SomeAngryIndian

So I’ve had a nasty habit.

Like with slasher films or trashy novels, junk and titty mags, albums that critics declare less-than-perfect are in a dark light. In my mind, they were … deficient. Sometimes, excessive.

We all do it. “If only Time After Time was excised from Reckoning, Electioneering from OK Computer, Good Day Sunshine from Revolver.”

As modern day listeners, we have become peculiar in our relationship to art. For as long as I can remember, film students tell me what scenes in movies work, don’t work. Writing professors talk about slicing the fat off a piece. It doesn’t matter if you really like that line. How does it function?

Art has several purposes. The first is superficial. It can make you feel good. A song can get stuck in your head. You hum it while brushing your teeth. And then there is purpose.

I will not argue with anybody, especially not Stephen Malkmus, if they say Time After Time is probably the worst song on Reckoning (though I’d say it’s in a tie with Second Guessing). What I like about Malkmus’ musings is that he never says it shouldn’t have been there in the first place. He’s not the kind of man to skip the track, which is a practice I’ve grown to dislike and discourage among my friends (if you don’t let Fitter Happier play I’ll break your fingers).

Why? Because like all good art, there are the pieces and there is the whole. Grapes of Wrath is still a great read if you take out all the chapters involving nature, but then how small does its world become? Without red ants and turtles juxtaposed to JC cudgeling across the Midwest, where are the limits to the text? The book would not be the same, its parameters now changed, metaphors missing — it is not Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.

The same goes for music. It has to. I belive production is just as valuable as actually writing the songs. The track order, the arrangements. Knowing when to call it quits. So why is there a Fitter Happier in the middle of OKC?

Fitter Happier is, I believe, the defining statement for OK Computer. Say what you want about the frenetic post-modern disappointment of the first half of the album, the lethargic descent of the human condition in the second. You’ll never have a complete picture. Fitter Happier is the link, that tie between the two halves. The perfect segue.

Looking at it from a strictly textual point of view, this is excellent modern poetry. Billy Corgan, you wish your shit read like this. As Thom put it, this is the 90’s checklist. Years from now, this is the document that will describe our times. No amount of hippie guitar jingle jangling or optimistic thoughts could describe how we all really feel (not how we want to) like this. Case in point:

Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
…
eating well
(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats),
a patient better driver,
a safer car
(baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well
(no bad dreams),
…
favors for favors,
fond but not in love,
…
no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate,
nothing so childish - at a better pace,
slower and more calculated,
no chance of escape,
now self-employed,
concerned (but powerless),
an empowered and informed member of society
PRAGMATISM NOT IDEALISM
will not cry in public,
…
still cries at a good film,
still kisses with saliva,
calm, fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig in a cage on antibiotics.

Slowly the lines unravel from basic guidelines to our idea of healthy living into the reality behind our society, the ills beyond. From the concerned (but powerless), to the pragmatic, the ones who cannot cry in public, to the ones that still can, who kiss with saliva. Together we see the multitude of human emotion, all delivered in an objective Stephen-Hawking/Mac-voice, with a drunken piano playing beside you on this journey through the museum.

I especially love the line “fond but not in love.” Chilling.

Many describe Radiohead as a political band. “Orwellian”. And yet let’s look at the political content of their most significant album. Paranoid Android has references to a king and a firing squad. Exit Music has vague reference to disestablishmentarianism, as does Karma Police. No Surprises has the lines ”bring down the government/they don’t/they don’t speak for us.” But there is no overt politik in any of this. So where does this definition come from? Where is the solid ground their definition stands on?

Electioneering:

Riot shields, voodoo economics,
it’s just business, cattle prods and the I.M.F.
I trust I can rely on your vote.

When I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet.

Here we see anti-neoliberal sentiments. Rioting in the streets, Reaganomics. Playing the politics game. And we also see this duality in the second stanza between politics and their touring. As Thom put it, this song was originally about being on tour and having to pander to an audience (i.e. play Creep). Radiohead is a political band against current politics while playing politics. In Electioneering, their identity is placed in the spotlight and they take a closer look into what they do and how it relates to what they dislike. Few anti-establishment songs/bands can accomplish this feat. Holding Blowin’ in the Wind to the Bob Dylan selling Victoria’s Secret, or the BornAgainBob. Transparency.

Plus what’s wrong with you people. Electioneering is balls out fun punk. A sure converter to the RadioHeads flock.

Even Time After Time has its purpose. It contrasts the rest of the album, shifts the tone only to have it turn out again into classic REM, killer tracks like Don’t Go Back to Rockville and Little America. To me, in a complete listen-through, this juxtaposition illuminates the album.

Revionism is a close-minded attempt to look only at the surface of music. At the sheen and gloss and glimmer of the Top 40. To turn a complex blend of flavors into fast food. We cannot do to books and film what we do to music: slice it up, put it back together, like some Frankenstein horror freakshow.

Music is not inherently visual. Only one or two senses at work and so people demand music to work harder. Instant gratification, etc. And it can. We call this ”being catchy”.

But like film, photo, painting, sculpture - music doesn’t need to make you happy. It doesn’t have to, and not all of it should. What music, like all great art, should do is affect you. And if one song in the album finds you to be combative, then it’s done its job. If it confounds and frustrates you, good. If you can’t listen to one Radiohead song because it makes you claustrophobic, panicked, unhappy, or bored, tired, withdrawn, then they’ve successfully transferred their message to your mind. Now go listen to your happy stuff but don’t ever say its not art, that this song doesn’t have a right to be there. And don’t resort to revisionism and rewriting art you can’t agree with.

A last point about music, to be elaborated on in a later post: identity. Reading a book can be entertaining because you identify with the characters, the protagonist. But then there is reading to understand a new world or thought, beyond the facile dispositions of its characters or the superficiality of common form. Reading is about discovery, and music is the same way. Sometimes, I listen to music to fit my mood. Sometimes, to adapt to a new one (because music can lift you or make you serious or even anger and frustrate you). Listening to unusual music, that initially makes you uncomfortable, tests your patience, which is a valuable trait. It is about opening up to new things. In this, sad music can make you happy, and happy sad, etc. Music is personal that way. How many people get happy from listening to No Rain when the person it’s about would clearly get pissed off at that song? Man, all this shit is confusing. End ramble.