Radiohead

I have wanted to write a post about this band for a long time but I didn't really know what I wanted to say. Until today. I am in the middle of reading this book right now (which was suggested to me by one Speaker of the Keek, who also lent it to me, and which I am thoroughly enjoying, by the way) and I came to the part of the book titled "The Sixth Day" where the author talks about Radiohead's fourth album Kid A. I am going to copy an excerpt from that section (which I generally try not to do too often unless I find it absolutely necessary as is the case here) but first I want to give you my history with Radiohead...not that you really care, but I do and I am going to tell you anyway. My first album and their second, The Bends, was acquired sometime during my sophomore year at UCLA by giving one of my college buddies, Rudy Alfonso, some clothes for the homeless for which he in turn gave me any CD from his collection. He made this offer to everyone in our dorm because he wanted to both help the homeless and let go of some of his worldly possessions so that they did not become idols. Rudy was and is one of my favorite people in the whole world. I heard he recently had his first child, a girl. Congratulations, Rude. Anyway, I had only heard about Radiohead from the handful of songs that had managed to get radio play from their first two albums, their first being the largely ignored except for "Creep" Pablo Honey. I can't remember what the other album I was considering taking off Rudy's hands besides Radiohead but I distinctly remember debating with myself for a while before settling on The Bends. Little did I know that a lifelong love affair had begun with that simple choice.

The Bends is a phenomenal album. There is not one song that I do not like. The only songs that really got any air play from that album were "High and Dry," "Just" and "Fake Plastic Trees" (one of my favorites). Their next album, Ok Computer, is widely believed by many music critics (especially Rolling Stone critics) to be the greatest album of all time. Needless to say, that one is pretty good. Their fifth and six albums, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief are equally impressive and their live album I Might Be Wrong, is superb. Dave Matthews had this to say in a review he did for them in Rolling Stone:

"Every time I buy a Radiohead album, I have a moment where I say to myself, 'Maybe this is the one that will suck.' But it never does. I wonder if it's even possible for them to be bad on record."

You should actually read the whole review as it is borderline worship of the band by an artist who is himself extremely well received by critics and fans alike. My first concert was the last time they were at the Hollywood Bowl which was, I believe, sometime in September of 2003. I saw them for the second time at Coachella in May of 2004. Both were fantastic shows.

Of all of their albums, Kid A probably got the least praise. Some people accused them of trying too hard to be different or something like that. It is definitely the most unique of all of their efforts. For some reason, this album has always been my favorite. I don't say that in order to make myself out to be some sort of Radiohead snob or anything and I don't say it just to be "non-conformist" by choosing the least liked album as my favorite. I don't know that I can really put my finger on why I like it so much...I just do. The more I listen to it, the more I like it. It doesn't even have my favorite song of theirs of all time (Ok Computer's "Let Down"...probably the most beautiful song ever written). It just has ten individually great songs. I never made the 9/11 connection that Klosterman does in his book but, after reading the following passage, it just made me like it more than I ever thought I could...and you better believe that I grabbed my iPod and listened to "The National Anthem" when he suggests you do so after which I proceeded to listen to the rest of the album and then every other Radiohead song that I have on my iPod...which is pretty much all of them.

So without further ado, I give you the hauntingly insightful Chuck Klosterman (if you plan on buying and/or reading the book, you can probably skip the rest of this post...if you just want to know what I am talking about, read on):

Five hours after the attacks on New York and D.C., I was driving all over Akron, trying to interview average people for a story about the "local reaction" to what had happened (as if - somehow - the citizens of Akron would provide a unique emotional perspective on this tragedy, such as blaming the attacks on Art Modell). Kid A was in my car's CD player, and I played it whenever NPR became too depressing, which was always. That night, I remember thinking how all those swoony, shadowy Kid A tracks seemed to reflect the attacks on the World Trade Center. But I dismissed that idea immediately. I assumed that this was akin to how - if you're in the midst of breaking up with someone - every pop song on the radio seems to directly address the way you feel at that very moment. It occurred to me that anything I had been playing that afternoon would have undoubtedly felt like a terrorist attack; had I played Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, it would likely have had the same affect.

Except that it wouldn't have.

Maybe it would have on that afternoon, but not beyond supper. Not beyond the moment when I wasn't freaked and my feelings started to normalize. However, the opposite thing happened with Kid A. The more I played it, the more this connection became real. And it keeps getting more and more symbolic, and the imagery becomes more and more lucid, no matter how often I listen. there are those who made similar points about Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, primarily because that album included songs with titles like "Ashes of American Flags" and "War on War." However, that album also has songs about watching KISS cover bands and raking the leaves. Kid A has no gaps in logic, perhaps because its logic is never overt; it almost seems like a musical storyboard for that particular day. After the attack, I played it compulsively for an entire year. At this point, I am certain Kid A is the official soundtrack for Sept. 11, 2001, even though it was released on Oct. 3 of 2000.

