Photo by colm.mcmullan

Robert Christgau, perhaps the most famous rock critic in history, once called Radiohead the “Only Band That Matters,” a title previously bestowed upon British punk band The Clash. Radiohead has put out seven full-length studio albums and have been called the “Pink Floyd of Generation Y.” Whether or not you listen to them or you believe they deserve it, they are the most critically acclaimed band of the past two decades.

I grew up in a middle-sized town in northwest Indiana: too big for John Mellencamp, but not quite large enough to relate to the Rolling Stones’ portrayal of New York in “Shattered.” I used to sit in front of my parents’ stereo and listen to Beatles’ records for hours at a time. I listened to a dozen CDs a week driving to and from my high school. My best friend used to tell me there were three musical phases you would go through at some point in your young adult life; a Beatles phase, a Led Zeppelin phase, and a Radiohead phase. My Beatles phase came young, and my Led Zeppelin phase was throughout high school. Now I write for a couple of music blogs and spend part of my week doing grunt work at a local record label. I have listened to thousands of artists, I own hundreds of records, and I have never had a Radiohead phase. This makes me wonder if it will ever happen to me. Is Radiohead worthy of a phase in my life, or everybody’s for that matter? In order to answer these questions I enlisted the help of experts and conducted a personal experiment (involving five and a half hours of Radiohead) that has never been attempted.

The Experts

In order for Radiohead to legitimately occupy a plane above all other pop bands they have to contribute more to society than ring tones and record sales. According to Brandon Forbes, co-editor of Radiohead and Philosophy, the band is not just a capitalistic juggernaut.

“We had a pretty good hunch going into it, but putting this book together made it plain to us that there are good reasons why Radiohead has succeeded The Clash as ‘The Only Band that Matters’.”

The book compiles essays about the band itself and its music and lyrics, separating them into categories such as “Radiohead’s Existential Politics” and “Radiohead and the Postmodern.” The overarching theme of the book is that yes, it is possible to have a discussion about the band that goes beyond the surface aesthetics.

As Forbes puts it, “Radiohead’s music points toward philosophical analyses of actual experiences in the world.”

However, Radiohead has impacted more than just the philosophical world. They made a cultural and economic splash in 2007 with the unconventional release of their highly anticipated album, In Rainbows. They decided to allow fans to download the album for whatever price they wanted to pay. The results were mixed, and it is estimated that less than half of those that downloaded the album contributed any money to the virtual tip jar. The album was released physically later, but this attracted much less attention than the initial digital-only sale.

This new method, flawed as it may have been, created a whirlwind of controversy about not only the album itself, but about the entire music industry. D.E. Wittkower, author of the essay “Everybody Hates Rainbows,” says that cutting out the middle men of the recording industry is something that plenty of people would not mind doing.

“Music is expressive, and the idea of transforming something fundamentally communicative into a commodity for sale has always been a bit of a house of cards…From the fan-perspective, music as a commodity has always been only a necessary evil and an unwelcome precondition.”
Any band with enough power to make countless numbers of fellow musicians, authors, and professors muse about their work and cultural impact has to be important. Having established that Radiohead does hold merit in intellectual communities, it is time to answer whether or not Radiohead can have a significant impact on my personal life.

The Experiment

What do Radiohead and I have in common? Nothing as far as I can tell. I have never listened to any of their albums all the way through. To me, this does not seem like such a big deal, but to other music writers it is akin to reporting on professional football for a year and then going on vacation during the Superbowl.
In the interests of science and my own personal edification I listened to all seven of Radiohead’s studio albums in a row. According to iTunes that is five and a half hours and 81 songs. There were three bathroom breaks and a phone call from my mother that stopped the music, but other than that it was smooth sailing on a slow Sunday. When I decide to do something I tend to follow the plan through to completion (unless you count my childhood dream of owning a Ford Probe, which I have put on the back burner for now).

I am not a very good scientist. I went into the experiment wanting to like Radiohead. Often I wonder to myself, do I have an inherent dislike for Radiohead, or as perhaps George W. Bush would ask, is it a choice that I freely make? The only band I ever tried to make myself like was Pink Floyd. I remember having a 7th grade duty to hate them since “pink” is in their name (i.e. must be for girls). Then, somebody cooler than me told me they were the greatest band ever so I sucked up my pride, bought Dark Side of the Moon, and listened to it twice through while sitting in my mom’s minivan. Quickly it became one of my favorite albums, and I still love it.
I have listened to a few Radiohead songs before (I think once in high school I fell asleep listening to Hail to the Thief on a long car trip), but I’m still probably an anomaly in the “indie rock” world. Before I listened to all the albums I liked the song “Karma Police” and I have a previously formed opinion (more later) on the single that vaulted them into the spotlight from relative obscurity, “Creep.”

This did not end up like Chuck Klosterman’s essay where he sets out to watch music videos on TV for 24 hours, only to find out that they loop every couple of hours, so he ends up watching the same videos in the same order all day. Radiohead does have seven studio albums and, as I found out, they had quite an interesting musical evolution. What follows is my account of the day when my view on Radiohead became informed, instead of just based on speculation.

Any Given Radiohead Sunday

Released in 1993, Pablo Honey is the group’s first studio album, which is the first step on my journey to enlightenment. The album art is god-awful and for a moment I consider scrapping the whole experiment and throwing on an old Led Zeppelin record.

1 Song In: The first song on the album is called “You” and it sounds more like R.E.M than what I had imagined Radiohead to sound like. It is rather surprising and I can’t say that I dislike it.

2 Songs In: This is the aforementioned “Creep” and my opinion on it has not changed. Anybody who has played the Rock Band video game or has had a roommate trying to learn guitar knows this song and has heard it too many times. Since it is the second song into my odyssey there is no new context in which I can view it, so I still think it is whiny drivel.

5 Songs In: I’ve listened to four full tracks and I have not heard any break beats or electro-sneezes that I expected to hear. This song is called “Thinking About You,” and if Radiohead was an 80’s hair metal band, this would be their “Ballad of Jayne.”

12 Songs In: “Blow Out,” the last song on Pablo Honey is ending, giving me the first glimpse of psychedelic weirdness that I have previously associated with Radiohead.

15 Songs In: This song, “High and Dry,” is the first song that has legitimately wowed me. It has a sad beauty that kind of sums up the rest of the songs I have heard so far.

19 Songs In: More than half way through The Bends, and this song, “Just,” has woken me from some sort of trance. I was either entranced or napping, but I’m not sure which. This song is what I would call rock and roll and boasts a pretty great guitar solo.

25 Songs In: “Airbag” is the first song on OK Computer, which many consider the band’s greatest accomplishment. In an NME article from 1995, singer Thom Yorke said of the album, “You know, the big thing for me is that we could really fall back on just doing another moribund, miserable, morbid and negative record, like lyrically, but I really don’t want to, at all.”

