Radiohead's American shows run with no tapes and low volume

Nothing at Radiohead's American shows this summer comes off tape or disc, Mix magazine reports in its 1 October issue, so every sampled drum, synth line and scrap of found audio in the Kid A and Amnesiac songs is played on the night. Robert Hanson followed the band to the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View on 27 June and on to the Santa Barbara Bowl, where on 30 June they covered Neil Young's “Cinnamon Girl”. The sets changed from night to night, with more than half the songs from the last three albums and a few from The Bends.

David “Tree” Tordoff, the monitor engineer since the last leg of the Bends tour, runs 47 inputs into 22 stage mixes. Besides their own spots, the five move between two extra keyboard positions, so each of them needs a mix in more than one place, and keyboards are wheeled about all evening. The big change for this run is an acoustic piano in the middle of the stage, and Colin Greenwood now plays upright bass as well.

And if you put an acoustic piano in the middle of the stage, it changes everything!

David Tordoff¹

Only Thom Yorke and Phil Selway use in-ear monitors. The other three wear filtered earpieces, and Yorke keeps wedges for the electronic drums and Jonny Greenwood's instruments, which he doesn't want in his ears. Tordoff says the band decided as soon as they were signed to look after their hearing, expecting careers of 30 or 40 years.

A lot of my job is keeping things quiet, as opposed to being very loud.

David Tordoff¹

The Santa Barbara Bowl sits among houses, with a 100dB limit and a 10pm curfew. A pine tree grows where the speakers would usually hang, so Firehouse Productions flew them above the stage and aimed them over the microphones. John Drane, Firehouse's system technician, noticed that nobody drifted off to the bar.

It's one of the few shows that I've been to where the audience is just riveted the whole time.

John Drane¹