The first song on Kid A paints the skyline of Manhattan at 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning; the song is titled, "Everything In Its Right Place." People woke up that day "sucking on a lemon," because that's what life normally feels like on the Manhattan subway; the city is a beautiful, sour, sarcastic place. We soon move to song # 2, which is the title track. It is the sound of woozy, ephemeral normalcy. It is the sound of Jonny Greenwood playing an Ondes Marenot, an instrument best remembered for its use in the Star Trek theme song. You can imagine humans walking to work, riding elevators, getting off the C train and the 3 train, and thinking about a future that will be a lot like the present, only better. The term "Kid A" is Yorke's moniker for the first cloned human, which he (only half-jokingly) suspects may already exist. The consciously misguided message in this: Science is the answer. Technology solves everything, because technology in invulnerable. And this is what almost everyone in America thought at around 8:30 a.m. But something happens three and 1/2 minutes into "Kid A." It suddenly doesn't feel right, and you don't exactly know why. This is followed by track three, which is called "The National Anthem."

This is when the first plane slams into the north tower at 470 m.p.h.

"The National Anthem" sounds a bit like a Morphine song. It's a completely different direction from the first two songs on Kid A, and it's confusing; it's chaotic. "What's going on?," the lyrics ask. "What's going on?" It gets crazier and crazier, until the second plane hits the second tower (at 9:03 a.m. in reality and at 3:42 in the song). For a moment, things are somber. But then it gets more anarchic.

At this point, Klosterman leaves this footnote: "Reader's Note: You might want to consider playing Kid A right about now, since I'm not always so good at explaining [expletive] like this."

Which leads into track four, "How to Disappear Completely." This is the point where it feels like the world is possibly ending. People try to convince themselves that they are not there. People keep repeating, "This isn't happening." People are "floating" (read: falling) to the earth. We are told of strobe lights and blown speakers; there are fireworks and hurricanes. This is a song about being burned alive and jumping out of windows, and this is a song about having to watch those things happen. And it's followed by an instrumental piece without melody ("Treefingers"), because what can you say when skyscrapers collapse? All you can do is stare at them with your hand over your mouth.

Time passes. It's afternoon. Kid A's side two, if you have it on vinyl. Action is replaced by thought. The song is "Optimistic," a word which becomes more meaningful in its absence. It has lyrics about Ground Zero ("vultures circle the dead"), and it offers a glimpse into how Al Queda members think Americans perceive international diplomacy ("the big fish eat the little ones, the big fish eat the little ones / not my problem, give me some"). Track seven, "In Limbo," is about how the United States has been shaken out of its fantasy and has "nowhere to hide," only finding "trap doors that open, I spiral down." Now we're at "Idioteque," where it's "women and children first." Survivors slowly conclude, "I'm alive" Unlike "How to Disappear," "Idioteque" offers the first moment of acceptance: We concede, "This is really happening." We wonder "Who's in a bunker?" across the ocean, trying to murder us for working in a 110-story office building. Yorke says "We're not scaremongering," yet some of us already are; there is an "ice age coming," In "Morning Bell," a shell-shocked nation becomes uncharacteristically compassionate ("everyone wants to become a friend"), but there is no way to deal with loss: On "Motion Picture Soundtrack," Thom sings "Red wine and sleeping pills / Help me get back to your arms," Suddenly, everyone needs vicodin. Everyone needs to drink more merlot. We fill our void with cheap sex and sad films, and baby we think we're crazy. But there is no answer to the question of reality, except the faith that there is something greater than this world, which is how Kid A ends: "I will see you in the next life." And maybe you will, and maybe you won't. It's always 50-50.

Now, please do not misinterpret my thoughts on this album; I am not saying that we should have been warned by it, or that John Ashcroft should have played Kid A in spring of 2001 and said, "You know, we really need to ramp up airport security." I am also not suggesting that Thom Yorke is some kind of pop Nostradamus; in fact, the opposite is probably true. When composing this album in the wake of Radiohead's Ok Computer, Yorke had a severe case of writer's block and resorted to scribbling discarded lyrics on scraps of paper, throwing them all into a top hat, and withdrawing them at random, one line at a time (Yorke apparently got this idea from a technique David Byrne used when writing the 1980 Talking Heads album Remain in Light). Lyrically, there is no conscious structure to Kid A's songs at all. Which is, of course, the only way this could have happened. A genius can be a genius by trying to be a genius; a visionary can only have a vision by accident.