A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Two Radioheads

This is bound to brand me as old and/or lame, but I seem to be one of the few people who loved Radiohead but stopped listening to them at the end of the 90s. I loved The Bends and especially OK Computer and saw them play a terrific show at the Metropol in Pittsburgh around ’97 or ’98 (at which the band churlishly refused to play “Creep”), but completely lost interest once they moved into their more “experimental” phase. It’s funny now that there’s a whole generation of people who know them almost exclusively for the post-90s output and are just now discovering their earlier stuff. Ah well.

5 responses to “Two Radioheads”

  1. I used to be a big fan, from The Bends through Kid A. I lost interest not because the music changed, but because the lyrics didn’t. I mean, Radiohead’s about angst, depression, despair, vulnerability, paranoia, right? And there’s certainly a place for that. I felt Radiohead very deeply in those years (partly for personal psychological reasons.) But I read an interview with Thom Yorke after Kid A came out in which he said “Yeah, you can only do that sort of depression for so long. Eventually you either get help or kill yourself. You have to move on.” And I thought that was exactly right. If it’s real, it’s got to end sometime. Either die or find some hope. If it’s not real, it’s just a branded product that you’re selling – postmodern anxiety from Radiohead!

    And then their next album came out and it was just more of the same angst. At that point I decided that they’d stopped being genuine, and lost interest. And at that point in my life I needed something different.

  2. Interesting! I’m much easier to please – I just missed the hooks and catchy riffs. 🙂

  3. silenceinarchitecture

    “In Rainbows” doesn’t have hooks and catchy riffs? o_O

  4. Okay – I’ll admit I haven’t listened to In Rainbows. That’s the newest one, right? Maybe I should give it a spin.

  5. […] 15, 2009 by Lee A while back I complained that I was never able to get into Radiohead’s post-OK Computer output. My beef was that they […]

Leave a reply to Lee Cancel reply