30 Songs In: I can see what Yorke means now as I listen to “Karma Police.” This album ventures more into outer space, with songs like “Paranoid Android” and “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” as opposed to the introspective bent that the previous albums had. Like The Smiths before them, Radiohead was often labeled as a band to listen to only when depressed, since their lyrics were often self-loathing and melancholy. OK Computer signaled a change in perspective as the band began to comment more on the world around them, as opposed to the world inside themselves.

37 Songs In: Starting the next album, Kid A, right now, and feeling the beginnings of the pain this might inflict on my physical self. I feel a little burnt out but glad I decided to undertake this experiment instead of a Whitesnake experiment. Can you believe the band with one video of a model dancing on the hood of a car put out 11 full-length albums?

46 Songs In: This song (“Motion Picture Soundtrack”) has multiple endings and solidifies my view that Radiohead is adept at choosing the last song on each of their albums. I am enjoying each album more than the last, which I am more than half certain is not because I am developing some sort of disorder from sitting in front of my monitor for so long.

57 Songs In: I just finished listening to Amnesiac, which is the most epic album that I have heard so far. It has thunderous bass, but lacks the cohesiveness of Kid A. The albums were recorded at the same time, but their releases were staggered since the band was opposed to releasing a double album. My mental and physical states are on the brink, but maybe the next album will be full of Metallica covers to keep me awake.

58 Songs In: I am listening to the first song off 2003’s Hail to the Thief, which is called “2+2=5 (The Lukewarm).” This album annoys me already for a few reasons. First, did each member of the band get to choose a word of each song title without consulting each other? I do like the title “A Punchup at a Wedding. (No no no no no no no no),” but I think that probably triggered the trend in music nowadays where bands think it is okay to name themselves Somebody Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin.

71 Songs In: Hail to the Thief, like all of Radiohead’s previous albums, builds on their sound, this time adding a creepiness and feeling of impending doom to each song. At points the album falls short and turns into background music, but it has a handful of quality songs. Also, I think this may be the first album that gives credit in the liner notes for playing the “laptop.” If you are allowed to claim that you play the computer, I think the next Britney Spears album will come with a tome full of liner notes.

81 Songs In or The End: I just finished listening to In Rainbows and it went by like a blur. I like the sound of the album as a whole, but there are not any songs that stood out to me like “High and Dry” or “Karma Police.”

Conclusions

Having consulted the experts and gained firsthand knowledge (maybe a little too much) about Radiohead’s music, I have come to realize a few things. The first is that Radiohead is a great band. Who am I to tell millions of people that a band they love is not worth loving? Such a statement always sounds ludicrous and ignorant when it is about a topic as subjective as musical taste. Even if it is not my perception of them, the world sees them as great and credit should be given where credit is due. The last thing that I learned from my time with Radiohead is that I do enjoy their music and their message, even if I do not fully understand it. Now I understand the hype and I can eagerly follow along as the band teeters on the edge of a break up or contemplates the post-In Rainbows world and the evolving (devolving?) state of the recording industry. I may be a late bloomer, but I feel like I am on the edge of a new musical phase…

Cover of Björk's Homogenic (One Little Indian, 1997); image courtesy of slantmagazine.com

Cover for Björk's Vespertine (One Little Indian, 2001); image courtesy of harmony-korine.com

When I began conceptualizing this blog in the ol’ brainspace, one of the first sections I came up with was “Records That Made Me a Feminist.” I knew Björk was going to get at least one entry. Homogenic and Vespertine each played a vital part of shaping my politics. So, I figured out I’d probably have to write about them together.

Pairing albums for this section of the blog is something I originally wanted to do this when covering Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, which I started listening to around the same time as PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. I liked the idea of dialoguing seemingly dissimilar work by female artists with one another, but I feared covering those two albums together would short-shrift the artists who made them. However, talking about two distinct pieces of work by one woman seemed easier. And essential. So here we go.

I must admit that covering Björk’s 1997 and 2000 full-length releases present its own political challenges that makes me think critically about how I understand and practice feminism. Both of these albums made me a feminist largely because of the boys I was preoccupied with at the time.

But while my initial reception and resulting connections to them were tied up with potentially normative feelings around romantic angst and heterosexual coupling, I feel the albums speak to my development at the time as well as transcend it. In other words, Homogenic and Vespertine may remind me of boys I used to date, but they speak to larger, more overtly feminist issues as well.

Of course, being a feminist doesn’t mean you can’t like boys or be hung up on them from time to time, so long as you don’t let them run your life. Which I don’t think Björk endorses in either of these records, even though she herself has an ambivalent relationship with feminism (though not with calling out the music industry’s sexist practices of attributing male engineers and instrumental songwriters).

Importantly, as both albums were prescient to my development, they also went over my head when I first listened to them. Debut and Post were more accessible and, as a result, I liked them almost immediately. It was hard for 10-year-old me not to fall for the girl dancing through New York City on a flatbed in the music video for “Big Time Sensuality.”

But Björk’s next two albums took more time to process. Both albums mark advances in the artist’s production sensibilities, approaches to music-making, and interest in electronic instrumentation. Thus, just as Björk had to evolve as a musician before creating these albums, I had to mature a bit as a person before liking them as a fan.

So, Homogenic came out just as I was starting high school. I don’t exactly remember when I bought it, but I think it was sometime toward the end of junior year. I completely ignored it at the time. Or rather, I listened to it once, went “ooh, so angry!” and put Post back on.

The particulars I’ll keep to myself for the sake of decorum. Suffice it to say that I dated someone for a little while, fell in love, we broke up, and I spent a little over a year trying to get us back together. It didn’t work out. Eventually I got over him and whatever I thought we were, but not without some pain and denial and then serious personal re-evaluation. The healing process involved some righteous anger, loud parties, several bottles of wine and other goodies, and burgeoning feminist development. After a rough start, 19 turned out to be a pretty okay year. Homogenic was its soundtrack.

Now, I have no problem acknowledging that this guy was a total jerk to me. But feminism isn’t only about recognizing and calling out chauvinistic bullshit. It’s also about self-empowerment, personal accountability, and un-learning heteronormativity and patriarchal co-dependence. It isn’t always just the guy’s fault, even when it is.

Thus, I also have to own up to being really needy and delusional at the time. I pinned my worth on whoever I was dating without questioning whether being with them was actually good for me. So I projected my own big feelings and insecurities on someone who clearly didn’t want to be with me. I was ignoring the reality of the situation and, as a result, my own well-being. I finally recognized what I was doing when confronted with the lyric “How could I be so immature to think he could replace the missing elements in me — how extremely lazy of me.” 

Kinda appropriate that a break-up record got me over mine, no? Apparently, Björk made the album after breaking up with drum’n'bass musician Goldie while they were working on their own project. Hence lines like “So you left me on my own to complete the mission, but now I’m leaving it all behind.” But it pretty much hit all the right notes of melancholy, indignation, rage, and feisty recovery for me. I’m a quarter Norwegian on my mother’s side, so even the line ”I thought I could organize freedom — how Scandinavian of me” in “Hunter” applied.

