THE GREATEST ROCK BAND IN THE WORLD
Who is the greatest rock/artist in the world today? Those of us who are adolescent males with no girlfriends or boyfriends, no doubt, have pondered over this question with much gravity over the years. But those of you who have graduated on to adulthood have other thoughts to deal with. Your babies, your jobs, your future, your health, etc. So in the interest of transporting all of you girls and boys back to a time which you only dimly remember (and some in fact never experienced), let me pose to you "Who indeed is the greatest rock band/artist in the world today."
Umm, so Radiohead has pulled some big shit since about OK Computer. A few months after OK Computer came out, the UK press began warbling on about how it was the GREATEST ALBUM EVER MADE in the history of human experience. It came in ahead of Blood on the Tracks, Fun House, the White Album or whatever album that rock journalists think is the greatest album of all time. So these self-important magazines in England had polls. And amazingly, the readers were suckered into it. They voted (repeatedly) that "OK Computer" was the greatest album of all time. For some reason, this never caught on in America where Radiohead was a moderately interesting "alternative" band who dithered with classic pop melodies and sang songs suitable for breaking out the razorblades -- the classic Cure syndrome.
So then they released Kid A. Something strange happened in this country. Radiohead now became the greatest band in the world. I'm not sure how many people actually heard Kid A, but there was no debate. Arguments seemed to be primarily based on this notion that Radiohead had "taken a risk," they'd taken a giant step forward, they were "willing to change their style," i.e. they were innovators of a sort. The prevailing wisdom was that the band had abandoned guitars in favor of a more electronic sound (assuming of course that guitars have nothing to do with electronics). In any case, robots, not humans had made most of the sounds on Kid A, or so the story went. Imagine the bravery! Imagine the courage of the boys in the band! After all, they could have churned out OK Computer Version 2.0, but no! they had never strayed from the path of creativity and innovation. They had soldiered on, much like the Beatles after Rubber Soul and produced their Revolver. They had taken a giant step forward, and damned be the commercial realities of the day. They were into it for art.
OK, let me back up a little bit here. Radiohead's second album The Bends, a straight ahead guitar-based album. is a gorgeous album. It, in fact, is one of the finest pieces of music anybody's made in decades. There are about 12 songs, each with a verse-chorus-verse scheme. When I first heard it, every song sounded like something "I once heard before." The melodies were too obvious. Yet later, it dawned that the songs are like that because they are simply brillliant pop songs, each one fully realized, from introduction to coda, with their ringing electric guitars, background acoustic guitars, brush strokes on the drums, and vocals that were awesomely beautiful. The singer had an amazing range (although a little shaky with pitch), sort of like a less pissed off Sinead O'Connor. yorke So Radiohead followed this up with OK Computer. OK Computer begins with a sad guitar figure followed by a cascade of electronically processed drum beats -- a slowed dance beat embellished by pops and squeaks from their very ok computers -- after which Thom Yorke (below), the singer, comes in on a perfect note -- something about "driving in a fast German car." It is a truly astonishing beginning to an album, an introduction that sucks you right in. It's the best kind of album opening because it immediately transports you to somewhere other than where you are. You are no longer listening to the music because you are in the music. The mark of brilliance. The album continues with amazing melodies and inventive arrangements, all with crystal clear production, and all linked together. By the end of the fifth song, you're generally convinced that Radiohead have nothing happy to say about the world. At the same time, it's like watching a beautiful Russian princess in 19th century St. Petersburg die of arsenic poisoning. It's hard not to watch her as you marvel at her porcelain skin turning blue. Although OK Computer falters a little bit after the fifth song (which is why it comes in behind The Bends), it is still a powerful work of music. It's like nothing I've heard before and it's good.
So how did Radiohead become the Earth's greatest band according to the sages? Because they followed OK Computer with Kid A on which they pretty much dispense with guitars (oooh...how cool). Kid A is very slight. It's like a gossamer album, because it sails by you, and it's over, and you're not really sure if there was anything you remember about the whole experience. There are a couple of wonderful melodies, but nothing too striking. Some psuedo-warbling about sucking lemons and things like that. But ultimately, Kid A fails because it is neither of those two things thatjournalists go on about: it is neither innovative, nor is it spectacularly good. It's just moderately good. It's probably an insult to people like Aphex Twin or mu-ziq or whomever to call Kid A innovative electronic music. It's not innovative for a pop band because even a lame band like Tears for Fears were using electronics in the mid-1980s. For God's sake Depeche Mode's first album in 1981 had no guitars on it! That was 20 years ago! Can people please stop announcing in interviews that "[in British accent] oh, we're heading in a completely new direction because we've decided to go electronic -- no guitars, you know." Most of you probably remember this refrain from...oh 1985.... Every two years, there's some artist (Madonna in the late '90s, U2 with Pop, etc. etc.) who will say those words, and we all stand around ooohing and aahing at their genius. So anyway, back to Radiohead. Recently, they released an album called Amnesiac, recorded at the same sessions as Kid A. I can't comment on it since I haven't heard it (for reasons too long to explain) (although admittedly I own a copy). However, even if the album is astonishingly brilliant, it would still not make Radiohead the GREATEST ROCK BAND on Earth. They would be in the top 3 (because they are brilliant). But they would not be number one. This is because of the Kid A goof-up That cost them some major points, dude. Points for poor execution of the whole debacle. So anyway, I invite comments on Amnesiac.
For the best information on Radiohead on the web, go here.