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Pop Rock Nation

Tag: Radiohead

  • We Break Easy: Ten Songs I Was Listening to on September 11, 2001

    10 years ago – y’know, before iPods and stuff – it was my general practice to keep a mix CD of my current favorite songs in my car to listen to on my way to and from work. And then, every week or so, I’d make a new CD, replacing the songs I was tired of with fresh new ones. I was listening to one such CD Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. On my way home from work that day, I was struck by how eerie some of the songs felt in light of the day’s events – the same way the absolutely perfect blue sky of that day took a sinister cast once its perfection had become so abruptly purified of the usual air traffic.

    In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, radio programmers were purging their playlists of songs that, however popular before, suddenly felt insensitive or inappropriate. The nu-metal act Drowning Pool had scored a breakout hit that summer with a song called “Bodies”, a tribute to the joyful violence of a moshpit. The song had been ubiquitous on rock radio and MTV2 all summer, and suddenly it was gone. Similarly, Jimmy Eat World’s then just-released third album Bleed American was pulled from the market, only to reappear a couple months later, euphemistically retitled as Jimmy Eat World. In the place of those “troubling” songs, came Five For Fighting’s “Superman” (at the time, a 6-month old single that had previously fizzled at radio, like it’s superior – and more troubling – predecessor “Easy Tonight”), and a new version of Enya’s “Only Time”, tricked out with 9/11 audio verite.

    In the meantime, I kept my little mix CD, and while I already loved most of the songs on it, the fact is, they’d taken on a whole new dimension for me (in the same way that Five for Fighting song did for so many others). Even now, hearing any one of these songs in any context has a sort of time travel effect, and I’m back on that beautiful, horrible Tuesday morning.

    Eventually Bleed American got its original title back. And “Bodies” would eventually be revived, not only as theme music for professional wrestling, but also as an instrument of torture at Guantanamo. And eventually, my little CD got a little beat-up – CD burning was still a relatively new thing at that point, and my home made mix CDs had pretty short playable lives. But I kept the tracklist, and here are ten highlights, presented with no further comment, in the order in which they appeared on my CD.

    1. “Crystal” by New Order

    2. “Working Girls (Sunlight Shines)” by The Pernice Brothers

    3. “Sometimes” by Ours

    4. “We Need a Resolution” by Aaliyah

    5. “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box” by Radiohead

    6. “Hellbent” by Kenna


    Kenna – Hell Bent by Kenna

    7. “Blizzard of ’78” by Ida

    Ida's ''The Braille Night''
    [no video available]
    “Fixing an eye on the hopeful in a heartless room / you’ll be done soon /
    Snow is falling down and the whole damn town / is covered in white”

    8. “Broke” by The Beta Band

    9. “Getting Away With It (All Messed Up)” by James

    10. “I Want Love” by Elton John

  • The Daily Awesome: Radiohead “Let Down” (1997)

    After an artist has been as highly-regarded for as long as Radiohead has been, it’s easy to forget what was so exciting about that artist in the first place. After sneaking out from under future-one-hit-wonder status to usurp the title of World’s Greatest Living Rock Band from U2 in the mid-90s with their albums The Bends and OK Computer, Radiohead channeled their renown into crafting two of the strangest, most dissonant and experimental records to ever top the American pop charts – Kid A and Amnesiac.

    In the last decade, with the single ascendant (due to the advent of iTunes and easy piracy), Radiohead have almost single-handedly kept the album relevant as a form. Which is why it was sort of disheartening, if not entirely surprising, to hear Thom Yorke talk about the band moving away from recording albums after the release of 2007’s In Rainbows. 15 years after The Bends, it’s easy to take for granted that Radiohead have been the greatest album band of their time; but it’s even easier to forget that the band first got our attention by just writing some really good songs (“Creep” among them, to my thinking). Tonight, I was taking the long way home from work because I just got a new car – one that I can plug my iPod into! I had it playing on shuffle and when I heard the shimmering opening notes of “Let Down”, I didn’t even recognize it. It was like I was hearing the song – which I had in heavy rotation on my Walkman in the summer of ’97 – for the very first time. The way Yorke sings the verses in gradually expanding ellipses of melody; the way his voice maintains a flatness and distance even as the music behind him grows grander and more urgent; the layers of shimmer and twinkle, delicately plucked arpeggios and folky strumming chords backing up lyrical images of disappointed people “clinging to bottles”. I’m not sure how serious Thom Yorke was about Radiohead focusing entirely on singles – and Radiohead have always been a band that thrive when they’re defying expectations, even the ones they’ve helped to perpetuate – but if, in fact, they never release another album, I have every reason to suspect that they’ll become the Greatest Living Singles Band in the World. Songs like this are why.

  • Respect Due: Arsenio Hall

    My opinion of the current talk show wars…is probably not worth reading. After all, I’m usually in bed by midnight (and if I’m not in bed by midnight, I’m definitely NOT watching TV). So the whole Leno/Conan thing really doesn’t mean a lot to me.

    Leno’s kinda funny. Conan’s kinda funny. Of the 11:30 guys, I’ve gotta go with Letterman. Carson Daly’s boring as hell. Jimmy Fallon sucks BUT he has The Roots as his backing band, which is enough to get me to watch episodes on nbc.com. To me, the only legitimately hilarious late night host is Colin Ferguson, and by the time he comes on, I’m in la la land. Truthfully, the last late night show I stayed up and watched religiously was “Politically Incorrect”.

    The last (and only) late night talk show (in the traditional sense) that I ever watched religiously was “The Arsenio Hall Show”. While I must admit that the caliber of guests has gotten better over the years, back in the early Nineties there was no way in hell I was sitting through either Johnny Carson OR Letterman. Arsenio had the best guests and he pretty much had the ONLY show that paid any attention to R&B or hip-hop. No one else was putting NWA or Tupac on late night TV. No one else at the time was able to get Prince or Michael Jackson to go on their show, either.

    Arsenio Hall was the first talk-show host to speak to my generation and reflect my tastes. So screw Leno and Conan. Bring back Arsenio and his extra-long fingers.