I’ve got to chime in on this too even though I’m obviously too late. I’m interested to hear what you thought about the show…
I went and saw Radiohead in an arena venue as well two weekends ago in Houston. It was a spectacular show, musically. I also have a few freinds who saw them the following week in Austin and reported having the same experience. While I agree that the Bends was a mind blowing album, I also really loved Kid A, and they played a lot of that. They are definitely different than DJ, but that’s okay. It’s good different, in my opinion.
The really funny thing is that I live in Dallas, and on the drive down to Houston, I was listening to a lot of DJ. When I arrived at my buddy’s place, I told him that the only thing that would make this show better was if it were to start with, “And for tonight only – special opener Dinosaur Jr.” Didn’t happen. But it was a kick ass show anyway. Damn near perfect, actually.
And as to the money… Radiohead has a much, much larger fanbase than Dinosaur Jr. If they didn’t play in large venues, they wouldn’t be able to reach as large of a population of that fanbase, and that would suck. As long as the quality of the sound is as good as it was at the Toyota Center, I can be happy. Of course, with large venues come large price tags. I would think that Radiohead has a bit more overhead to cover than DJ does. There are definitely pluses to seeing a show in an intimate setting, but sometimes if you like the music, you take it where you can get it. When I saw DJ at Lollapalooza, it wasn’t exactly a small crowd… Then again, I’ve seen them several times in Austin for smaller shows, and it was just as good.
