Radiohead
Alternative / Experimental
It's very unlikely that anyone reading this aside from my mother (Hi Mom!) is unfamiliar with the music of Radiohead. Like Miles Davis and Bob Dylan, Radiohead seems destined for the history books. However their rampant critical and commercial success seems at times unfortunate for such a counter-culture, pop-less pop group, bent on being anti-rock stars. Five albums worth of an ever evolving musical style seems to do everything it can not to be mainstream, yet millions of fans and sold out tours pull them right back into center-stage. An Unnamed fashion magazine even listed the Radiohead album "Amnesiac", as a summer "must have" along with gingham print sandals and chenille beach blankets. Radiohead made their debut in 1993 with "Pablo Honey", and while giving us the single "Creep" (our first taste of refrigerator buzzing music) it would take some time for the band to mature and the general public to catch on. Two years later "The Bends" was listed as a favorite by many of the bands contemporary musicians, but still didn't garnish the success they were entitled. Then in 1997 the band release a daring concept album entitle "OK Computer" and forever changed the tides of popular music. The album's success and the bands new mass appeal seemed only to make lead singer Tom Yorke that much more reclusive and melon collie, as if his life had turned into one big Pink Floyd movie see "Meeting People is Easy" a documentary on the band made during their OK Computer tour). Fortunately for us this hasn't yet resulted in Yorke shaving off all the hair on his body and moving in with Syd Barrett, but rather gave us the amazingly brilliant work on Kid A. An album so inventive and unique it almost teased record companies to try to find a ra asingle in the middle of a 50-minute symphony. Electric noises, keyboards, saxophones and a surprising lack of guitar solos for a band with three guitar players, Kid A assured the world that while not big on the idea of being rock stars, they weren't going to give up said day jobs anytime soon. After all who else could make obscure European political remarks to such a large audience of American youth? "Amnesiac" released a year later, was a collection of material recorded at the same time as Kid A, but with a slightly different feeling. The album is strong enough to stand by itself, as is the case with the live album "I Might Be Wrong" released after it. However knowing that this is all material created if not recorded in one phase of the band's evolution, we are left simply wanting to know: what's next?
- King Morgan
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