THE BENDS

Okay, time to roll up our sleeves and dive into The Bends.



Album: The Bends

Released: 1995

Artwork: First and foremost, the cover of this album has to be one of the creepiest album covers of all time. The cover features a picture of what looks like some sort of horrible experiment on the human body. I feel like I've seen this picture before, somewhere other than on this album cover, but I could be wrong. Chances are that my memories of this ghastly image are from seeing it on the shelf at music stores everywhere. If I were to guess what sort of experiment this man was a subject for, I would guess that he's strapped in to one of those centrifuge things that they use to test astronaut's abilities to withstand g-forces without passing out due to the high velocity. You can see two of those round, white sucker-type things that hospitals stick on your chest to monitor your pulse, reinforcing the idea that this is some type of bizarre science experiment. The photograph looks authentic enough to make me believe that it was not staged for the album cover. The image looks grainy and distorted, and might have even been colorized from a black and white photo. It looks like a photograph of a TV screen still-shot. There's no indication how old the photo is, or if it did in fact exist before Radiohead started kicking around ideas for cover art. The black background is striking, as is the red box that the band's name appears over, making it look like some sort of label affixed to the photo, with the album's name in all lower-case letters beneath. Is it a coincidence that the album title is in lower case letters while the band's name is in all caps? It's funny the little details that you notice only when you're really paying attention.

The back cover is mostly a bright red, and looks to be a colorized photo of a digital sign filled with numbers. Stock market figures? Race horse lap times? Computer generated arithmetic solutions? Who knows. It makes a nice counter-point to the cover image, with the black background, but somehow fits in the same color palate as the yellow tinted photograph of the 'experiment man'. It looks like it could be a photograph of another television or computer screen, like the front cover. The numbers could be showing the results of the experiment taking place on the front cover - if this is true, is Radiohead trying to tell us that this is an experimental album?

My copy of The Bends is the two-disc collector's/deluxe edition, so I don't know what the differences are between this version and the first pressing that a fan might have bought in 1995. But if the booklet is the same, and it most likely is, the back cover of the booklet (the first image you would see upon opening the CD jewel case) is a collage of photos showing the five band members looking cool and bored, as is the trend with most 90's bands. In the upper left, we have Thom Yorke posing with an acoustic guitar. I found this interesting only because Radiohead is not known for its songs that feature acoustic guitar as much as its electronic instrumentation today, and also because even back then they must have been known more for their electric guitar thrashing on "Creep" instead of their other acoustic numbers on Pablo Honey, such as "Thinking About You". It's possible that a photo with Thom and an acoustic guitar was simply the most aesthetically pleasing one that the art designer could find, in the same way that whoever compiled the four photos of the members of the Beatles for the Let It Be cover managed to find the only photo in existence that featured a smiling George Harrison. In the bottom middle, there's a picture of a guy behind a drumkit, and we naturally assume that this is drummer Phil Selway. There is no indication which of the other three photographs are Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, or Ed O'Brien, and even though I've already seen some video footage of the band playing together on You Tube, I can't make an accurate guess as to who's who.

There is something interesting at the top middle of the back of the booklet collage, though: the number 50999 6 93914 2 5. If you look at the back cover, you'll see this number below the barcode, the barcode used to ring up the album at the store I bought it. This number is also repeated on the album's spine. Every album is assigned a sort of social security number for the record company's cataloging purposes - when an album goes to the presses for the first time or a re-issue, I'm assuming that the record label uses this number to make sure that they are pressing the right album instead of someone down at the factory figuring out which collection of master tracks is supposed to go on which album. It's interesting to see this number make an appearance on the back of the CD booklet, but even more interesting to see it on the CD's themselves in place of the band's name or even the album title.

The CD's are mostly blank, with just the serial number described and what must have been serving as the band's logo at the time: a lower case 'r' superimposed over a picture of Earth. Around the edge of the CD are the track names and numbers, but it would take someone unfamiliar with the CD a minute or two to figure this out because the print is so small.