Attention must be paid to the album’s sound and how it marked a musical departure for Björk. Post was an eclectic mix that boasted songs like “Army of Me,” “Enjoy,” and “Headphones,” that opened up her sound to include state-of-the-art aggressive digital distortion and serene electronic minimalism.

While this was evident in the production work Tricky and 808 State’s Graham Massey did on Post, it wasn’t the focus. It would come to define the artistic work she began doing with producers like Mark Bell on Homogenic and would continue to do with Matmos on Vespertine. But I’d hedge that most casual listeners just remember Post’s ”It’s Oh So Quiet,” which was produced by Björk’s then-mainstay, Nellee Hooper, the man responsible for all the production on her breakthrough Debut. He was also responsible for “Hyperballad,” which I’d argue suggests the artist’s shift, which is fully evident on her next album.

Man, I wish I could post the music video, but WMG has apparently disabled the audio. All the more reason to check out Michel Gondry’s Directors Label DVD, or any of the other myriad DVD titles that have documented her videography.

So Homogenic marks a transition from being a pop star to an artist who challenges her listeners’ ears and expectations with each release. By 1997, we also heard alternative pop stars like Beck and Radiohead establish themselves similarly with Odelay and OK Computer. We would hear Radiohead do it again in 2000 with the mind-blowing Kid A, where they really demonstrated their love for electronic instrumentation and experimental production techniques.

Björk was already on this path in 1997, but while Radiohead looked outward toward the fallabilities of modern life, Björk looked inward at the seductive pleasures and wobbly peculiarities of domestic life and partnership on her next record, rapturing at her voice’s clicks and finding percussive possibilities out of shuffled decks of cards. I don’t think these innovations went unnoticed when Radiohead went to work on In Rainbows. To me, Vespertine’s influence is all over a song like “Nude,” which was originally an outtake from OK Computer. This is further confirmed by the band’s rendition of Homogenic’s ”Unravel” as a tip of the hat. As if lead singer Thom Yorke’s backing vocals on “Náttúra” aren’t enough.

Hmmm. Maybe at some point, I’ll consider Yorke’s duets with Björk and PJ Harvey. Yorke is one of my favorite vocalists, a fact confirmed by a recent revisit of Hail to the Thief. If one of my friends ran a blog on male masculinity and music culture, I’d pen a guest entry in a second.

But I was afflicted with a troubled mind when Vespertine first came out. In addition to boy heartache, I was going through some considerable familial strife. I was also starting my first semester of college, so a tackier person might blame 9/11.

After seeing the music video for “Hidden Place,” I dutifully bought the album, along with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, another at-the-time inscrutable release, at the Tower Records by campus. I listened to the album a few times, but my head was not in the right place for it. It was too contented and quiet. I couldn’t hear it. And then for a little while all I could hear was Homogenic at full volume.

Stills from the video that convinced me to buy "Vespertine"; image courtesy of unit.bjork.com

To be blunt, Vespertine didn’t really make sense to me until I started having sex. Critics like Ryan Dombal would seem to concur. I remember seeing her performance of ”Cocoon” on Jay Leno and thinking that it was really quiet, but totally not getting how micro-embodied intimacy is the song’s entire purpose. While I had a good understanding of mechanics and had engaged in related activities before going into my first listen, I don’t think a song like “Cocoon” makes sense to a person unless they’ve experienced it, to speak euphemistically, in a corporeal sense.

BTW, yes that is Bill O’Reilly adjusting his tie. If he was actually listening to the song, I’m sure he’d be appalled by how delightfully, defiantly sexual this song is and that it was performed uncensored on network television. Watching it now, I can’t believe I wasn’t really listening. Maybe I should have been leaning into the television.  

Again, the particulars here aren’t really important. I was a week or so into being 20 and, frankly,  didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. The guy was someone willing, it was fun, and didn’t last very long.

In short, the romanticism and emotional connectedness that is often built into such an experience was not there, nor do I regret that it wasn’t. I would find that later, which would make my understanding of those aspects of Vespertine more profound and further develop my feminist principles.

I bring sex into the discussion because I, to borrow briefly from Arrested Development’s George Michael Bluth, find Vespertine’s complex eroticism one of its most key contributions to what made me a feminist. Though perhaps a stretch and certainly not without its own distinctions, I tend to think of this album in accord with Audre Lorde’s wonderful essay “Uses of the erotic: the erotic as power.”

And while I don’t know if this entry’s subject has read the essay, something tells me that the same woman who identifies as bisexual and recognizes the erotic potential in mundane activities would concur with much of the theorist’s thesis.

Of course, feminists must also have the wherewithal to recognize that eroticism, even ephemeral evidence like orgasms, are luxuries to some women and girls. Not everyone is given a space, a country, or a political system that allows them the safety and freedom to enjoy and explore these possibilities.

But eroticism isn’t about cataloging who did what to whom for Björk. As David Fricke gestured toward in his review of the album for Rolling Stone, it might be everywhere, at once tangible and theoretical.

This is where I think it’s important to consider the album’s production sensibilities and Björk’s particular uses of her voice. In addition to non-conventional practices like sampling and turning seemingly non-musical domestic items into instruments, the singer’s voice is the album’s real focus. Because of how closely she’s miked, you can hear every tic, breath, whispered turn of phrase, and any other sound coming out of her mouth. As a result, her voice becomes a varied and vital instrument, an idea she has continued to develop and that has continued to stay with me.

_Nada mais?

_As idéias foram todas roubadas!

“O Ladrão de Idéias é o usuário mais comum da Internet. Estima-se que representem 85% das pessoas que publicam alguma coisa na web, e 101% das pessoas que publicam alguma coisa na Desciclopédia.”

I use the word “best” to describe my favorite 5 bands/artists of the 2000s because I respect my own opinion that much. I don’t really expect you to show it the same respect. Regardless, these are the 5 best bands and artists of the 2000s in no particular order. What you’ll find is the artist name and the albums they’ve released during this decade. Which amazingly enough is drawing awfully close to it’s end. We’ve only got about a year and a half left until the “tens”?

RADIOHEAD (Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, In Rainbows.)

OK, there is some order to my first listing. I think Radiohead is the best band of this decade. Amazingly enough they were also the best band of the 1990s on the strength of OK Computer & The Bends (nevermind Pablo Honey.)

There hasn’t been a band as consistently awesome Radiohead since The Beatles broke up. They don’t seem capable of making a bad album at this point. And their very best albums (Kid A & In Rainbows) set the standard. In my view they are very likely the best two albums of the decade.

