Archives for March 2020

Certain Songs #1775: Radiohead – “Optimistic”

March 17, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

Of course, Kid A wasn’t all bleeps, bloops and blorps; bedeeddles and woobles. Mostly, yeah. But just as “Electioneering” served as the big-ass riff-rocker on OK Computer — complete with cowbell — so does “Optimistic” serve as Kid A’s token “normal” rock song.

And so “Optimistic” roars out of the gate with the guitars of Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood clangoring and clamoring against each other over a rolling and tumbling tom-filled Phil Selway beat while Thom Yorke “ooooooooooohs” over the whole thing before sliding into an opening verse that kind of belies the title.

Certain Songs #1774: Radiohead – “Everything In Its Right Place”

March 16, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

We are now as far away from Kid A as Kid A was from Remain in Light, perhaps the most trenchant example of a restless band changing itself this radically on their fourth album in 1980 that I can think of while writing this post. (I guess Sandinista!, too, though one might argue that it was more of an extension of the genre-bending of London Calling that a full-on reinvention.)

And while we’ll get to Remain in Light in a couple of years — assuming we don’t all die of Covid-19, in case you’re wondering about my mood right now — it does seem weird that Kid A is now 20 years old, because it sure doesn’t seem that old, does it?

Certain Songs #1773: Radiohead – “Karma Police”

March 12, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: OK Computer
Year: 1997

. . .

For a minute there, I lost myself. I lost myself.

I’ve only ever seen Radiohead in concert one time. But it was a pretty great time: at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on April 2, 1998. Oh, and the opening band was Spiritualized, which was as on point as you could possibly want, ranking up there for me with The Clash opening for The Who in 1982 or The Hold Steady opening for the Replacements in 2014. I guess these types of bills only happen every 16 years. Looking forward to what happens in 2030. If there is a 2030.

Certain Songs #1772: Radiohead – “Subterranean Homesick Alien”

March 11, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: OK Computer
Year: 1997

. . .

While I kind of suspect that “Subterranean Homesick Alien” was written because someone came up with Dylan-referencing title and they all thought was too good not to write a song around it, it’s also one of the coolest, spookiest songs on this cool, spooky album.

Set around a strutting, disjointed Phil Selway beat, echoing electric piano and guitars that sound like spaceships that are hovering just out of your peripheral vision “Subterranean Homesick Alien” plays with multiple meanings of “alien,” as he sounds so alienated from his life that he welcomes abduction from aliens he figures see us as entertainment.

Certain Songs #1771: Radiohead – “Paranoid Android”

March 10, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: OK Computer
Year: 1997

. . .

Radiohead have always had a sense of humour that never quite made it into their public image. But it’s there, lurking in the background of their intensity. After all, their first album was named after a Jerky Boys routine — which just dates it even more — and one of their best songs is named after a character in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, whom I’m going to call Marvin, and whose sour attitude on life was matched only by the shit Douglas Adams continually dumped on the character.

Also kinda funny was that they made the 6:24 “Paranoid Android” into a single, kind of the 1990s version of “Roundabout,” though not nearly as big as “Roundabout” was in the U.S. Though one thing they two songs had in common was a long organ solo. At least at first: one of the original takes had a very long keyboard solo that they subsequently edited out because apparently it was too much like Deep Purple. As if that’s a bad thing!!!

Certain Songs #1770: Radiohead – “Airbag”

March 9, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: OK Computer
Year: 1997

. . .

OK. Here we go.

Two-plus decades down the line, OK Computer is universally considered one of the all-time greatest albums ever recorded, and I am certainly not here to rain on its parade. That said, like Marquee Moon, it’s kinda front-loaded: most of the greatest songs appear in the first half of the record. And by “greatest,” I of course mean “my favorite.”

Like the opening track, “Airbag,” which sets the tone for the record. Driven by Phil Selway’s jumping, cut-up beat — influenced by DJ Shadow, and then cut up and looped by Selway & Thom Yorke — “Airbag” immediately drops you into a universe you’ve never heard before. A universe full of shimmering arpeggiated guitars, mellotrons, tape effects and a Colin Greenwood bassline that plays hide-and-seek with the rest of the song.

Certain Songs #1769: Radiohead – “Bones”

March 7, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Bends
Year: 1995

Some songs instantly take me to a place and time, and “Bones” is one of those songs. That place is Organic Online in San Francisco and that time is the late summer of 1996.

Organic — which apparently still exists a quarter-century later (and good for them!) — was only my second web job, but, and it was so long ago that I was still slinging HTML, but it was an incredibly important job for one, a two-year period in the early dot-com era where I built primitive websites for evil multinational corporations like Nike, Sony & McDonalds and met people I’m still in touch with today.

Certain Songs #1768: Radiohead – “The Bends”

March 6, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Bends
Year: 1995

While Pablo Honey was the first Radiohead album, The Bends was the first Radiohead album. It was the first album where they worked with Nigel Godrich — just as engineer, but still — the first album with art by Stanley Donwood, the first album with weird song structures.

The first album where their ambition to do something new with rock started showing.

Certain Songs #1767: Radiohead – “Prove Yourself”

March 5, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Pablo Honey
Year: 1993

. . .

Look, it’s not like I hated “Creep” or anything. But it sure did seem to get popular way out of proportion to how go it was, especially on U.S. alternative radio, where you can still hear it, nearly 30 years later, sometimes even with the phrase “so fucking special” left in. But, honestly, I never need to hear it again.

And given how tepid the reviews for Pablo Honey were I didn’t even bother with it until the summer of 1996, when I got both it and The Bends — where the reviews were somewhat better — thanks to the auspices of the BMG CD club. And it was . . . fine.

Certain Songs #1766: R.E.M. – “Blue”

March 4, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Collapse Into Now
Year: 2011

. . .

File Under Collapse

Of course it was right there on the album cover. Michael Stipe is waving goodbye on the only R.E.M. album cover to feature more than a single member of the band — Bill Berry was on Lifes Rich Pageant and Stipe is in triplicate on Around The Sun — which was probably a hint.

As one of the people that he was waving to, it went right past me when Collapse Into Now was released in March, 2011, though some fans sussed it out: on the RU Talking To Me? Re: R.E.M. famous superfan Adam Scott — who was at the beginning of his Parks & Recreation run — told the story of how he posted about it on an R.E.M. message board.