Assuming that everything we see is a planned part of the art direction of an album, what statement was the band trying to make? My thinking is that the band did it as a sort of sarcastic joke, that it's not really an album to their record label or even the record buying public, it's just a commodity; an item for sale. By removing the band's name and album title from the CD, it makes the CD appear like a generic product instead of a piece of musical art.

Open up the booklet, and on one side we get to see even more album art, though I can't determine what it is that I'm looking at. There is a lot of purple with some white spots, and at the bottom there is red and yellow, but this must have been added to the album art portfolio on the color aesthetic alone. It's not clear what this is supposed to represent. Look a bit closer, and we see a doodle-like drawing of a sort of frog with teeth, a man who might be an alien, a few stars, and a sort of circle doodle that might be anything at all (as long as that thing is round). There is one interesting thing to note - in the upper right is a superimposed 0% in a digital type font. This also makes me think of that 90's meme that being a loser or coming up short was cool, although I have to say that Beck wins this battle with his song titled 000,000. By the way, I have no idea how to refer to that song other than typing out the title - in conversation, would one call it "zero million"? "zero-zero-zero-comma-zero-zero-zero"? We may never know.

On the other side of the insert fold-out: lyrics! Lots and lots of lyrics. It's always so satisfying to see lyrics included in the CD booklet; now you get to follow along with the singer as you listen!

We're also treated to a collection of sketches. From left to right: an alien wearing a space helmet? A creature with big teeth. A UFO landing between two buildings? A fat and round bird? A plane, with the word 'itch' written directly above it? Three connected dots, that resemble the molecule diagram cover of the Foo Fighter's "The Colour and the Shape". Two ostriches with their heads buried in the sand. Another creature with big teeth. A newly hatched bird (a chick?)

I like the science fiction imagery, and it fits the music quite well. The music seems to point forward into the future by incorporating new guitar sounds and noises. But how do the bizarre animal sketches fit in?

I always read the liner notes to every CD I buy - you can find out all sorts of neat stuff. We see the name Nigel Godrich here and there, and I'm reminded that this was the start of Nigel's prominent career as a record producer. He has since become Radiohead's go-to guy, and worked with other artists like Beck.

Recorded at Abbey Road! I wonder if the band took a picture of themselves crossing the street on their dinner break.

When a fledgling band hits the big time, they usually get a truckload of free gear. The savvy musical instrument manufacturers will find up-and-coming bands to donate free guitars, basses, amplifiers, drumkits, cymbals, guitar strings, picks, and sometimes even clothes to bands who are in desperate need of more road-worthy or studio-worthy gear in exchange for a free mention in the liner notes, in the hopes that those 5% of record buyers are the types like me that actually read the liner notes will be more likely to buy an Ampeg 8x10 bass cab when I start my own band in an attempt to match that Radiohead sound.

Usually, this equipment shout-out isn't that interesting, but in this case, the band thanks Mesa Boogie and Fender. This is noteworthy because they are the same brand of amps that Nirvana used when recording Nevermind and In Utero. Is it possible that Jonny Greenwood is a liner-note-reader like me, and he wanted to incorporate a bit of that Nirvana sound? Kurt Cobain used to run his Fender guitars through both a Mesa Boogie amp and a Fender Bassman amp to get that thick, grunge sound. I wonder if Radiohead (or the producers) knew this, or if they reached their own conclusions on how to get the best sound, and it just so happened that Kurt Cobain and Butch Vig had figured out the same solution four years earlier.

There's also a note that reads: "guitar & amp building and rebuilding by plank". 'plank' is not capitalized. I wonder if 'plank' was a person or a guitar shop. Whatever plank did, it is probably featured the most on the strange sounds of the song "My Iron Lung" - it definitely must have been a custom-made guitar effect.

BUT THE MOST INTERESTING LINER NOTE is down at the bottom: "dedicated to the late Bill Hicks." Bill Hicks was a stand-up comic who passed away in the early/mid 90's, and he was known for his act that criticized commercialism and ignorance. If he was not the best known comic of his time, it is only because he was before the age of Comedy Central and the internet - if you weren't on national television, nobody knew who you were. I can easily understand why Radiohead, a band that even early in their career was concerned with their commercial success, would have identified with Mr. Hicks.

