyond the music chords stop. A real lump in your throat moment.

You would have to be deaf not to appreciate this and now you too can get as close to that moment as is possible, 8 years after it’s passing.