BECK (Sea Changes, Guero, The Information, Modern Guilt)

Beck is another one of the top artists of the ’90s that has kept it rocking into the 21st century. In fact I think at this point I’d take his ’00s output over his ’90s (although it was really great too.) I’m not a huge fan of Guero (although it has it’s moments) but the other 3 albums he’s released this decade (include this year’s Modern Guilt) are all excellent.

AKRON/FAMILY (Akron/Family,Meek Warrior,Love Is Simple)

I must particularly recommend their debut self titled album Akron/Family released in 2005. Meek Warrior was actually somewhat of a disappointment for me (although like Beck’s Guero it has it’s moments.) But their most recent album Love Is Simple is a great trip that I do recommend. They are also really excellent live.

I’ve always struggled with deciding on my favorite Radiohead album. So, being the nerd that I am, I decided to come up with an answer once and for all by quantifying it. I already had all the songs rated on iTunes, so I figured I’d total up all the stars, divide by the number of tracks, and get an average rating for the album. Here are the results:

The Bends (1995)
5 Stars: 6 Tracks
4 Stars: 5 Tracks
3 Stars: 1 Track
Album Rating: 4.42

OK Computer (1997)
5 Stars: 8 Tracks
4 Stars: 2 Tracks
3 Stars: 1 Track
2 Stars: 1 Track
Album Rating: 4.42

Pablo Honey (1993)
5 Stars: 6 Tracks
4 Stars: 5 Tracks
3 Stars: 1 Track
Album Rating: 4.42

Kid A (2000)
5 Stars: 5 Tracks
4 Stars: 2 Tracks
3 Stars: 3 Tracks
Album Rating: 4.2

In Rainbows (2007)
5 Stars: 2 Tracks
4 Stars: 4 Tracks
3 Stars: 3 Tracks
2 Stars: 1 Track
Album Rating: 3.7

Amnesiac (2001)
5 Stars: 1 Track
4 Stars: 2 Tracks
3 Stars: 6 Tracks
2 Stars: 2 Tracks
Album Rating: 3.18

Hail to the Thief (2003)
5 Stars: 1 Track
4 Stars: 3 Tracks
3 Stars: 4 Tracks
2 Stars: 6 Tracks
Album Rating: 2.93

Yes, you read that right, the exact albums that I struggled with, Pablo Honey, The Bends, and OK Computer, somehow, garnered the exact same score! Guess I didn’t accomplish much with this exercise.

Genie let out the bottle
It is now the witching hour
Genie let out the bottle
It is now the witching hour

Murderers you’re murderers
We are not the same as you

Genie let out the bottle
Funny haha funny how

When the walls bend
When the walls bend
With your breathing
With your breathing

When the walls bend
When the walls bend
With your breathing
With your breathing
With your breathing

They will suck you down
To the otherside
They will suck you down
To the otherside
They will suck you down
To the otherside
They will suck you down
To the otherside

To the shadows blue and red
To the shadows blue and red
Your alarm bells
Your alarm bells

To the shadows blue and red
To the shadows blue and red
Your alarm bells
Your alarm bells

Should be ringing

This is the gloaming.

(Radiohead, The Gloaming, Hail To The Thief)

Penso non ci sia nulla da aggiungere e mi sembra inutile intraprendere conversazioni (ma poi con chi?) sul significato del testo e cose del genere.

Loro sono i Radiohead e spero vivamente che Vasco Rossi non ne faccia una cover.

Radiohead – Sail to the moon

Time and again I wonder why I end up with this band. Radiohead is science fiction at its best. Thats the way i like to see it. If you like science fiction, you will love the work of this band. It is not only innovating the music industry but is also creating the sounds of the future.

Here is sail to the moon..

The dark infinite sky. A  spaceship moved alone. Moving slowly through deep space. Those who had managed to live through the catastrophe had closed their eyes. They had seen enough. They never wanted to look outside and see the cold universe. But Omega was awake. She saw the vastness of the sky and it scared her. But at the same time she thought that the idea to sail to the moon was well thought.

Those were the final days. Everything was over. If you look straight across to your right, you could see the top floor of the tallest building in the city. The rest of the floors were underwater.

The city had sunk inside the sea. The buildings stood like tombstones. People who worked in the last few floors had managed to run to the top. The terraces were full. People in their formal dresses stood shivering. Their ties were loose. And their eyes were red. All of them were traders. It was ironic that the day the world decided to call it a day, those who remained alive turned out to be investment bankers and traders.

Those who had the inkling might have gone short on the market and thought that they could make some money from the floods.

Omega stood there alone. She happened to be in one of those office when the waves started to rise suddenly. She was there to meet one of those guys who made money in all kinds of markets. He thought that the flood was an excellent opportunity to do some short dated trades. He was so sure about the money that he will make, he called a finance reporter to witness the episode. He was sure that this one trade will make him the richest human being on this depleting planet.

But before he could punch that order the wave hit the high-rise. Within seconds it was over. She remembered that all of them ran to the emergency exit which took them to the terrace. The cameras in the staircase showed how the surrounding tide was rising. She could see her city drowning. She could see the world coming to an end in  front of her eyes.

But she ran. Climbed the steps till she reached the top. There were several of them on the terrace. All of them traders that belonged to rich investment banks – firms that could afford the rent of the top floors. The rest of the building was occupied by low level firms or some information technology outfits who thought that it would be better to stay close to their money-vending machines.

On the top of the terrace people stood in rows. They hardly spoke. There were very few women. Omega was one of them. There was a cold wind blowing. There were those who were looking at the water a few meters below. Wondering if it will still rise.

The sky started to change colour and nobody knew what to do. Few tried to talk. But there were no words. “Look, choppers”, a young trader screamed.

Choppers moved on the top of the building. And rescue workers were trying to throw ropes at them. Suddenly there was hope.

Omega did not like it. She wanted to write that last story- an obit on the investment banker. She knew that there were no readers for her story but she wanted to write the last words in history. That honour nobody could steal away from her.

But now she thought that all of them will live.

The rescue team managed to get all of the survivors in separate choppers. And the choppers moved towards an unknown destination.

Omega sat next to the young trader. They hardly spoke. She felt that she had seen him somewhere. But her memory failed her. She looked outside and saw the flood. The water was rising. Eventually, the tall buildings that had survived for a few hours will also disappear. There will be a dead city that will exist in the future. Underwater.

The choppers took them under a spaceship. One by one the traders and investment bankers were transported into the spaceship. There was gloom everywhere.

The spaceship was like an airplane. When everyone was seated there was an announcement that informed them that the ship was going to sail to the moon.

Moon. The new frontier. Many earthmen had only read it in science fiction that one day man will move to the moon. But it was happening now.

There were reports about some colonies that already existed on the moon. But no one was sure. All this was bad news for Omega. For once she thought that all the world was cured of investment bankers and she can simply write her obit and float it into one of the vast networks of the universe. Somebody sometime was bound to read it. but that was not going to happen. The traders and the investment bankers will survive.