AND NOW, ON TO THE MUSIC.

Planet Telex We start with the sound of... wind? An empty, desolate sound. Have we just landed on a remote planet, Planet Telex? More science fiction imagery. A haunting piano intro... and here comes some of that great, plank created guitar sound... I wish I knew what Telex was. For all I know, it's some British candy or something, and I'm missing the joke. It's such a beautiful reverb effect they have on the piano.

The Bends This song starts with a quiet whisper of, a TV broadcast? A radio show? Then it kicks in with a riff that sounds so 90's... so good. I love the lyric "baby's got the bends..." What are the bends, anyway? If I remember correctly, it's a real bummer of a condition that happens when you're scuba diving and you come up from the depths of the ocean too quickly. Something about air bubbles in your blood. Sounds nasty. "Where do we go from here?" sings Thom. Did this notion of getting the bends come from the band's fear of becoming a huge and popular rock band, that they wanted to eject, but they knew that if they did it too quickly that they'd get bubbles in their blood too? I certainly wouldn't want that to happen to me. To prevent divers from succumbing to the bends, they have to be put in special decompression tanks... I guess this album is their decompression tanks.

High and Dry This song is so unabashedly pretty. A nice, acoustic ballad. But wait, this is no simple puppy dog love song. "You'd kill yourself for recognition, kill yourself to never ever stop/you broke another mirror, you're turning into something you are not." When Thom asks the person he's singing at not to 'leave me high, don't leave me dry', is this his inner self warning his ego not to get too carried away? Perhaps he's coaxing his creativity into continuing to help him out with some new song ideas, so he doesn't hit writer's block at the peak of his band's popularity. And there's such nice distorted guitars providing an edge to the acoustic prettiness.

Fake Plastic Trees Thom busts out the acoustic again... I had heard of this song before I heard what the song sounds like. I'm sure it has been played in coffee houses around the world at least a thousand times by Thom Yorke wannabes. Such a sad and melon-collie song... "it wears her out..." Thom sings. Is he singing about a diorama, or about someone who feels that her life and everything around her is no longer real, but fake stand-ins for what should be there? The line "but gravity always wins, and it wears him out" is a killer. Nice organ sounds in the background.

Bones Starts with another cool guitar sound, but soon turns into what sounds like a U2 song. We hear the pumping bass and the drums, and The Edge-like little guitar notes... then here comes the tidal wave at the chorus. I like how Radiohead is really good at keeping an aggressive undercurrent in even their simplest ballads on this album.

(Nice Dream) An interesting downward chord progression. One thing is for sure, these guys know a thing or two about music theory. This song features some strings in the background, and that touch of distorted guitar. Very well arranged. I especially like Jonny Greenwood's sad string bending guitar parts under the verse. It's hard to believe that these little twinkling noises came from the same guy who added the heavy guitar hits to Creep. And then the bridge takes the song in a different and unpredictable direction... nicely done, lads.

Just I love this song. I had actually heard this one track before when I saw the music video. Awesome video, by the way. I'm not entirely clear on what this person is doing to themselves, but all I know is that Thom thinks that their punishment is 'just'. Another great arrangement, plenty of guitar layers to sift through.

My Iron Lung All the true Radiohead fans who bought the My Iron Lung EP would have already heard this song, obviously, but here it is again. The imagery of an iron lung is such a strong one - they could have said 'my oxygen tank' or 'my wheelchair' or something similar, but refering to an iron lung is so much weirder. It makes me think of the weird, David Lynchian scene in The Big Lebowski. Unclear whether or not the Coen Brothers are Radiohead buffs or not.



I still love that crazy corroded guitar sound. This song and Just are the most rocking songs on the record, and it's seems odd to me that they're stuck together here in the middle; it's sort of a strange sequencing choice.

Bullet Proof... I Wish I Was And, bringing it back down to the ballads... Plenty of atmosphere in this song, even in its sparse arrangement. I like the strange synth or possibly manipulated guitar sounds in the background of the mix. And suddenly, it fades out, and fades into...

