If you converted all the critical plaudits Radiohead has gotten over the past fifteen years or so into liquid form, and poured them into all the world’s supertankers, then an awful lot of supertanker crews would be frantically bailing their overloaded vessels out to keep the keels off the harbor floors.
Now, I’ve been around music a long time. I’ve listened to a lot of it. I’m about as openminded as it gets. I dig music on two levels; on the one hand, there’s music that grabs me in the liver, that connects with me emotionally right where I live and breathe. It’s the stuff I wear on my sleeve in this blog – stuff like Springsteen and Tchaikowski and Emmylou Harris and Richard Thompson and Prince and the Clash and Gustav Mahler and Sam and Dave and piobaireachd and Iris Dement and the Iron City Houserockers and middle-period Public Enemy and the Black Watch Pipes and Drums, and all kinds of stuff in between. Stuff that grabs me in the soul.
And then there’s stuff that misses my soul to one degree or another, but which I admire from a technical perspective as a musician, much like a programmer might admire good code or an engineer a perfect gusset plate, as great technique for its own sake. Stuff like Yngwie Malmsteen or or Alban Berg or Rush or Bela Fleck or Miles Davis or Charles Mingus or Rimsky-Korsakoff – stuff whose pure technical excellence I admire and enjoy to a degree, but which doesn’t grab me by the liver and say “this explains a key part of what life is about!”.
And at the juncture of neither of these avenues lies Radiohead.
Now, if you’ve followed this “Thing I Like/Things I Don’t” series over the past few months, you’ll know this is the point where I launch into a detailed explication of why, even though I know I should like something, and indeed find things in his or her or their body of work that I do appreciate, there is a paradoxical hitch that keeps me from liking it, or interferes with my appreciation.
But not here.
Because while I’ve tried, and King Banaian (as Radiohead-y of a Radiohead fan as exists) has tried, and other ‘head fans have tried, I can’t honestly say I care about them on either level.
And as with most of these love/hate articles, it’s not that I couldn’t or won’t be converted. And I’ll cop to the fact that the period from the band’s major-league debut up through what their fans call their “creative peak” (whatever that was – and if you get five Radiohead fans in a room, you’ll get seven answers to that question) happened at a time when I didn’t listen to much music at all, so it never really had a chance to get ingrained in my head, one way or the other.
It’s just that in a decade and change of (sorta) trying, nothing has pushed me in one direction or the other.
OK. Not much of an article. Sorry. I’m a creep and I don’t belong here…
…er, wait.
Is that a picture of teh Peevee using his mad vocal skillz (did you know Pavarotti used to live next door?..’course he’s dead now) to belt out his arrangement of “Listen to me?”
“And I’ll cop to the fact that the period from the band’s major-league debut up through what their fans call their “creative peak” (whatever that was – and if you get five Radiohead fans in a room, you’ll get seven answers to that question) happened at a time when I didn’t listen to much music at all, so it never really had a chance to get ingrained in my head, one way or the other.”
Well, there you are. My Radiohead addiction was born in Europe, mid-1990s, having completely missed Creep while in LA and mostly developing an addiction then to sports radio on XTRA and talk radio on KABC (Prager, Elder) and Limbaugh. Went to my old radio grounds at KSPC a few times but felt out of place.
Left LA mid-1995, four months later in Ukraine just in time for everyone going nuts over The Bends. I didn’t even hear Pablo Honey (first, 1993, with Creep) until 1997 when OK Computer is out. If you missed all three of those, and your first intro was Kid A, well, Mitch, I know you well enough to know that would not be your taste. Just depends on when you came up for air from life to duck back into your music. For me, 1995 and 1996 were just in time to have missed grunge and post-grunge, and to get to electronica, the post-rave of The Prodigy, The Verve, and damn near anything from Scotland in the second half of the 1990s. Put it this way: I heard Coldplay when Yellow was still a Dutch EP. (Now I wouldn’t walk across the street to urinate on them if they were on fire, but that’s another story.)
Timing is everything. Being 19 in 1977 when Talking Heads first shows up matters a lot. If you’re 9 or 29, it’s not going to make any impression at all.
One of my issues with Radiohead is that they’re described as perfect critical darlings: “Experimental,” “Influential,” “Challenging,” and “Avant-garde” get thrown around. Rarely were words “Memorable” or “Interesting” used, and the word “Fun” is rarely used. Thom’s voice is usually a whiny mumble mixed in with a screech, and the drumming might be some of the most uninspired since Spinal Tap.
Sure, they’ve got great songs, and a true “Best Of” would give you an unforgettable album. Creep was awesome, as was Paranoid Android. I even liked much of Kid A, and “How to Disappear Completely” was a beautiful ballad. In Rainbows had a few good songs, too. But then there’s the filler — and they’ve got it in spades. Lyrically, even Yorke admits the lyrics are often nonsense.
I get the feeling that Radiohead might be remembered like a lot of the 70s Prog Rock groups. I enjoy the genre, but mixed in with some good albums by King Crimson, Yes, and Genesis are a lot of glittery capes, pretentious lyrics, boring concept albums, and 30-minute long songs forgotten the moment they ended.
David Poe said:
“… and the drumming might be some of the most uninspired since Spinal Tap”
What?!?! At least their drummers spontaneously exploded from time to time. Hmm … maybe that was from lack of inspiration?
1. How many bands are there for whom a good Greatest Hits is more satisfying than any single album? Well, damn near all of them. That’s why they keep making Greatest Hits; I have always wondered if anyone’s done the market survey of how many GHs sell to people who already own two or more of that band’s full-length works?
2. Relatedly: I will own damn near anything ever made by Eno or Fripp. And I have several Yes albums because what I like most usually aren’t the hits (though Yours is No Disgrace is in my top five best songs ever. I can hear Wakeman now…) But I started buying old Pink Floyd other than Dark Side and kept saying to myself “what did I like about this?” Ditto Uriah Heep and most other prog-rock.
And I can’t ever forgive Peter Gabriel for So. So bad. Sosososososo bad.