💙🇺🇸ThatRadioChick

Nick Cave has compared his experience at one of Radiohead's recent shows to a "spiritual activity." "I was sitting among twenty thousand people. Bizarrely, it was the first time I had ever been in the audience at such a large show, and I was stunned by the depth of love in the room -- people dancing, screaming, crying, hugging each other, throwing themselves around. I was struck by the realization of just how powerful live music is -- that a group of individuals can come together and concoct a sound unique to them, and that people can connect with that distinctive vision as if it were their own experience. I could feel its moral quality -- how this singular force has the capacity to repair the world with its goodness. "I engage in various spiritual activities -- I swim in a lake, go to church, walk in nature, meditate -- but none offer the transcendent opportunity of a live concert. It is a form of human activity that radiates goodness, working its way through the crowd and into the world as a reparative, cosmic force, improving matters, keeping the devil at bay. I believe Radiohead’s audience was responding not only to the music, which was astonishing, but also to the courage of the performers -- the sheer nerve to stand before a crowd and offer up their souls. Like everyone else there, I was deeply moved and humbled." 📸: Matthew Baker / Alex Lake