Black Star More sci-fi. Stars. Space. Planets. This song seems to have been designed as a sort of sequel to Bullet Proof, the way that Bullet Proof fades out and this one fades in... you don't see many examples of the fade in these days unless it's the first track of the album. This song seems to have a lyrical theme that I've noticed in the other songs that involve the protagonist trying to care for someone who seems to have given up hope or are suffering from depression. There certainly were a lot of 90's songs about depression, weren't there?

Sulk The title sounds like the title of a Smashing Pumpkins song. Something about that word just seems like it would be right at home next to a song named "Mayonnaise" or "Starla". Another song about dealing with someone else's depression. "You'll never change..."

Street Spirit (Fade Out) Again, the final track appears to give us a glimpse into the future of Radiohead... it doesn't fit the same pop song structure that the other songs follow on this album. It seems to be giving us a sign of what's to come.

It's hard to say whether I would have liked this album as much as I do now if I had bought it when it first came out. I was thirteen in 1995, and I was primarily interested in The Beatles and country music at that period in my life. This probably would have been a bit beyond me. But I'm glad that I have it now, and the music is definitely timeless enough to still make an impact.

That photo on the cover still creeps me out.

COMMERCIALISM AND CHEESE

Turns out that if I start the My Iron Lung EP as soon as I get on the 2-3 train at the Hoyt Street station, the last song, You Never Wash Up After Yourself, ends just as I exit the train at the 59th Street station. Is it possible that Radiohead planned on providing the soundtrack to my morning commute in the same way that Dark Side of the Moon is exact sync with The Wizard of Oz?

The answer, of course, is no. But the music on the train this morning was very nice indeed.

At this point, I'm disappointed in myself for not catching the Radiohead wave earlier in my life. I can enjoy the music now, at the fine age of 27, but I'll never love it in the way that I loved music when I was 15. I'm certain now that I would have been one of the many Radiohead fans in the 90's if I had picked up the two CD's I bought all this time later.

At least Radiohead is still around and making music. I definitely missed my chance to see Nirvana in concert - even if I'd known that Kurt was going to blow his head off, I was thirteen at the time of his death, which is probably too young to go to a Nirvana show. I was the oldest child in my family, so I didn't have that cool older brother to take me to that kind of stuff. I also missed the boat with Soundgarden; by the time I was really into them, they had already broken up. There's rumors of a reunion, and I'd probably go see them, but with low expectations. Actually that's not quite true - I saw a video on You Tube of the three band members who are not named Chris Cornell jamming with Tad Doyle (from the band... Tad) and they sounded as good as ever. Matt Cameron is a very underrated drummer, and Soundgarden was a great opportunity to showcase his ability to rock in unusual time signatures. Kim Thayil's guitar playing sounded great too. Of course, the real question is Chris Cornell. By this point, the guy basically has no vocal cords left, so he'd probably be croaking instead of actually singing.

Then there's my other favorite 90's band, Smashing Pumpkins. I'm not even going to get into the massive disappointment that they turned out to be - I could write an entirely separate blog about what a joke Billy Corgan has become. The odd news from Planet Corgan keeps coming in, too - my friend Eric sent me an email at work today announcing that Smashing Pumpkins is now auditioning a new bass player and keyboardist via You Tube style video submissions. Um, yeah. Good luck with that, Billy.

The Pumpkins were coming to play the Electric Factory in Philadelphia in the fall of '99. Tickets were originally priced at $20, and I can't remember why I didn't go out of my way to buy one when they first went on sale. Of course, that would have been easier said than done - the show sold out in less than two minutes. I went to the office of a nearby ticket broker, and he wanted $100 for the ticket that he bought for $20. I passed.

I was a senior in high school at the time, and my after-school job was at a store that sold pool supplies in the summer and Christmas decorations in the winter. I remember that the concert was in November, so by then we must have had Christmas trees and Santa dolls everywhere, but the hot tubs were still set up in the back of the store, and one of them had a radio (even a CD player!) built into it. I had to work on the night of the show, so I took every opportunity I could to stop by the hot tub and listen to the concert which was being broadcast over the radio. I was disappointed that I wasn't there at the show, but I figured that I'd catch them next time for sure.

