Ok Computer was my first Radiohead cd, but I sold it to get the deluxe editions(which have great bonus tracks, btw).Originally Posted by kristi
Ok Computer was my first Radiohead cd, but I sold it to get the deluxe editions(which have great bonus tracks, btw).
I love them dearly, and have followed their evolution from the days of Creep to their current other worldly kraut rock inspired fragile beauty. King of Limbs too me longer to love than some of their previous work, but it is a quite beautiful work, and when I saw them performing most of it live last autumn it was special. I totally agree about the leaving off of The Daily Mail, quite puzzling as the song is sublime, this was in the live set. I think Thom's solo album is wonderful too.
Interested to see there is a cover of The National Anthem, possibly my favourite song out of many of theirs I cherish, I will play it later.
I find it so hard to pick a favourite Radiohead album, the quality is so high, but I come back to In Rainbows more often that any I think, but Kid A, OK Computer, The Bends, Hail To The Thief.... all are up there.
I do think that live they are magical, I must have seen them ten times over the years, from The Bends onwards, the shows are the most intimate arena gigs I have experienced, brittle rhythms and plaintive vocals stilling a crowd of 75,000 in the balm of a Glastonbury evening, is one of my all time convert highs.
I love OK Computer. It's a masterpiece.
I like Kid A very much.
Amnesiac is alright. Some pieces started sounding redundant to me.
Hail To The Thief lost me. I'd had enough redundancy.
Haven't paid much attention since, although I did listen to samples of In Rainbows because so many were saying good things about it. My impression - again, based only on samples - was that it seemed promising. Sounded like some songs might be pretty great, while others might still be covering some already traveled ground. Opinions?
And, what of this krautrock-influenced space rock sound that I've been seeing referred to here? There's always been a little of that on OKC, KA & Amnesiac, but have they stepped it up? I'm intrigued to get more details.
"I tah dah nur!" - Ike
My thoughts on the studio albums then followed by In Rainbows which I didn't get until I saw it live a few times.
Radiohead IMHO has turned into a live band, I prefer the newer albums live than studio. Been seeing every tour since Ok Computer one of my favorite live bands.
I want to dynamite your mind with love tonight.
I love OK Computer and have it on my "desert island" list. Unfortunately for me, I don't think the band was ever able to replicate the same level of quality in their subsequent works. I don't think they even cared to, as they have evolved in different directions. While I respect that, I secretly wish they would have released one or two more albums in the same vein before moving on to the more experimental/electronic style of music they did after OK Computer.
Big time fan of the "Bends/OK/KidA" trilogy.
Saw the band 4 times: the 1st three times were out of this world (Ok tour / Kid A tour / Amnesiac tour). The last time was fucking dreadful (pre-Hail to the Thief release tour)
Got off the bus with Hail to the Thief and have not heard anything yet that has changed that opinion.
Death inspires me like a dog inspires a rabbit
I was very excited to listen to Radiohead after reading so much about OK Computer. There was also a really long article by Nick Hornby in The New Yorker magazine where he talked about one of the members playing the obscure electronic instrument ondes martenot. Hornby also likened their music favorably to King Crimson's "In the Court.." album and I know Hornby is not a big fan of progressive rock. Anyone who has read any of Hornby's books can probably tell you what kind of music he likes and, while he does cast a wide net, progressive rock is not usually in it. I was psyched to hear this new experimental progressive band that everybody was talking about. I borrowed OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac from my sister. My sister is a fan of Britpop and "mainstream alternative" (love that term!) and is not familiar with progressive rock really at all. When she told me that OK Computer was good and that Kid A and Amnesiac started to get weird, I assumed I would really like the "weird" stuff that she was not getting into. I listened to the three albums in order. OK Computer was good, but not an earth-shattering classic like I was expecting. I noticed a few nods to the old King Crimson sound here and there and a few bits that reminded me of Nick Drake, but there was no sort of coherent sound or approach. The main thing I noticed was that the singer, Thom Yorke, sounded alot like Bono Hewson, the singer from the Irish band U2. I remembered in Hornby's article about Radiohead that the band members mentioned that they used to watch the U2 video Live at Red Rocks every day after school.