Anyways she hated the breed. She wanted to do something.

She decided to change the trajectory of the spaceship. she knew that the spaceship was on autopilot. If she can hack into the system, she can very well miss the direction of the moon. That way she could possibly kill all the scum of the earth that was getting transported to another part of the universe.

Hacking the mind of a spaceship is not an easy art. But Omega had it in her. It was a talent that she had so far kept it to herself. She never had an opportunity to find out how good she really was. And today was one.

She not only misdirected the spaceship from the moon. She even managed to put the ship in the trajectory of an asteroid that will surely destroy the ship. She got everything right.

She miscalculated on the fact that in case of a head-on collusion, every seat became a pod. And would float into space looking for an anchor. If the pods survive.

She had closed her eyes and thinking about how she is going to start her obit of the last trader- investment banker on earth. She had miscalculated the time. When the spaceship hit the asteroid she had not written a single word that she could feed in to the infinite networks.

The explosion lasted for a few seconds. Then turned into a nebula. The seats into pods. Nobody knows if anybody survived. Omega did. Her pod floated into space. And she took a breather that at least now she can begin her report.

Before she could start, there were some numbers that blinked on the dashboard of her pod. “Ask: 123.30 for empty pods”.

Some bastards had survived and they were already entering their quotes.

She wrote her report on the beginning of trading in the new age. Thousands of years down the line, this market will have a volume in billions. She could never write the obit. She wrote the birth of the new financial markets in an expanding universe, floating in her pod and looking at the vast universe.

I sucked the moon
I spoke too soon
And how much did it cost?
I was dropped from
Moonbeams
And sailed on shooting stars

Maybe you’ll
Be president
But know right from wrong
Or in the flood
You’ll build an Ark

And sail us to the moon
Sail us to the moon
Sail us to the moon
Sail us to the moon

2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm)
Sit Down, Stand Up (Snakes & Ladders)
Sail To The Moon (Brush The Cobwebs Out of The Sky)
Backdrifts (Honeymoon Is Over)
Go To The Sleeps (Little Man Being Erased)
Where I End And You Begin (The Sky Is Falling In)
We Suck Young Blood (Your Time Is Up)
The Gloaming (Softly Open Our Mouths In The Cold)
There There (The Boney King of Nowhere)
I Will (No Man’s Land)
A Punch-Up At Wedding (No No No No No No No No No )
Myxamatosis (Judge, Jury & Executioner)
Scatterbrain (As Dead As Leaves)
A Wolf At Door (It Girl, Rag Doll)

Download

…mostly because if I had to hear “Creep” (or any other song from “Pablo Honey”) one more goddamn time, I was going to kill someone.

Years later, after “The Bends” and “OK Computer” were released, I would roll my eyes when people began to spout off about how awesome they had become, how they had reinvented themselves and were the future of music as we knew it. I chalked it up to a lot of hype, figuring they’d go the way of most other early nineties alterna-bands, showing up on a VH1 special about one-hit wonders to reminisce about their heyday of “Creep.”

Nowadays, I’m older, (slightly) wiser, and a lot more willing to listen to music with an open ear. Because of this, I have to admit that I’ve been absolutely and utterly wrong about Radiohead, their career and their music.

For me, the awakening began with Thom Yorke’s guest appearance on the track “Rabbit in your Headlights” from the UNKLE album “Psyence Fiction.” I loved that song, listening to it over and over again; in doing so, it began to dawn on me that maybe there was more to Thom Yorke than just a whiny voice.

In 2000, a friend burned me a copy of “Kid A,” and I began to tell people that I still didn’t like Radiohead, but that they had created a pretty superb album. And then “Amnesiac” hit in 2001, and someone gave me a burn of that disc. And then “Hail to the Thief” was released in 2003. And so on, and so on.

And so I feel I must take a moment here to make amends:

Dear Radiohead,

You most certainly do not suck. I was just a stupid kid.

I apologize. Please forgive me.

Sincerely,

Justin Shady

It’s now safe to say that I’m an actual fan of Radiohead, which means that I was excited to hear that their first six albums were being re-released as collectors editions this year. This past March, the band’s first three albums were released in two editions (“Collectors Edition” and “Special Collectors Edition”), but I didn’t receive any of them for review.

Luckily, I did receive “Special Collectors Edition” sets of “Kid A”, “Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief”, all of which were just released a few weeks back.

Each set includes two CDs and one DVD. The first disc in each set is the original full-length release. The second CD in each set contains rare live performances and concert recordings; included are performances from BBC Radio One, sessions from Canal+ Studios, and a 2003 recording from the “Jo Whiley Show.”

The DVDs in the sets serve as a scrapbook for the band from 2000 to 2003. Collecting live performances from “Later… with Jools Holland” and “Top of the Pops”, as well as a few promotional music videos thrown in for fun, Radiohead fans are given a glimpse into the evolution of the band during this time.

If you’re a fan of Radiohead, chances are you’ve already picked these up. If you’re not a fan of Radiohead, you should really reconsider it. Take it from a recovered Radiohead hater.

I was the creep,

-Shady

‘There There’ by Radiohead is a song for late night drives. Especially those lonely drives. It’s a song from ‘Hail to the thief’. The story that follows is done by keeping the atmosphere of the song in mind. Hope you enjoy

“There There”

It was dark. I sat on the rocks watching the sea. The sea. It is vast. It is unknown. It is scary. But it pulls you in. It pulls you like it knows you. And brings you to face reality. And someone like me who has been running all his life doesn’t like it. I don’t remember when I rested last. Must have been the time when I was with you.

I had just killed someone and they had paid me enough. Money, that will last me for the next few months. I remember that you had stopped the car and asked me to drop you ahead. I did not refuse. It was raining. And there was nobody on the road. No vehicles. No people and no lights. I could see one lamp right ahead. Its yellow bulb throwing light on the raindrops.

I looked at you. You were looking straight ahead. Nowhere in particular. You were not even scared. You did not tell me where you wanted to go. And I was a man without destination. You did not talk much. And there was this radiohead song “there there” playing on the local radio station.

I wanted to know where you were coming from. Wanted to ask more about you. But you were clearly not in a mood to talk. But you looked beautiful. The glow on you face was enhanced by the little light that was coming out of the music system. It was a blue light. Your eyes looked different.

Then she told me that someone just killed the guy she loved a lot. The body is still lying in the rain. She had seen me kill him. And she was waiting for me to drive down that road. She had stopped the car just to see me.

“I know you killed him”, she said. And those words had an effect. They were cold. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem emotional. But why did she come with me now?

“I don’t have any hope now. There is no one for me”, she said. As if to answer my question.

“You can kill me or take me with you”. I kept quite. Listening to the haunting song. I don’t kill if there is no money involved in it. So killing her without money was out of the question.

I stopped the car. The rain poured on. “So you want to come with me and why?”

