T-shirt #175 - Radiohead-2006

T-shirt #175 - Radiohead-2006

I have two Radiohead shirts, so this will be the short entry because I can expound on the wonderfulness of Radiohead another time.

When I discovered Radiohead with the release of Kid A (I was a bit late to the party), I read everything I could get my hands on about Radiohead.

Do you think I remember very much of it?

This is a problem with me. Faulty memory. I am not sure if I have always had this problem. Since my memory is now faulty, I cannot remember if I used to have a good memory. I should have a better record of my brain scans. Again, this would be a reason for the nanobots.

Weird, I am experiencing a peculiar and undefinable Déjà vu.

Soon after discovering Radiohead in 2000, I became a huge fan. I quickly bought the band's entire back catalogue, and I listened to it all, though especially Kid A, which became one of my favorite albums of any band of all time.

Radiohead ties in with my theme for the week. I mentioned Radiohead (possibly for the first time in the history of the blog so far) with T-shirt #171: The Neahtawanta Inn: Goodbye Bob Russell.

Indulge me in repeating that portion of T-shirt #171:

I shared a lot of music with Bob and Sally over the years. Bob often kept CDs I made for him or recommended in his car. Our tastes aligned in many ways. Sally told me that after the 2001 attacks, 9/11, they were listening to a CD I made called "How to Disappear Completely" from a song by Radiohead. The lyrics "I'm not here; this isn't happening" struck a chord.

Lots of things are going to remind me of Bob Russell for a very long time until I adjust to the fact that I am never going to see him again, which is a weird displacement of reality.

In keeping with my short entries in an effort to get ahead, I am just going to accumulate a few key thoughts on Radiohead. I had the pleasure of seeing Radiohead in 2006 in Chicago as per the ticket seen here. They played a great deal of material that they then released on In Rainbows, which at the time I did not like very much, and I still would not rank that music and album highly among favorite Radiohead albums.


I have adopted Radiohead's second album, The Bends, as my walking through airports album. It's a great album for dodging through traffic but in airport terminals with that faux-modernism and disconnection from the real world that travel and terminals provide., like drifting through a movie montage with a soundtrack and no other ambient sound.

I sat in the balcony at Auditorium Theatre for the Radiohead show, and I almost came all the way out of my seat and over the railing when they launched into "The Bends," the song, during one of their encores.

"The Bends" is the second song on the album The Bends, which paired with the first song, "Planet Telex," and the third and fourth songs--"High and Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees"--make for the best terminal-to-terminal ambulatory music that I know. Give it a try next time you have to cross through an airport from one end to the other.

For those who have always wondered about the signs on my office door seen behind me in many of my pictures, here they are up close and legible in the photo above.

Much of my music constitutes of good music therapy, but one of the best therapies is Radiohead. As I mentioned already, The Bends is my walking through airports album.

Kid A is my favorite Radiohead album and one of my favorite albums of anyone for all time and GREAT therapy. Though my lists of favorite albums was more aptly titled ALBUMS I HAVE LISTENED TO MOST OFTEN as I blogged in T-shirt #97: KRAFTWERK, Radiohead's Kid A would make both the favorite list and the most listened to list. Because it's newer than others in the list, it ranked in the top twenty but in the 10-20 group for albums most often listened to. However, if I were to re-frame the list as favorites, it would surely be in the top ten, possibly replacing Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak, which makes a list of top ten most listened to albums because of how many times I listened to it (daily) from about 1983-1985.

When it was released, Kid A baffled many Radiohead fans as it was such a departure from The Bends and OK Computer, the latter of which has often been voted by British music fans as the single greatest album of all time. Late to the Radiohead party, my entry came with Kid A, mainly due to my fascination with British music magazines.

One of the best of these magazines, Mojo, hit my radar when I was reading an interview with one of my favorite authors, and another author I shared in common with Bob Russell, William Gibson, most famous for Neuromancer, but Bob and I both loved Pattern Recognition, which remains the only book listed on Bob's Facebook account. Gibson described how he walked to his local news shoppe monthly to purchase his copy of Mojo, which is much less expensive than attempting to subscribe and pay International post from the U.K. Even though Gibson lives in Canada, the expense is just as great as for us Americans.

Radiohead came to my attention reading Mojo, which prompted me to buy Kid A, which then prompted me to buy every magazine and read every interview I could find promoting Kid A.

The Wikipedia Radiohead entry describes Kid A as an evolution in the band's music style, fusing experimental electronic music with krautrock and jazz, which is a description that would surely turn off some potential listeners. Kid A was immensely popular, going Platinum in its first week in the United Kingdom, winning the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album, and a nomination for Best Album (which it should have won, losing to Steely Dan's Two Against Nature, and as much as I love Steely Dan, that's a travesty).

The Kid A Wikipedia page linked here is a great tribute and investigation of the greatness of the album. It's well worth reading if you're keen to know more. For now, I am keeping this short, especially since I bought another Radiohead shirt when I saw them in concert last year (2012) on tour with The King of Limbs and will expand and expound with a future post.

To close, some art from the limited edition Kid A release and two videos of my favorite Kid A music, which is difficult to select as I love the whole album as one continuous piece of music. In fact, bless You Tube. I will share my one favorite song, already mentioned, "How to Disappear Completely," and also the full album of Kid A. If you have never listened to this album, treat yourself to at least the one song if not the full eight tracks of music.

Radiohead - How to disappear completely LIVE

Radiohead - Kid A (Full Album)

Kid A (2000) (Times listed are the start of each track in the total You Tube video).

1. Everything In Its Right Place (0:00)
2. Kid A (4:10)
3. The National Anthem (8:55)
4. How To Disappear Completely (14:45)
5. Treefingers (20:43)
6. Optimistic (24:25)
7. In Limbo (29:41)
8. Idioteque (33:13)

- chris tower - 1309.12 - 10:12