It wasn't long after the tour that the band broke up. Before long, he starting doing weird stuff like testifying before Congress on behalf of Ticketmaster.



Billy is currently attempting to re-boot the band, but Smashing Pumpkins have morphed into something that is completely unrecognizable. The final insult was the newly released "Song For A Son", a song so jaw-droppingly bad I'm convinced that it's some sort of joke, that we are all in the middle of an episode of Punk'd.

Is that show still on? I feel so old.

Anyway, I wanted to throw a post on the blog that returns us to the topic of commercialism in the music industry. I arrived home after work today, ate some food, and flipped open the laptop to check my email. Best Buy sent me an email, informing me that they were having a massive sale on CD's.

Awesome! I love CD's, and I love sales. Who doesn't like saving money?

So I clicked on the link and took a look at the discs that B.B. was peddling. The specifics of their sale is this: thousands of CD's priced at $7.99 or $9.99. You can sift through the CD's all at once (there are 1,666 discounted CD's for sale, which means that Best Buy is lying when they say they have 'thousands' of CD's at the discounted prices, since you would need more than 2,000 to qualify for that category, but I like that the number of CD's that actually are discounted = 1,000 + 666 (the number of the beast!), proving yet again that rock and roll is the devil's music), or you can sort them by genre. There are 47 Blues albums, 19 Comedy albums, 14 Folk albums, 274 Country albums (!), and 1,251 Rock albums.

I decided to focus on the Rock albums. I figured I would always backtrack to check out the 86 Electronic/Dance albums.

By this point, I was really looking forward to finding something to buy. I had forgotten that I already own some 500 CD's and 70 LP's, and even more music stored on my laptop. By this point, I probably don't need any more 'catalog' CD's, by that I mean CD's that are no longer considered 'recent' or 'new'. I don't own any AC/DC albums, and I enjoy listening to AC/DC, but who needs an AC/DC CD when they seem to be played constantly on the radio? At least, they were played a lot on the Philadelphia rock radio station 93.3 WMMR. If you left WMMR on for two or three hours, you were guaranteed at least one AC/DC song, one Ozzy song, one Van Halen song, etc.

All the CD's for sale on the Best Buy website were catalog CD's, or worse, Greatest Hits compilations. There's Guns N' Roses Greatest Hits (another WMMR staple), U2's Greatest Hits (they have a few Greatest Hits packages - this one is their '18 Singles' album), Blink 182's Greatest Hits (oh man I am really old)... stuff like that. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't enough to make me want to get back on the subway and go to Best Buy.

I realized that I was craving a good deal more than craving a new CD. I guess I should have the U2 18 singles disc, but would I really listen to it that much? Haven't I heard Sunday, Bloody Sunday enough times already? Then again, St. Patrick's Day is coming up...

(On a serious note, I want you to know that I'm kidding about the St. Patrick's Day thing. I like the idea of St. Patrick's Day but I hate the execution of it - all of a sudden, there's green-tinted Miller Lite in all the bars and people are packed in all the bars at 9 AM... it has very little to do with being Irish - or perhaps rather I should say Irish-American - and more to do with boiling a culture down to its lowest stereotypes and using it as an excuse to call out of work to drink whiskey all day. But hey, don't let me ruin all the fun.)

Let's change the subject, shall we? I want to talk about cheesiness.



The word 'cheesy' is a great word indeed. I could do some quick research and learn the history of the word (the etymology?), but it doesn't really matter. The point is that I love that there is a word in the English language that can be used to describe both a Styx record and a plate of nachos. That makes me happy.

And a Styx record is exactly what is rotating on my turntable right now. I wanted some music on, and I thought I'd take a break from Radiohead. What is the opposite of Radiohead? At first I thought it would be Styx, hands down, but actually now I'm not so sure. I think both artists were going for the same thing - this specific Styx record, The Grand Illusion, is trying hard to be some sort of concept album. The album art is very self-important: ooh, look! An optical illusion!



Or, you might even say, a GRAND illusion!

This is the album with the song Come Sail Away on it. C.S.A. has to be one of the cheesiest songs of all time. Is it possible that Styx could have foreseen my generation's obsession with declaring things 'ironic' and embracing these ironic artifacts with all our our hearts?

