SomeAngryIndian

Friends. Associates. Hated ones, even. Here is the first part of my meandering, monolithic review/philosophical digesting of Radiohead’s most recent opus: In Rainbows. The first part, A Return to Autobiography, reveals the history of my relationship to Radiohead and music in general. I hope you will enjoy. And do try to make it to the end. There will be a quiz after.

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Emotional maturity is a valuable commodity. How many people, in the midst of their lives, ever wonder if they have it?

Every couple of years I look backwards and have a chuckle at the kind of man-child I have been and wonder – do I have it yet?

Imagine a child: age 14, filled with insecurity, self-doubt, and percolating testosterone, having this thought: I think my favorite band is Radiohead. Imagine that thought followed by this one: Oh crap.

For years I’d argue about movies, politics, music – still do, who doesn’t? – but back then I felt like I was arguing for my very identity. In recognizing how I felt about Radiohead, I thought I was coming out of the closet. A few years prior I was into nothing but hip-hop, for which I felt little if anything at all. It served mostly as a way of connecting with my best friends at the time. My sister loved gangsta rap. My parents loved Bollywood. Later, my most musically fervent friend was a diehard Oasis fan. No one I knew really liked Radiohead more than just a few songs. More than Creep. I felt alone. Worse, I felt different. Remember when that was bad?

To those that know me intimately, this might be shocking. Remember that a lot can change in seven years. Two years later I would lay on my friend’s floor with my head against his speakers as they blasted The National Anthem (Radiohead’s, not America’s). Another year later, I was in the mezzanine of Madison Square Garden with said friend, the Oasis fan, flailing manically to Radiohead’s final concert of the Hail to the Thief tour. I remember the day the album came out:

I had a falling out with a very close friend of mine. The release date for Hail to the Thief coincided with her birthday. That morning I had wanted to give her the presents I’d bookmarked for purchase months before. The whole process was hard on me and I came home feeling shitty. That is, until I spied a little brown box on my front step. Two months would pass before I felt remotely right about my life, but for one solemn afternoon I could shut that world out. I felt good. I felt a bit more whole.

Months later, the lights go down on Madison Square Garden and Thom Yorke is convulsing to the heavy bass of The Gloaming. A little while after, I am witness to Jonny beating the shit out of his guitar during an extended Go to Sleep outro. Screaming out my desire to have Mr. Yorke’s babies during Exit Music. The feeling of the ground shaking beneath me. The opening roar of Airbag. “Bring down the government.” The ecstasy of Paranoid Android.

Rain down, indeed.

My Oasis friend, now I guess my Radiohead friend, who I wouldn’t be speaking to in a month or so, sat with me in the Sbarro’s across the street, listening to OK Computer, trying very hard to breathe. We could have slept right there but I desperately wanted to go home and put on my headphones. Like a fish out of water. There are very few nights like that in our lives. I love you, [Oasis friend].

Many moons pass. High school ends. Enter college. Freshman year.

In January 2005 I am tipped off about Radiohead and their desire to record new material. Later that year, I am dismayed by their decision to recruit Mark “Spike” Stent, the man responsible for some shitty and some good music. Stent is known for fucking around with songs without people knowing. His saving grace is that he is apparently responsible for some of Homogenic.

We all knew Nigel Godrich needs to be the damn producer. The man produced OK Computer, for Chrissake. He did Kid A. Luckily, Radiohead realized they needed their friend and decided to scrap the Stent sessions. This was good because we’d get LP7 proper. This was bad because it would take so fucking long.

Cut to spring 2006 and I am awake at 6am to find that W.A.S.T.E. (Radiohead’s merchandise store) has sold out of New York ticket pre-sales. Pissed off, I neglected to buy some for the L.A. show, forgetting eBay and all its glory. I doubt the band would’ve wanted that though. So I suppose it works out. Anyway.

My two friends were lucky to get four tickets for Boston. One was the Oasis guy. The other friend I had to tell three years previous that we had scored only two tickets. After a brief heart attack involving me almost not getting one of four tickets and a query upon when the gun shop closes, I was elated to be going to another Radiohead concert.

You know, for years, I claimed my favorite song of all time was Fake Plastic Trees, from The Bends. It kind of became my namesake in the following years. What I identified with in that song is that feeling of walking into the world and loving people you don’t think are worth it. I had found that putting myself on the line for people often led to them doing some very disappointing shit. At the end of Fake Plastic Trees I believe I hear Thom sing “And I run.” Is it the solution? Since, I’ve found a great deal of people to love. I’ve been happy to know people find me to be worth loving. There are genuine people out there, irregardless of my early experiences. The song still resonates with me in a more ecumenical sense: I love life despite its shortcomings. I am beginning to extend that to myself.