I was able to pick the U2 influence fairly quickly and, although I am not a big fan of U2, the early stuff was definitely potent in its day. I was disappointed with OK Computer, but I was looking forward to hearing the "weird" stuff on Kid A and Amnesiac. After hearing those two records, I went back and listed to all three again. There were some good songs here and there and I felt that the best songs from each record could make a decent compilation, but I was left wondering what all the excitement and hype was about. Later, I heard a Radiohead song on radio and it was in 3/4 and kind of catchy and swinging. I could tell it was Radiohead because the singer sounded so much like the U2 singer. I kind of liked the song, but it didn't really do anything interesting with the swinging rhythm and it never changed from that rhythm. It just did the same thing over and over again. I chalked it up as a good try by the band, but I felt that they needed to keep on working at it. Eventually I found out that the song was actually by the band Coldplay. I still haven't quite grasped the appeal of Radiohead (or Coldplay, for that matter). I always figured that Radiohead was progressive music for people like my sister who didn't really know anything about progressive music. With their crowds and record sales, it would seem like Radiohead could be considered a mainstream band (or a mainstream alternative band) or at least a band with wide popular appeal, unlike most bands who are considered to be progressive and do not tend to have the same widespread appeal. All that being said (and no one ever accused me of being concise), I was surpsrised that posters here were promoting the band as being progressive when it could be assumed that most posters are familiar with "authentic" (for lack of a better term) progressive bands (or bands that most people consider to be experimental). I do like a little Krautrock-style music in my diet from whatever era, so any band dabbling in that sound would be interesting to me. I'll have to check out some of the later Radiohead albums. When I was going to school at VIrginia Tech in the 80s, there was a local band called The Bruise who were quite popular with the students. They had a bit of an anthemic-U2-style sound to their music and performance. I'm pretty sure the band broke up after all the members graduated from college. At any rate, what I've heard from Radiohead reminds me of that group. Radiohead are a solid band with perhaps progressive aspirations who deserve the devoted following of an enlightened college town, but I don't see the appeal beyond that at this point. Maybe they've gotten more interesting (or will in the future) on subsequent albums. I think it's great that they are able to charge whatever they want for their albums and experiment (to the extent that they do) with different sounds and composition techniques. I haven't heard anything that they've done that was as interesting as Johnny Greenwood's music for the film There Will Be Blood.
Interesting way to put it, Finn_McCool: "I always figured that Radiohead was progressive music for people like my sister who didn't really know anything about progressive music."
I think anyone who was weened on the entire spectrum of late 1960s to late 1970s progressive music (Psychedelic rock, Prog, Canterbury, Kraut, Rock in Opposition, Magma, Henry Cow, post Bitches Brew Mahavishnu/Headhunters/Weather Report inspired jazz rock, early analog electronic music a la Vangelis/Tangerine Dream) may find Radiohead to be enjoyable but hardly revolutionary, earth shattering, or ground breaking.
Very nice post, Finn. I've tried many times to crack the Radiohead code but I always walk away annoyed or at the very least, bored; the last time I tried, I listened to "In Rainbows" and the "clink-clink-clink" electronic toy-drum sound drove me crazy, in a bad way. I had to take the thing off after two songs.
I think they're more of a "live" experience; I saw the "In Rainbows: From the Basement" thing and loved it so there ya go.
Hope to catch them live some time in the future.
Gosta Berlings Saga must drive you crazy.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
-- Aristotle
Nostalgia, you know, ain't what it used to be. Furthermore, they tells me, it never was.
“A Man Who Does Not Read Has No Appreciable Advantage Over the Man Who Cannot Read” - Mark Twain
Strangely, the GBS stuff I've heard, I've enjoyed.
True... but nothing is, any more, so it's not fair to hold Radiohead to that standard.
IMO, Radiohead did '90s rock as well as anybody with The Bends, and indulged their '70s influences as well as any mainstream band with OKC. Then - in a move worthy of a lot of respect, IM - they chucked most of the elements that led their success and went off the deep end, so to speak, with their next two albums. I'm not saying that either Kid A or Amnesiac are these revolutionary, incredibly difficult albums, but how many bands, achieving what Radiohead did, popularity-wise, would go in *that* direction for an encore? Rewind a couple of decades, and you had '70s mainstream prog bands who had helped change rock music, bringing all of the progressive tendencies to a halt by 1980, so that they chase radio stardom and imitate the other new-wave bands of the day. Radiohead got popular and then got even more experimental (and credit the sophistication of the modern music fans for keeping the band very popular even after this change in direction).
