In Which I Can’t Move On To A New Topic Quite Yet
Posted on May 12, 2008 by andrew
As you may or may not know, Radiohead was attempting to make this tour a bit more friendly to the environment than the typical ginormous rock tour. In light of last night’s fiasco in which several thousands of cars circled aimlessly around Virginia for upwards of three hours, spewing carbon (among other things) into our atmosphere all the while and wasting gallons upon gallons of gasoline, I thought I would make this list of tours and concerts that have been greener than Radiohead’s attempt at a green tour. Perhaps the band can use this list for reference when it comes time for their next effort.
- Al Gore’s Live Earth shows.
- That local band whose members all live in Mt. Pleasant that alternates between playing DC9 and the Velvet Lounge every other week.
- The Tibetan Freedom Concert when the lighting strike resulted in all of RFK Stadium’s power being shut off and all of us having nearly as good a time running around in the mud without any actual music as we would have if bands like… Radiohead… had actual gone on as scheduled. Holy crap, I just realized I’ve missed Radiohead three times due to weather.1
- My younger brother’s high school band’s trip to Florida, which involved moving 50 or so students plus instruments and chaperones from Baltimore to Florida and then moving them around Disney World for a week.
- R.E.M.’s tour in support of their album Green.
- On a similar note, any tour by Green Day.
- U2’s “PopMart” tour.
- The second was on the Kid A/Amnesiac tour, when they scheduled two back-to-back shows at Manassas and the park was flooded. Brad just counted Radiohead as having had one successful performance in the DC area in twelve years, not counting day two of that TFC when they played an abbreviated set to make up for missing day one. ↩
» Filed Under Radiohead, environment, music
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4 Responses to “In Which I Can’t Move On To A New Topic Quite Yet”
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Once you factor in the huge number of SUVs and monster trucks that got caught up in the concert traffic, I’m pretty sure Burning Man is more eco-friendly.
Because I’m wallowing in self pity:
4/10/96 9:30 club
8/22/96 Merriweather (opening for Alanis M.)
8/25/96 Nissan Pavillion (opening for Alanis M.)
8/12/97 9:30 Club
6/13/98-6/15/98 Tibetan Freedom Concert + Make-up 9:30 Club gig.
8/11/01-8/12/01 Bull Run Floods
8/20/03 Merriweather
5/11/08 Nissan Pavillion Floods
So 2 9:30 club gigs right before/as they were blowing up. Two opening act performances for Alanis Morrisette, and a decade of debacles (aside from the 03 show). The band avoided DC/Balt when they did their theater tours, presumably since there wasn’t a decent midsized, indoor venue.
Decent midsized, indoor venue: DAR Constitution Hall? I’ve never been, but plenty of people seem to go there for that type of show and have an enjoyable time.
(The Patriot Center would also be the right size, but I can personally vouch for the atrociousness of that venue.)
The venue note was actually an incomplete thought, but DAR makes great music sound like garbage. I’ve only seen a handful of shows there but it looks better as a venue than it really is. Sound bounces around it like crazy and every seat gets a different show. All the other indoor venues are just a bit too small for the types of shows they like to do occasionally. For this tour it looks like they were locked into having to do a LiveNation venue, which meant either RFK, Nats Stadium, or Nissan…not really great choices, and I can understand them wanting to avoid RFK given their history there. I think their “eco-friendly” metrics” probably vastly overvalued newer venues over a 50 year old multipurpose stadium (Think lighting fixtures, power systems, etc.).