I don’t have a favorite song anymore. But I still really wanted to hear Fake Plastic Trees live. They had not played it at Madison Square Garden.

In Boston, I got what I wanted. Early in the set, Thom begins to sing and I hear the words “A green plastic watering can.” The sound that hit my ears sent a signal to my brain, which went berserk and promptly told my eyes to start releasing fluid at an alarming rate and my fists clenched tightly into two hot, white balls and I found my normally masterful control of the English language had dwindled to monosyllabic baby-talk. Having no control over my reaction, I just sat there and accepted it. It had been a difficult year, with no sign of improvement. I could use a release.

That was another night you don’t get often in life. Well, not often enough.

God bless the internet because within a week I had the bootlegs. I must have played House of Cards a dozen times before I realized this next album would be sweetness. For over a year I languished over my inability to hear Thom in the studio sing through my headphones:

I don’t want to be your friend. I just want to be your lover.

That is very sexy. I don’t care who you are. That gets me wet. Maybe I am easy. I don’t care. Call me.

I have had a very interesting life since Boston. Life has been one surprise after another. People came. People went. Some stayed. It’s been good times, mostly. I transferred to Columbia and the move proved to be a needed one. I spent orientation week meeting new people (never easy) and getting sloshed, to mixed results. Always interesting.

Still, that goddamn LP7. When. Oh when. I’d gone from trolling AtEase to being an occasional poster and found that talking to Radiohead fans proved exciting and exhausting at the same time. AtEase has some irrational haters. I’m sure it’s currently bubbling with people hating on the new Reckoner and Videotape (more on this later).

The one day I decide to keep my head down and not waste time on the internet and do my goddamn work (being an engineer feels like fucking Thetis – it’s a bitchmonster, but when you get your metaphorical cock in that ink-hole, man, I tell you…) I get a message from a friend. It’s a link to digg.com. It’s a story about Radiohead. It’s a link to InRainbows.com.

I think I had a stroke because I tried to dial some numbers and couldn’t feel my fingers or understand what a number was anymore. Still, there were friends and lover to be informed! I spent a good hour rolling around the sidewalk on Riverside Drive spitting frantically into my phone.

“RADIOHEAD ALBUM 10 DAYS PLEASE GOD BE REAL AM I DEAD ARE YOU THERE KRISHNA I’M FUCKING ALIVE.”

Sweet baby Jesus, it was real. Discbox. $81. No, thank you for this purchase, Radiohead.

I endured the longest, hardest 10 days ever. And on Wednesday, 1:30 AM, I’d given up and was set to sleep. I figured Radiohead is releasing a 10 track album 10 days after announcing it at the beginning of the 10th month and it would probably come out at 10AM English time, or 5AM here. I made plans with my brother to wake up at 5 and moved my mouse over to the Away button. Then an IM comes in.

(01:31:13) Her: did you get the new radiohead?!?!
(01:31:17) Me: 5am
(01:31:18) Her: omg downloading it as we speak!!!
(01:31:26) Her: what??
(01:31:28) Me: i’what?!

My head promptly exploded as I tried to alarm friends and lovers again. Having done all I could, ten minutes later I’m laying in my bed with the lights off, mp3 player and headphones set.

In Rainbows has a lot riding on it. A lot of albums do. But this one is special. Many people have heard the songs by now, thanks to the advent of torrents and YouTube. Many were expecting their favorites to be on it (sorry Down is the New Up fans, I feel you – I can’t wait to hear 4 Minute Warning show Coldplay how it’s done) and others had it perfectly set in their heads how the songs would sound. The tracklisting confounded many. Is Faust Arp really Spooks from the tour? Yes! No! Yes! Fucking wait 10 days!! (By the way, anyone with a brain knew it was no. Who called it?)

Not only that, but many were hoping for them to redeem themselves after the debacle that was the Hail to the Thief recordings. Don’t get me wrong. Many HTTT songs are fantastic and contribute positively to the band’s legacy. Others…not so much. Live, everything I’ve heard from HTTT is fantastic. The album, however, was rushed. Two weeks in L.A. is not Radiohead’s style and it showed. Songs like We Suck Young Blood and Scatterbrain had that Radiohead brand of weirdness but somewhere that tribal sense of melody they have was lost. HTTT also suffered “interweb blues”, since people were horribly pissed that Sail to the Moon and I Will sucked elephant dick compared to their live, bootlegged counterparts. I have to agree on this one. SttM was heartbreaking live. I Will was played in the Meeting People is Easy DVD and sounded majestic. On the album, both withered and trudged along. The skeleton was there but no meat. Some songs benefited from this barebones approach. There There still tingles my bingle whenever my playlist runs into it. Unfortunately, the album also had Go to Sleep as an uninspiring single (was great live though!). Also, let’s not forget those that are still pissed about Amnesiac (I won’t get too much into this, except that after many, many listens I’ve decided that it’s better than the Bends! There, I fucking said it!).