“I don’t have anyone”.

I took the gun and put it on your forehead. Right between your eyes. That was probably a better deal than taking her with me. Her eyes did not move. She kept watching me. Without batting her eyelids. I was captured between the eyes. Inside the bullet that could have just entered her head.

I removed the gun and kissed her. We spent the night in a hotel and then next day I ran away. Hoping that I would never get to see her.

Business was as usual. And it had been a few months to that incident. I received a phone call to go for a shoot. There was someone waiting to be killed. I had to go to the far side of the town. Enter a lane and kill the man who was sitting on the first bench of a roadside café. I reached there earlier and waited for him.

He came in and sat down on the front bench. Later on a girl joined him. They kissed. A very wet kiss. I saw the girl. Someone was trying to kill her men. It was the first time in the last thirteen years that I did not kill someone even if money was offered.  I normally do anything for money. I looked at the vastness of the sea.  Sat there for a very long time.

In pitch dark I go walking in your landscape
Broken branches trip me as I speak
Just cos you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there
Just cos you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there

We are accidents waiting
Waiting to happen
We are accidents waiting
Waiting to happen

Dancing the night away

PREVIEW: Download  Rubblebucket’s “Bikes” MP3
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Emerging Artist: Rubblebucket Orchestra
VIEW: Photos below the jump

The lounge and bar area of Brooklyn’s The Bell House had less people sitting on the stools and chilling on their couches Friday, August 7, than usual. Instead, most of the people were in the back venue listening to some extraordinary live jams while chowing on waffles (Funk ‘n’ Waffles that is).

By a quarter to midnight Syracuse’s own Sophistafunk had ended their high energy performance that included a guest horn section from Utica whose saxophonist was especially feeling the groove. They blew the audience away with her insane improvisations. After such a finale it was hard to see how anything could follow up such a tour de force. Yet based on this writer’s experience, Rubblebucket Orchestra (or Rubblebucket—as they seem to be calling themselves now) have developed reputation of always miraculously exceeding expectations as they did in this show.

The way they entered the stage at The Bell House was uncharacteristically low-key, as the nine-piece band simply walked on stage by midnight and put their instruments on. My encounter before, with Rubblebucket was much different. It was at Syracuse’s Funk n Waffles and the show started with lead band members Alex Toth and Kalmia Traver entering from the front door — with a confident swagger that personified cool as they blew into their respective instruments and banged on a bucket, heading toward the stage and jamming into their first number as if it were nothing.

Despite their more modest demeanor this time around, they more than made up for it by breaking into an amazing opener entitled “Afro 5.” In this new song, bandleader/trumpet player Alex Toth drove the heavy rhythm by banging on a tom-tom drum in a style that channeled Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief classic “There, There.”

What soon followed was a rendition of their debut-album track “World is Gonna Drown” which took a darker and more intense tone than what was heard on Rose’s Dream. This was the first evidence of the night that, after tireless touring, Rubblebucket have developed already well-done songs into performances that can blow away year-old original recordings.

This was also evident in their fourth number, the classic “Kuma,” which was played an even more powerful and fierce horn section — as well as a more harmonized call-and-response part to “Who shot your leg down” than what’s on the studio recording. Touring has clearly made them a tighter and more entertaining band.

Although there were brilliant and well-revised renditions of their older songs, this show was more about getting the audience ready for their upcoming album Rubblebucket. Ten out of the 15 tracks performed were new and all of them showed how the band had been influenced by timeless artists — yet are crafting their own distinctive sound out of those influences. Their third number “Time” has a guitar riff which sounds as if you could find it off of “Thriller,” while another song “Landing” is led by keyboards that sound similar to Depeche Mode.

Nevertheless, as the show ended, Rubblebucket didn’t fail to do their trademark routine. Towards their last song, trombonist Adam Dotson and trumpeter Alex Toth walked off the stage and into the crowd where they ran around and battled each other with their respective instruments. All while the audience surrounded these seemingly possessed musicians doing what they do best in amping up a crowd and putting on a spectacular finale.

Look out for these guys on their upcoming Northeast tour that’s going on in the coming months — especially at Funk n Waffles September 5 where you’ll find me among the many dancing and jamming away.

– Story and Photos by Charlie Weeks

PREVIEW: Radiohead’s “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” MP3
PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Editor’s Pick 146: Thom Yorke and Bon Iver soundtrack New Moon

Radiohead’s newest recorded song “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)” sounds like nothing else they have done before. Perhaps it’s the sweeping string section that sounds as if it belonged in a film score, or maybe it’s the unusually direct lyrics — which were actually taken verbatim from an interview with the last surviving World War I veteran, Harry Patch, whose recent death inspired the song. Either way, the song is beautiful yet mournful and an unsettling anti-war tune whose sound most resembles “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” the last track on Radiohead’s 2000 album, Kid A.

However, it remains to be seen whether this track is representative of their new album’s sound. Thom Yorke previewed a new song, “The Present Tense,” at Britain’s Latitude Festival last month, which sounds like a more mellow “Jigsaws Falling into Place.” So perhaps the band hasn’t totally gotten back on an experimental course (i.e. Kid A, Amnesiac).

The new song “Harry Patch (In Memory Of),” is currently on sale on Radiohead’s waste.co.uk website for just one pound. It’s all for a good cause, since the proceeds go towards the British Legion. So to all the cheapskates who paid a penny for In Rainbows, you should definitely shell out for this one. It’s well worth the pound.

– Charlie Weeks

As almost everyone knows by now, Radiohead’s latest album, In Rainbows, was released using the “Pay What You Want” method back in December 2007. During the 4 years between their previous album, Hail to the Thief in 2003, and In Rainbows, there were dozens and dozens of “demos” leaked onto the internet that were supposedly going to be on the new album. This was during my superfan stage, so naturally I sought out every single one. From live bootlegs, to raw studio cuts, to acoustic songs Thom Yorke recorded in his bedroom, I was poised to collect them like Pokemon.

Due to all my song hunting, I had a pretty good idea of what the new album was gonna sound like before it was released. Having hearing most of the demos for songs that would be on the album, when I actually heard the final, finished project, I was still blown away. They seemed to take the live/demo versions of these songs and make them so much better than I had ever imagined. While Radiohead purists (whatever that means) either wanted the band to recreate “The Bends” or “OK Computer”, they instead went somewhere different completely… taking what they had and turned it into something, dare I say, a little more mature.

The demos sounded as if we were going to get a guitar-driven rock out of an album, but instead, with those same songs, we got something quieter, more serene, but just as potent. They did what they always have done, taken their songs to the practice room, hammered them out with the full band, perfected them, then taken them to the studio only to completely deconstruct them to be something new entirely. My friend, Mike Lardi, who happens to be one of the most talented artists I know, did a project one time where he had to draw a very detailed, realistic looking car, a Land Rover to be exact, and then once he put all the finishing touches on it, he then covered the thing in red paint. Furious red brush strokes over such a meticulous, technical work of art, leaving barely a remnant of the shapely lines of the Land Rover visible. But in the construction/deconstruction of the “Land Rover” piece, it turned into something you never would have guessed. It was a symbol of sorts, challenging your perception of the word “beautiful.”

