I don’t mean to steer attention away from our ongoing Alanis Morissette "discussion." (What’s more, C-VILLE’s own Caite White will have plenty to add in next week’s issue for all of you jagged little pills.) But rather than spend yesterday evening with Alanis, a client of locally owned Red Light Management, I spent two hours with another act with local ties: Radiohead, whose record In Rainbows was distributed domestically by ATO Records and the label’s offshoot, TBD Records. (The TBD site currently resembles a Radiohead fanclub.)
National Public Radio broadcast the band’s recent gig at the Santa Barbara Bowl and offered the set as a podcast on its website. Give it a listen here.
It’s a pretty great live gig, save for the fellow that sings back-up on "Karma Police." (Now he sounds like a detuned radio.) "Jigsaw Falling into Place" is ferocious, and the performance of "Idioteque" that closes the band’s encore does a good job of summing up, in audio, just how completely Thom Yorke loses it onstage when he sings that song.
Give it a listen and leave your thoughts on the set here. I don’t know that anyone in town would make a strong case for not wanting the band to play here, though if anyone wants to make that argument, well, have at it.
Sidenote: ATO Records seems to have a bit of a pattern going with three-letter acronyms—ATO, TBD, etc. (That last one isn’t an ATO imprint.) Who wants to propose the next ATO Records label acronym? I’d offer "WTF," but as I found here, that one might be a bit confusing.