The answer, of course, is no.

Styx is clearly a silly band, and Radiohead are definitely not silly in any way. But I do actually like this record. I like its bombast, it's over-produced and syrupy songs, and the incredible goofiness of the lyrics (the biggest offender is the song A Man In The Wilderness, which might just be the first emo song).

It's extremely difficult not to smile when you're listening to the most famous song from the album, Come Sail Away. It's as if the band got together and said, "okay, gang, how can we make this song even more hilarious?"

Okay, break time is over. Time to stop with the cheesy.

My Iron Lung EP

I just listened to the songs that make up the My Iron Lung EP. It sounds like the band's creativity is really starting to take off.

I really enjoyed taking the time to sit and listen to this CD. I had considered putting the songs on my ipod and listening to them while at work or even on my morning commute but I'm glad that I waited until I was home so that I could relax and really listen. The experience made me wonder: how does a professional rock writer listen to the records that they are assigned to review? I would hope that each reviewer at Rolling Stone or Spin is allowed to take the promo CD home, to be played on their own stereo system, allowing them to fully invest themselves in the sonic experience. After all, if album reviews are meant to inform a potential music consumer whether or not a specific album is worth owning, then it makes sense that the reviewer would try to replicate the experience of buying a CD and then listening to it in their home, as the consumer would likely do. I imagine the offices of all the major rock magazines being extremely noisy, with newly recorded songs blasting out of every office. Chances are, this is not at all how things go down at Rolling Stone. The reviewers probably listen to the music on headphones while sitting at their desk, which is probably in some sort of cubicle. I also wonder how many times a professional music critic will listen to an album before starting to write about it.

I listened to this EP twice.

ALBUM: My Iron Lung EP

YEAR RELEASED: 1994

NOTABLE SONGS: My Iron Lung (duh.) This song really blew me away. It opens with a guitar riff that seems to be in a major key, and yet it has a strange effect added to it that makes it seem like it's being dragged into a major key. The only way I can describe the guitar effect is that it makes the guitar sound corroded, like the master tape had a nasty encounter with battery acid. At this point, I can't remember where I heard that this song was written about their other song, Creep. The first verse seems to be a plea for their newly found fans to back off and give the band some room to breathe - quite literally. "You don't mean it/but it hurts like hell/my brain/says I'm receiving pain/a lack of oxygen/from my life support." I remembered seeing the band perform Creep at the MTV Beach House (on TV, of course, I wasn't actually there), and even back then I remembered thinking that those guys looked pretty unhappy to be singing that song.

So they did what any good artist does: they use their hatred of themselves as inspiration to create more art.

The third verse sounds almost as if the band is insulting their empty-headed listeners: "suck, suck your teenage thumb/toilet trained and dumb". It's not a wise move to start insulting people between the ages of 12 and 20 when you're in a rock band. It's sure to cut into your sales figures. If there's one easy way to piss off a teenager, it's by comparing them to a baby. Claiming that said teenager still sucks his or her thumb and is newly toilet trained is likely to make them so angry that they won't even hear Radiohead call them stupid; they will have transformed themselves into a band-hating monster, who will promptly burn their Radiohead concert t-shirt and go find another band to fall in love with, like Live or Collective Soul.

I doubt that this effort to weed out their more meatheaded fans worked; no one really gets that mad about a song that doesn't mention a person by name because everyone assumes that they are the smart ones, they aren't the people being derided in the song.

Kurt Cobain attempted the same thing in his song "In Bloom", written about his idiot friend Dylan Carlson, who, "likes all our pretty songs" and "likes to shoot his guns/but he/don't know what it means". Kurt took it a step further when Incesticide came out, an album of b-sides released in the post-Nevermind Nirvana craze. Inside the CD booklet is a fairly long open letter from Kurt to his fans, in which Kurt praises a bunch of bands most people had never heard of (keep in mind that this was before the days of the internet, when discovering a new band was just a mouse-click away) and had this request to ask of his fans:

"If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of a different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records."