I won’t go in depth with their new business plan, since you can read about that everywhere, except that I’m very happy they decided to do this. The claims that Radiohead did this as a marketing ploy is laughable (Radiohead doesn’t need marketing – I point to Kid A’s debut at #2 on Billboard despite the lack of videos or singles, and Amnesiac’s debut at #1, riding Kid A’s coattails). The allegations that Radiohead is robbing their fans is ridiculous. The implication that allowing consumers to choose their prices would allow them to pay more than they need to is insulting. It reflects a poor understanding of both the human condition and business. Radiohead did nothing but set up an auction system for an infinite amount of identical products for which there can be only one bidder. If the market value is close to $10 then we find that the mean case would be the average selling price is $10, given a lack of competition. In fact, the average price was slightly less, meaning the album could have made more cheddar on iTunes. While it is true that less people would have bought if the price was set at the norm, 29% of In Rainbows downloaders paid close to or nothing. Not only that, consumers aren’t blind mice throwing their cash in the air. We are the market, not products of it, got that Guardian and Wall Street Journal? Condescending fucks.

In any case, by doing what Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) pussyfooted around for years without making a big deal of it, Radiohead created tons of free publicity. This does not betray their anti-capitalist leanings. I point to Jonny’s humble Dead Air Space post. The publicity stems mostly from the public’s desire to see wide, sweeping changes in the music industry , internet phenomena such as bloggers and Digg.com, and Radiohead’s own fervent fanbase. All this comes with a price, however. What if they didn’t deliver the goods? What if the servers crashed, downloads crawled? Worse, what is the album is shite?

On that subject, the buzzword preceding In Rainbows was “lush”. Seemed good. Move in the opposite direction of HTTT. See what you get. Take your time. Be sure. Don’t fuck with the fans. Responsibility. Radiohead was thinking. Thinking is good. It also means In Rainbows took too fucking long to get here. But, I had this tiny thought in the back of my consciousness that they were going into Kid A territory. I had to be patient. I would be rewarded. I had the faith.

As I lay in the dark with my thumb hovering over the Play button I paused. Cue back to last summer, holding onto my friend as Fake Plastic Trees segued into Videotape. Four years ago, my head tossed against a schoolbus window, the sight of Hail to the Thief waiting at my door. Laying around to Kid A with the best friends I’ve ever had. Sitting idly on a couch staring at my hands as Karma Police comes on the TV and something changes.

Yes, I am a little nuts for Radiohead. Music in general has become a necessity for me. I digest it as post-modernly as possible. I know the facts, the history. Music I care about it is more than what it is. It’s a good story, the soundtrack to a memory, a healer, a link between myself and friends. Radiohead more than any other band because I remember when I didn’t have music. I remember fearing that I would never know what it was like to really enjoy a song. I felt like a piece of me was missing. The first thing that brought me into the fold was Radiohead. Even through years of tasting various styles and artists, they stuck to me. They came to define some very uplifting and very painful moments of my life. They aren’t constantly in my head but they’re like a home I can always return to. A place where I can sit and reflect. I don’t get sad when I listen to Radiohead. I stare into myself and find warmth. Even in the icy caverns of Kid A or the schizophrenic paranoia of OK Computer. As a song plays, I can remember sitting in my friend’s old room, long after it’s been torn down. The time I held my friend’s hand in English class as she cried when no one else could see, I had Exit Music in my ear. Wanting to walk so long in the rain till my legs turned to jelly, giving up and sitting in a puddle, realizing How to Disappear Completely is a perfect song. Being just ten years old and realizing I can love music.

Beyond my personal connections, anyone can say they make good fucking music. The last minute of How to Disappear Completely. The crescendo of Let Down. The fade out in Pyramid Song. It’s hard to argue against it. They require more patience than most bands, but it’s there waiting.

I let my mind settle, push Play, and an instant smile spreads across my face.

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Oh, a cliffhanger! The second portion of this review, A S(t)imulated Live Experience is forthcoming!