Since returning from sunny Spain, the ‘summer’ skies over Amsterdam have been largely grey and precipitative. So it was fortunate that the very start of the month threw up a suberb summer’s evening for the kickoff of the “Westerpark” outdoor concert series with a performance by Radiohead. The Westerpark – as the name suggests – is a park just to the west of Amsterdam’s centre, built around an old gasworks, with the concert venue being a fenced-off portion of the park. I’ve long been keen to see Radiohead play, but the chance was remote given a natural aversion to paying steep ticket prices to be squashed into a group of tens of thousands. But the Dutch are an enterprising lot, and thousands more of us arrived in the park with blankets and picnic provisions, people planting themselves down around the enclosure and able to enjoy Radiohead’s performance at least as much as those 15,000 souls who’d forked over the good part of €60 to be a captive market to expensive beer and jostle for space in the throng.

I’m not particularly enamoured of “In Rainbows”, which they get through in its entireity during a long set – but there are plenty of crowd pleasers (and me-pleasers when it comes to the “Kid A” material) like “The National Anthem”, “Street Spirit”, “Karma Police”, “There There” and “How To Disappear Completely”. Chilling out with friends, in the sun, in the park, Amsterdam throws up another great & gezellig gig-going experience. The perfect weather highlights that the light only leaves the sky at well past 11pm, and during “Lucky” when Thom Yorke sings “It’s gonna be a glorious day” he couldn’t be more right.

Rdiohead - Westerpark, Amsterdam (01-07-2008)


Setlist: Radiohead @ Westerpark, Amsterdam (01 July 2008)
Bodysnatchers
All I Need
The National Anthem
15 Step
Lucky
Nude
Street Spirit (Fade Out)
There There
The Gloaming
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Idioteque
Faust Arp
Videotape
Just
Bangers And Mash
Everything In Its Right Place
Reckoner
House Of Cards
Climbing Up The Walls
A Wolf At The Door
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Karma Police
Supercollider
How To Disappear Completely
Planet Telex