For a long time I have been meaning to make a personal "Best Albums" list. I like so many albums, though, that I figure I would probably have a top 50 list, which would be quite an undertaking. Whatever I choose, however, Radiohead's OK Computer, however, would be a given. Today's column is actually a column I wrote about them for a writing class. Enjoy.
**********************************************
"The future is here, and its name is Radiohead."
That opening probably typifies a rock critic�s response to the "jolly British band" who received a Grammy nomination for its seminal OK Computer album.
Unlike most rock critic reviews however, this one would not be mere posturing, and it would not be a mere attempt to sound hip to an audience whose age grows ever further from that of the critic.
And it would, in fact, be valid.
The future is bleak. The future is sterile. The future is impractical and inhumane.
The future is Radiohead.
Saturday night I saw Radiohead�s tour "documentary" Meeting People is Easy. I put "documentary" in quotes because this film was as more cinematography than biography, more cerebral than celebratory. I say film because, in my mind, there is a distinct difference between a movie like Dumb and Dumber and a film like Pulp Fiction.
The film opened with the computer-generated speaking that composes one track from OK Computer playing over a montage of an empty empty road. The image recurred in many different forms throughout this film, as it tackled the same issues that OK did�namely, industrial wasteland suburbia crap. The feeling of helplessness, of being just a part of a huge, huge, conglomerate world filled with deceit and pain and most of all loneliness.
"Dude, that movie was less than two hours long."
"Really? It felt like four."
The immense power of the cookie cutter landscapes and bleak factories pictured in this film were indeed. It is difficult to be confronted with the reality of a corporate world that continues to alienate everyone. It is even more difficult, and even uncomfortable, to watch a band constantly oppose this conformity while trying to avoid the fallout that comes from putting out an album hailed as "The new Sgt. Pepper�s" by the commodity-driven modern music industry.
A telling moment came in the performance footage of "Creep," the song that introduced many people, myself included, to the band. Back in 1993, when looking for the "Voice of Generation X" was all the rage, this song and its "I�m a creep/ I�m a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here?/ I don�t belong here" lament ensured their place in the "alternative" canon, but by now the song has become trite and overdone (of course, I still like it, but who says I have taste?). The footage of this song, with singer Thom Yorke holding out the microphone, disdainfully letting the audience sing for themselves what he clearly doesn�t feel like force feeding them anymore, gives us a sense that this band can see the irony that is their own existence.
[Hmm. This sounds more like a film review than a column. Whoops.]
This film showed me how futile life can be, and yet made me laugh in spite of the heady, heavy subject matter. It boggled the mind yet made so much sense. It pushed me to the cliff of overwhelming information oblivion, all the while commenting on this oblivion, all the while making me feel that perhaps I am not crazy, perhaps this world really does have problems, perhaps I am not the only one who feels that way.
And in an odd way, it rang of beauty.
"A job that slowly kills you/ �Bring down the government/ They don�t speak for us."
Indeed.
**********************************************
Email me here with your favorite recipes.
Rain down on me. From a great height.
April 14 April 13 April 8 April 2
March 31 March 30 March 29 March 28
Metraboy Online
"i will stop
i wil stop at nothIN.
say the riGHt things.
when electioneering.
i trust i can rely on your vote.
--radiohead, "electioneering"