It's been pointed out how ironic it is to ask someone to not buy your records after he's already bought it... otherwise the woman-hating racist never would have come across the liner notes inside the CD booklet. It's also interesting that Kurt doesn't request that the types of people he mention change their ways, just that they stop associating themselves with Nirvana.

Getting back to the song, it's impressive how different it sounds from the songs on Pablo Honey. It didn't take long for Radiohead to start finding their voice.

After the second verse, the song goes into a roaring, distortion-laden bridge which is repeated after the third verse. We can't hear anything except for the guitar - the vocals are muffled and the drums are drowned out. These noisy sections are enough to guarantee that this song will never be played on the radio, and that's probably what the band had in mind.

ALBUM REVIEW: This is technically not an album but an EP. I don't think bands today are even allowed to release EP's anymore. EP stands for Extended Play, which means that they are intended as a sort of glorified single. At eight songs, the My Iron Lung EP clocks in at a little over 28 minutes. Of course, I don't have the actual EP, just all the songs that were on the EP minus the acoustic version of Creep. To listen to the EP tonight, I had to play the song My Iron Lung off the disc containing the rest of The Bends before switching over to the bonus disc with the other My Iron Lung EP tracks. I didn't listen to them in the order that they appeared on the original EP, but tonight I'll put the songs into itunes and re-create the original sequencing.

The songs are more aggressive than I was expecting, and this is a good thing. Pablo Honey definitely sounds like an early 90's rock record, but this EP doesn't feel dated in the same way. The band was already creating their own little musical island. I wonder why the band stopped when they did; another two songs and this would have qualified as a full album. Maybe they just ran out of time and didn't want to slap together two more songs to fill it out, and they figured they'd get the songs they already finished out into the world before starting fresh on their next album, later to be known as The Bends.

This EP definitely deserves to be included in anyone's list of required Radiohead listening. True to form, this EP is satisfying enough to hold me over for a little while, but leaves me wanting more.

ACCIDENTAL ANNIVERSARY

A happy accident: I learned today that Pablo Honey was released on February 22, 1993. That means that I started this blog just three days after the seventeenth anniversary of Radiohead's first record's release date. It would have been better if I had started the blog three days earlier, on the actual anniversary date, but I think being off by three days is close enough.

I've been listening to Pablo Honey while I'm on the job. I work in an office on the 29th floor of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, just a few blocks from Central Park. Radiohead probably didn't imagine that some guy would be sitting in a cubicle in an office building in New York listening to their album seventeen years later when they recorded it.

My biggest concern with this experiment is that the later Radiohead albums probably won't be good at-work music. The best songs to listen to while I'm working my job are songs that I'm already familiar with so that listening to the music doesn't distract me too much from my typing. Singles and A-Sides make for even better at-work listening, which I guess is the whole point of listening to the radio. It's a shame that radio has pretty much given up on trying to appeal to people like me. Pablo Honey suits my at-work listening purposes very well, but I'm assuming that the later albums like Kid A and Amnesiac will demand more attention. An unexpected benefit from this experiment will be that I'll return to listening to music like I did when I was fifteen: lying on the bed doing nothing other than listening to the CD playing on the stereo (and probably staring at the CD cover). I've grown lazy with music listening, doing almost all of my listening to music on my ipod while riding the subway, and before that it was listening to music in my car while I was driving.

At this point, I've listened to Creep maybe five or six times. I played that song first before I played the rest of the album for the first time, and gave it a few extra listens at work. I'm now going to put that song into semi-retirement because I'm worried that I'll wear it out and get tired of it.