What Radiohead has done consistently throughout their career is much like what Mike did with the Land Rover, slaved over a piece of art to get every detail right, and then torn it apart, analyzed it and then reconfigured the pieces to create something you never imagined would be nothing more that just adequate. I believe that it’s in this process that art goes from good to great.

Check out this early version of the song Reckoner from 2003.

Now listen to the final, finished version of Reckoner from 2007.

The differences are astronomical, aren’t they? It’s pretty much an entirely different song. Over the course of those 4 years, they were able to really labor over the song and make sure it said what they wanted it to say and sound exactly the way they wanted. In my time working with Loren Israel, one of the things he taught me is that songwriting isn’t this magical thing that is gifted to one or two “blessed” individuals, and the songs didn’t just flow freely from some magical stream of consciousness. But all the greatest songwriter truly labor over their art, much like a sculptor does with his sculpture. The raw idea may have come quickly and painlessly, but to make that raw idea into something great, it takes hard work, dedication and an EXTREME eye/ear for detail.

These famous songwriter/performer types did not get to where they are without years of dedication to their craft. Meticulously thumbing through every inch of a songs, analyzing every pitchy vocal, every beat of a drum, they wouldn’t quit until it was all up to their very lofty standards. It’s no wonder bands like Radiohead put out 1 album every 4 years!

So now to flip this and make it applicable…

People blame the death of the music industry on the economy, illegal downloading, whatever etc. But I think, at it’s core, the problem is not one of distribution and promotion (because that is really all the record labels are good for), but for lack of creative effort. Seldom do band intensively labor over their music. There are few perfectionists in music anymore. The ones that are still left, are the ones that have earned their time in the spotlight, for the most part.

If you are like me, and scour the internet daily looking for the next big musical talent, you must also share my feeling that it just isn’t out there. Anyone can put music up online nowadays. Smaller bands complain that “it’s too hard to make it in this industry with all the illegal downloading.” and they “just want to get signed.” But let me tell you something, record labels are actively looking for you! They want you to be famous as much as you want to be famous. Because if you get fame and fortune, they get 10 times as much money as you do! Record labels are looking and hoping and praying that they find bands with amazing songs as a result of a unwavering work ethic.

So in my opinion, illegal downloading, the economy, etc., are legitimate reasons as to the music industry’s slide into mediocrity, but the biggest reason, the most important reason is a lack of effort in artistry concerning songwriting.

This is probably going to be the first in a long series of music/songwriting related blogs and I couldn’t be more excited.

Song of the day is, of course…

Reckoner by Radiohead.

Radiohead – 2+2=5 – Hail to the thief – 2003

Are you such a dreamer
To put the world to rights?
I’ll stay home forever
Where two and two always makes a five

I’ll lay down the tracks
Sandbag and hide
January has April’s showers
And two and two always makes a five

It’s the devil’s way now
There is no way out
You can SCREAM and you can shout
It is too late now

Because…
You have not been!

Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
You have not been paying attention

Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
You have not been paying attention

Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
You have not been paying attention

Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention
Payin’ attention oohh

I try to sing along
But I get it all wrong
Cozimnot
Cozimnot

I swat ‘em like flies but like flies the buggers keep coming back NOT
But I’m not

All hail to the thief
All hail to the thief

But I’m not
But I’m not
But I’m not
But I’m not

Don’t question my authority or put me in the box
Cozimnot
Cozimnot

Oh go and tell the king that the sky is falling in

When it’s not
But it’s not
But it’s not
Maybe not
Maybe not

Gata, m-am hotărât! După frământări interioare, scărpinări exterioare și altele am decis! Melodia mea preferată sunt de fapt două melodii:

Neaparat în ordinea asta, 13-14 și niciodata una fără cealaltă. Cele mai deprimante, cele mai deșteptătoare, cele mai optimiste, cele mai cele care-mi ajung până la cele mai cele… Pentru mine. Astea sunt.

Phew, am scăpat de povara asta. De acum pot să ascult pur și simplu muzică.

// Later edit, așa de amuzament și pentru că tot îmi place să descopăr pattern-uri: în urma unor calcule matematice destul de complexe și cu aromă de fizică nucleară am ajuns la concluzia că relațiile mele din ultimele două decenii ce au implicat femele au fost activate după regula una da, una nu ) Partea funny e că acum am ajuns pe ”da”, deci dpdv matematic următoarea relație romantică ce include o componentă sexuală ar trebui să meargă. Pfff, am mai scăpat de-o povară, îndată decolez!

Confirming Mark Greif’s thesis — that Radiohead is the most successful rock act “to incarnate a particular historical situation” — will require something of a hike through the Radiohead musical and lyrical catalog. This way the truly horrible play on words in the title — taken from a book that has nothing to do with this or with anything else — indeed commences our trek quite nicely. The release of OK Computer marked the day music critics stopped ignoring Radiohead. They had no choice. The album is remarkable in every measure: aesthetic, accessibility, lyrical, and yes, philosophical. Even the first few seconds of the opening track — a tense, aching guitar lick that stays with you for days — promises something altogether special. And the rest of the LP delivers. It is their finest work and has rarely been surpassed by any artist, in any musical genre, ever since.

Removing Pablo Honey and The Bends from consideration leaves five studio albums, but I will stop the search after Amnesiac because of personal preferences. Radiohead sort of lost me with the careless Hail to the Thief and certainly didn’t find me again with In Rainbows. The gimmicky honor-system distribution seems intended to overshadow the sub-par music, at least to these ears. This leaves us with OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac: this is by most accounts their peak period, anyway.

When you return to this triptych, the first thing you notice (actually this is the second thing you notice, but I’ve already started typing) is its sheer lyrical sparseness. All combined lyrics from this period — written out as sung, strung end-to-end, one song after the next, inclusive of repeated words — come in far under 10,000 words, about the length of two magazine cover articles. Taking out repeated phrases or those passages mixed underneath the music brings the word count to somewhere around 3,000 words, or 1,000 words per album. The final version of this post will be roughly 1,000 words. To wit, the complete lyric sheet to “Everything in its Right Place” reads as follows, when you remove repeated words or phrases:

Kid A
Everything in its right place
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon
I’ve got two colours in my head
What was that you tried to say?
(From Kid A [2000])

The lyric sheet to “Airbag” is quite minimalist as well:

In the next world war
in a jack knifed juggernaut
I am born again
In the neon sign scrolling up and down
In an interstellar burst I am back to save the universe
In a deep deep sleep of the innocent I am born again
In a fast german car I’m amazed that I survived
An airbag saved my life
(From OK Computer [1997])

You should go listen to that track right now, if for no other reason than to hear the inaugural guitar line again.

