Hoo boy am I exhausted. I didn’t get home from the movie theater until close to 4am, and after all the coffee it took me to stay up through the film I couldn’t fall asleep as quickly as I’d intended. Which made work a bit difficult today (and probably will all through the weekend). And, try as I might to tell myself, “You just have to make it until 5pm and then you’re free!” of course I was asked to close up shop tonight, which necessitated my sticking around an extra two-and-a-half hours longer than I was scheduled. Hoo boy am I exhausted.
Which means you won’t be reading your regularly scheduled Friday Top Ten tonight. Because I want nothing more than to step away from my computer, zone out for an hour or two, and then go to bed. Instead you get one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen in my entire life. My introduction to Spiritualized.
For my fifteenth birthday, my mother got me two 15th row (just off-center) tickets to see Radiohead at Radio City Music Hall on the final night of their US tour in support of ‘OK Computer’. Spiritualized opened the show, and had recently released their landmark album ‘Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’. Never having heard Spiritualized before, I was awed by their wall of sound mini symphonies. From the first moments of “Cop Shoot Cop” I was hypnotized. I’ll never forget the stage, awash in blue lights, and the intense volume of the first of that song’s distorted crescendoes. Since that night I’ve considered them one of my favorite bands.
The sound quality isn’t perfect, but it’s definitely enough to transport me back to the week of my birthday in 1998, and the most incredible show I’ve ever seen. I posted Radiohead’s set from this night (“Talk Show Host”! “Bishop’s Robes”! “The Trickster”! “Polyethylene”! “Lurgee”!) before. It’s definitely worth checking out.
Spiritualized
Radio City Music Hall; New York, NY
(April 18th, 1998)
MediaFire DL Link
01. Cop Shoot Cop
02. Shine A Light
03. Electric Mainline
04. Electricity
05. Sway
06. Come Together
07. I Think I’m In Love
08. Walking With Jesus [MP3]
