Wading in the Velvet Sea

As usual, my love affair with this band is borne out of an incredibly destructive emotional relationship with a now-friend during the winter of 1997. ‘OK Computer’ had come out that Fall, and ‘Paranoid Android’ was getting some airplay on the local alternative stations, back when ‘alternative’ was still a genre. I thought, ‘Hmmm. Interesting. Completely schitzo, but OK. I’m running with this.’

In that spring, in the middle of the Triangle of Doom Dating World, one of the three girls asked if I wanted to see Radiohead with her that April. Well, in early April, we broke off any and all nice relations, with her telling me to take both tickets, cuz, after all, she told me that, ‘I only bought the tickets because YOU wanted to go!’ Yea. Wasn’t gonna argue with the primal essence of Hate given California-girl form.

So I took my brother, and headed out to Worcester. Worcester is a little like Compton without the nice parts. Yikes. We were about as high up as you could get. And the show simply blew me away. In college, I had missed a lot of MTV scene, so tracks like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ were completely new to me. And the ‘OK Computer’ stuff simply knocked me off my feet. After that, I was hooked.

It’s not enough to say this band sonically sounds like nothing else out there. It’s not enough to notice that, unlike most bands, the overall lyrics to all of their records forms a cohesive whole. It’s not enough to say that beneath all of the exotic production and instrumentation often lies something as melodic as any teen-pop anthem.

Radiohead for me fills that niche where I implicitly need to have entertainment that I myself can never hope to achieve. Some people despair because they can’t write the Great American Novel. I find it inspiring to read a great work of fiction. Some people lament that they can’t fingerpaint. I immensely enjoy the artistry at the Met in NYC whenever I can go. Some people wish they could write a song. Well, for me, I’m just thankful that I have to cash to buy albums like the one Radiohead has produced.

I tend to find myself drawn most intently to the arts in which I have absolutely no talent. Art is the exception here; I like it, but really, Jenny was the expert of our artistic duo in that sense. She got it in ways I could never hope. For me, it was basically, ‘Art pretty’ or ‘Me no likey’. I didn’t have the critical faculty or vocabulary to really know what was going on. However, music and dance for me have always held a particular fascination. I never get tired of watching really inventive choreography. I just don’t know how people can hear a piece of music and think of a visual, moving representation or reaction to said piece.

Similarly, I never get sick of listening to improvisational jams of Phish and try to figure out how in God’s green earth they can produce such sounds. Hell, I’m impressed every time I hear a catchy song, period. It goes beyond my skills (and my skillz) to the point of treating these songs as archeological objects from a world I can’t possibly understand; I can only appreciate from a distance. Doesn’t mean I am not reaching for the stars; just means that I can appreciate the nighttime view as well.

Radiohead for me fills the aesthetic, the emotional, and the intellectual sides of my very being. There’s no album I’ve listened to more than ‘OK Computer’. I actually worked my way through ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’, because I felt that under the initial dissonant surface was something worth hearing. Now, I barely hear any dissonance on either record…both are mood pieces with incredible peaks and emotive force.

‘Hail’ was, according to the press, a return to the guitar-attack format of ‘The Bends’ but really, aside from a slightly more-direct style of songwriting, has more in common with the latter half their career than with the former. Just as there is room for Justin Timberlake in my Winamp playlist, there’s a place for challenging music such as Radiohead as well.

In the end, for me, I’d rather have a record that touched my heart and mind as much as it shook my butt. Radiohead touches me more than any other band out there today, having supplanted U2 on a warm April night in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1997. I love the dance floor to cure my blues, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes, though, a loud record while lying on your bed is just about the best medicine ever.