As a writer I can relate to their brevity (it’s the soul of wit!). Why say in 1,000 words what you can in 500? Or fewer? It will make our job more difficult: the sparseness will add ambiguity. The ambiguity will cloud almost everything: narrator, voice, intent, context, more. But the references to the next world war, to the interstellar burst, to the implied crash, to the hot, sudden, alarming inflation of the airbag, these introduce what you really notice first when you revisit the band’s finest work: violence. Greif is absolutely right about one thing. Radiohead’s music is deeply, disarmingly violent:

“When I am king you will be first against the wall … Off with his head man, off with his head man/Why don’t you remember my name?” “We hope your rules and wisdom choke you/ now we are one in everlasting peace/We hope that you choke.” “This is what you get, when you mess with us.” “Riot shields, voodoo economics, it’s, it’s just business/Cattle prods and the IMF.” “It’s always best when the light is off, I am the pick in the ice/Do not cry out or hit the alarm, we’re friends till we die/And either way you turn, I’ll be there, open up your skull.” “Bruises that won’t heal/You look so tired, unhappy/Bring down the government/They don’t, they don’t speak for us.” “Kill me Sirrah, kill me again with love, it’s gonna be a glorious day/ Pull me out of the aircrash, pull me out of the wreck, cause I’m your superhero.”

And that’s just OK Computer.

(A caveat: my lyric sources are unofficial. If you know any of the above lyrics to be wrong, please leave a comment.)

Repetitious, manic, sparse, and violent. There is only one way to distill such a concoction into one word, and that word is “terror.” But diagram the sentences: is the violence meant for the subject of the piece, or the object? In other words, is the vocalist playing Thom Yorke the Terrible? Or Thom Yorke the Terrified? The way I read it, Greif’s point is that Yorke is playing both. It’s a compelling argument, but let’s keep reading:”I’m a reasonable man, get off my case.” “Once again, I’m in trouble with my only friend.” It’s difficult to decipher intent in any rock lyric sheet, and those of Radiohead are certainly no exception. But which lyrics seem more genuine, the belligerent, or the persecuted? Which lyrics seem sarcastic, or which seem delivered in character? If you asked Yorke these questions during an interview, would he even know the answers? Probably not. And a good musician wouldn’t answer even if he did.

So far there’s one key ingredient missing in our assessment of Radiohead’s embodiment of the Right Now. (I’ll give you a hint: it’s one of the words in our name, and it isn’t “The,” “Muse” or “In.” We’ll bring this review into full compliance when next we meet.)

Note that this post is one part in a series. To view all posts in the series, start here.

Hey everyone. Here is the first submission for the month of June. Nate Stromberg (aka Conrad Spencer) has taken up the cover project this month - to cover a track one side one of a Radiohead album. Here it is:

2+2=5 (the lukewarm.)

It is a fabulous cover of the song, an outstanding recording that must have taken forever. It’s sort of like a photorealist painting. So similar to the original. I forget it’s Nate at times. I commented to Nate that it’s a very different way of thinking about covers in general. So, I ask you all, what makes a good cover? A Halloween, Alaska type cover (deconstruction, reconstruction) or a more faithful representation? Either way, you’ll enjoy this one.

Andrew Breitbart expressed concern that maybe the Republican Party should adopt a more aggressive attitude toward winning.

The Democratic Party’s attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so.

When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit?

Perhaps Breitbart forgot the presidential election of 2000 when many people feel George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the Republican machine in Florida stole the presidency.

Many people felt President Bush had become the president-”select” rather than the president-elect and that instead if “Hail to the Chief” it should have been “Hail to the Thief.”

Whether you agree with that or not, it’s crystal clear that Republicans had an aggressive, win-at-all-costs mentality in 2000.

Big Hollywood:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/abreitbart/2009/06/07/know-thy-enemy-this-is-not-your-mothers-democratic-party/

We start our series in earnest reading the back cover: “Since the 1993 breakthrough hit ‘Creep,’ the band keeps on making waves, with its view of the Bush presidency (Hail to the Thief), its anti-corp…”

Wait.  Stop.  More Bush bashing?  Yawn.  Personal foul, offense: unoriginal, uninspired dogpiling with impunity.  Ten yards and loss of down.

Some readers will likely protest my protest: Bush is a war criminal, they’ll say, a traitor to country.  He deserves a court martial.  He deserves, in the words of Sean Penn, “fucking jail.”  Know that I understand the rage aimed at the GOP, and namely the rage aimed at its figurehead.  But throughout W’s eight years presiding, some of us tried to maintain a certain agnosticism toward his ideology and policies.  Doctrinal support of the man seemed superfluous.  Doctrinal hatred of the man seemed premature, then overwrought, and then, ultimately, superfluous.  Indeed, playing the devil’s advocate from roughly the AIG bailout on would have found you supporting the Bush administration, no matter whom you were talking to. Some of us tried to stay — there are no better words than these two — less philosophical and more scientific.

So a smart, edgy book published in 2009 ought to know better.  And indeed it apparently does: the index cites precisely two references to “Bush, George W.”   The second reference (page 187)  is fleeting and indirect.  The first appears in “The Impossible Utopias in Hail to the Thief,” by Sean Burt, starting on page 161:

Surely, with a title like Hail to the Thief, this new record would be Radiohead’s attempt to send a broad political message….  But, at the very same time, other band members explicitly denied that Hail to the Thief is a direct response to current politics.  Jonny Greenwald, for one, stated that “We’d never name a record after one political event like Bush’s election.  The record’s bigger than that.”

Burt goes on to quote Ethan Brown’s June 2003 review of HTTT in New York:

Hail to the Thief will likely be listened to with the lights out and the speakers turned up loud.  It’s not going to start the revolution — great art never does.

Do you agree: does great art have a responsibility to start the revolution?  It great art even capable?

In answering the second question, do not bring up Rage Against the Machine, lest I bring up Neil Young in response.  A single example — even a perfect single example — does not prove a point.  Of course my answer to the first question is, “No no no no nonononono….”  Philosophical questions should be answered individually.  Are we responsible to lead politically-active lives?  Of course we are: we should all speak for those without a voice.  But are we under some obligation to let politics instruct every facet of our lives?  If you’re a politically-minded musician, must your music be political? You already have my answer.

But the answer that likely sticks in your craw is my response to the second question: can great art be great political art?  Two of the worst books you will ever read are two of the most renown pieces of political fiction there are: Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.  Instead of choking down three pounds of half-rate prose, read George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, a much more personal, much less political work.  And maybe that is the answer: the best art is timeless and personal art.  Political art cannot be either, by definition.

The record, as our hosts have reminded us, is bigger than that.

Note that this post is one part in a series. To view all posts in the series, start here.