Radiohead's Kid-A-to-the-present albums are vaguely progressive, IMO, but most importantly, I think they're really *good*. Their forbears are krautrock, and the solo work of Peter Gabriel and Robert Fripp, in that what they do of late is a lot about textures and rhythms. For example, I do not consider Peter Gabriel II or III to be a progressive rock album, but I find both to be very creative and interesting. But Radiohead also draws from lots of contemporary influences as well, which is part of why their music sounds fresh and immediate and not like a glorified tribute band.
Very cool post Finn, but I gotta say that I don't hear the York / Bono comparisons at all. I find them to have very different voices and styles. For me York’s voice was something that I had to kind of get over in order to like the band. I am still not a huge fan of his nasal style of singing, but have gotten used to it over the years and have to admit that it fits the music pretty well. Bono on the other hand, have enjoyed his voice from the beginning. I don’t find them similar at all.
Steve Sly
OK Computer is easily one of my deserted island discs, I think it's a total masterpiece. Well, sure, Electioneering could have been left off with no loss in quality because while I love the song, it doesn't seem to fit the overall mood, but still.
I also love The Bends, which I got after OKC. However, I think Kid A was crap, like they suddenly discovered Autechre and Aphex Twin and the Warp Records label and thought "Ha! All the assholes who think we're prog or Pink Floyd clones, take *that*". I got off the bus after Hail to the Thief; I saw them on the OKC tour but left their set at Coachella (they were touring HTTT) to go hear Kraftwerk, one of the best decisions I've ever made.
What John Peel said about ELP --"a tragic waste of talent and electricity"-- applies for me to Radiohead.
I just got the new Atoms For Peace CD, but I haven't listened to it yet. Has anyone heard this? If so, what did you think?
Great band. Kid A and In Rainbows are my favourites but Ok Computer is also very good.
The Bends and OK Computer went right over my head but love Kid A and In Rainbows
Ah, Radiohead. I first heard them via Creep, but while I liked it well enough, I thought "Oh gawd, another Pixies tribute band". I went nuts for The Bends however (Street Spirit (Fade Out) is one of my favorite songs) and I think OK Computer is a towering masterpiece, easily one of the greatest rock albums ever made. Radiohead's show at the soon-to-be-demolished Universal/Gibson Amphitheatre in April 1998 on the OKC tour is still the best rock concert I've been to.
However, when I heard Kid A for the first time, I was crestfallen. "Oh no, they've replaced being Pixies and Pink Floyd fans with being Autechre and Aphex Twin fans". Now, I love Autechre and Aphex Twin/Richard James --the last time I saw Autechre, they were incredible-- but Kid A just seemed so.....dated already, 5 years too late. I thought Amnesiac was awful, a typical leftovers album (see: Works Vol. 2.
I just lost interest along the way, though I dutifully buy the albums from the used bin and give them a spin. It got to the point that my friend and I were at Coachella in 2004 and we bailed on Radiohead so that we could get a spot in one of the tents to see Kraftwerk (a great decision, as it turns out). I listened to King of Limbs once and it's been gathering dust since. I find Thom Yorke's screechy whine unbearable now and he talks such rubbish in interviews that I've stopped reading them, it started to affect how I felt about the music of Radiohead that I did like.
Oh well, it happens with bands, they have to follow their muse, that doesn't mean any of us have to go along with them.
...or you could love
Words of wisdom!
I love'em, but they've been mining the same basic sonic terrain since Kid A and what seemed cutting edge, at least for rock fans, in 2000 is kinda old hat in 2013. Thom Yorke's solo/side projects are similar too which only adds to the overall feeling of sameness. I'm not wishing for them to go backward to Bends/OK Computer, but I am wishing for them to move forward in a different direction.
Not to mention Peter Banks and...Peter Banks!Oh Brother Singh, I deserve that!How many times have I done that with Mitch Miller and Mitch Mitchell here on this forum?
I meant PAUL Weller.
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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")
"You can take the war out of the soldier, but you can't raise that soldier from the dead."
--Shona Laing
N.P.:“Loneliness”-Dawn
"It was a cruel song, but fair."-Roger Waters
Can some of you list just one or two favorite Radiohead songs? I've only ever heard one or two and wasn't crazy about what I heard, but I want to check out a little more.
I love Marillion's cover of Fake Plastic Trees, but that's the only song I know well, and it's a cover. Then there was the Karma Police song, but I didn't care for that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VgyM9mzQys
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