Word: bandness
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...band's only U.S. festival appearance was significant in several ways, not the least because the band is touring this summer without a new album to promote or a record label to prod them. Instead, Yorke has surprised fans by releasing a solo work, The Eraser, that predictably triggered rumors that Radiohead was on the rocks. Partly to squelch such speculation and partly to test out new songs that the group recorded over the past year, Radiohead has for the past few months been touring and playing a lively mix of old and new material at smaller venues in Europe...
...Radiohead's appearance at Bonnaroo, known as a mecca for roots rockers, tested the range of Radiohead's appeal. Could a politically charged European band get a groove going with Southern fried hippies who worship Phish and the Grateful Dead? The answer came early in the set, as the crowd cheered and danced to "There, There," from the group's last album, Hail to the Thief, and later too, as the sea of listeners lustily sang along to Radiohead classics like "Karma Police" and "Fake Plastic Trees...
...also a bit of a slump at the end of the elegiac "How to Disappear Completely," when the audience stood in near silence for a couple of minutes before realizing that the set was over. Eventually, though, the crowd came around to what had just happened and brought the band back for two rousing encores, including a foot-stomping version of "Everything in It's Right Place." Several new songs, including "Bangers n' Mash" which featured Yorke for a short bit on drums, and the superb "Bodysnatchers," were also well received. If the band felt any pressure they didn...
...This might be the best rock band in the world," observed Rich, a forty-ish owner of a Nashville construction equipment company who had braved the crowds and the heat to get close enough to watch the band without binoculars. "This is the best thing going on in the U.S. this weekend." As for the notion that Radiohead was too highfalutin' for a festival that was famous for tie-dyed jam-band fans, he said, "I hear their new album is kind of a jam band record - most people don't know that...
...fact, unauthorized copies of several new songs have been bouncing around the Internet for weeks, mostly in the form of videos surreptitiously recorded at the band's European gigs. Radiohead seems to understand that staunching the flow is hopeless. If anything, the quality of the new material has stoked anticipation for the band's next disc. The sprouting grassroots black market for bootleg Radiohead clips, ironically, also connects them- spiritually if not technologically - to The Grateful Dead, whose aura still wafts through Bonnaroo like patchouli incense...