Radiohead wait for dark at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver

Radiohead played Thunderbird Stadium, the University of British Columbia's football ground, on Sunday 24 June, and began the night up against the sunset. A huge tent in the middle of the field, for contest winners at the front, kept some of the people behind it from seeing the stage for the first half of the show. From the stands, fans watched a security guard run at a man on the floor, punch him in the face and drag him out. The crowd grew restless and drifted off to the mini-doughnut stands, and Thom Yorke told them It'll be dark soon. It'll be fine.⁴

As the sun went down, the fluorescent lights behind the band came alive under dark rain clouds and the crowd settled down for the new songs. Yorke loosened up too, and threw himself into the end of the set, dancing with his whole body and his arms flailing.

It was their first Vancouver show since April 1998 at the Pacific Coliseum, and a stop on the North American leg of the Amnesiac tour. Alexandra Gill, reviewing for The Globe and Mail, put the crowd about 7,000 short of the stadium's 20,000, and blamed the glare of the sunset and the sheer size of the place as much as the music. The band mixed in enough of the old hits to hold the crowd, and those got the loudest applause.

In the second encore came an early version of “Nude”, the song fans have known for years as “Big Ideas”, which the band have still not released.

Setlist