Today I read the Wikipedia article on Pablo Honey. I learned who the baby on the front cover is - just the son of a friend of the band. Finding this out sort of took the fun out of it, but it's no big deal. The story that I heard about Jonny Greenwood trying to sabotage Creep was included in the Wiki article, but of course it's important to keep in mind that Wikipedia isn't necessarily the final word in what's true and what's not. I would not turn to Wikipedia for answers in matters of science or history, but I'd imagine that Wikipedia usually gets it right in matters of entertainment and pop culture, since those Wiki pages are probably going to get more visitors (and therefore more editors and contributors) than, say, pages about Russian history. Since Radiohead has many fans, and most of those fans would describe themselves as rabid fans (at least, the ones I met do), they probably take every opportunity they can to waste time on the internet reading about, blogging about (ahem), and shopping for items related to Radiohead. The article also mentioned where the band got the album name from: The Jerky Boys. Does anyone ever remember The Jerky Boys? Their whole act was making prank phone calls. If you go to You Tube, you can hear the Pablo Honey call that the album was named after. The call goes something like this: the Jerky Boys call a man and keep saying, "Pablo, honey? Come to Florida," to which the receiver of the call replies, "What? Who is this?" The conversation doesn't go much further than that. It's not very funny. I'm not offended by the ideas of prank calls, it's just a weak joke. The whole bit lasts no longer than one minute. Maybe humor has changed since 1993, and this was considered hilarious back in those days. I wonder if Radiohead liked the obscurity of the name, and they chose it for their album not predicting that there would come a time when all a curious listener had to go was type "Pablo Honey" into an internet search engine to find out where the name came from. Remember, this was before most civilian homes had personal computer, and forget about You Tube, Google, or even the most basic parts of the internet.

I thought it would be fun to see what Radiohead related items were for sale on ebay. Turns out there are currently 2,745 items listed under 'Radiohead' for sale on that site. 1,049 items are subcatergorized into 'music', and from there ebay has 737 Radiohead CD's, 232 Radiohead records or LP's, 14 cassettes, and 4 minidiscs. I didn't know what a minidisc was, so I had to look it up. Minidiscs (or MD's) were a format that came out in the mid 90's and it was meant to replace the CD. We all know how well that went. I think I remember a minidisc section of my local Best Buy when I was a teenager, right next to the also didn't-really-take-off SACD formatted discs. Someone in Japan probably lost their job as a result of MD's failure.

As for the remaining 1,696 items up for bid, you have the usual rock band memorabilia: t-shirts, decals, concert ticket stubs, posters, 8x10 glossy photos. I wanted to find something weird to list here, but the only unusual stuff I could find were wall clocks with Radiohead album covers as the clock's face and a Radiohead night-lite.

I told my friend Eric about this blog, and he gave me some encouraging words. He's been telling me to check out Radiohead for a long time, and I think he's happy that I've finally come around. He recommended that I include the EP's into my listening schedule, specifically:

My Iron Lung (released before The Bends)
Airbag/How Am I Driving? (released after OK Computer)
I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (released after Amnesiac)
Com Lag (released after Hail To The Thief)

Today on my way home from work, I stopped off at the same Best Buy I visited earlier (the one in Union Square) with intent to pick up the My Iron Lung EP. I think that someone else raided the Radiohead selections between last Sunday, the day I bought Pablo Honey, and today because I was certain that there were more discs available earlier in the week. This time, there were three copies of OK Computer, one copy of OK Computer: Collector's Edition, one copy of Kid A: Collector's Edition (priced at $32.99! Ouch!), one copy of The Bends: Collector's Edition and a copy of the My Iron Lung EP. That CD was priced at $12.99; not cheap for an eight-song disc. But I had read a few short fan reviews of this EP before I went to the store and everyone said that the My Iron Lung EP was an important edition to any Radiohead collection. Just when I was about to pull the trigger and walk it over to the counter for purchase, I picked up The Bends: Collector's Edition and flipped it over. It turns out that The Bends: Collector's Edition includes all the tracks from My Iron Lung except for one: the acoustic version of Creep. By sheer coincidence, I had listened to this version of Creep just last night through the Rhapsody website, trying to solve the mystery of why the 'clean' version of Creep that appears as track 13 on my copy of Pablo Honey was dubbed "Creep (Acoustic Version)" by itunes when it was anything but acoustic. Apple must have gotten their Creep variations mixed up. I liked the acoustic version of Creep, but it wasn't worth buying the My Iron Lung EP just for that one track. Best Buy was selling the deluxe version of The Bends for $19.99, which means that if I had bought The Bends in its normal version for $9.99, plus My Iron Lung for $12.99, I'd be paying $22.98 to gain the acoustic version of Creep but lost the small handful of extra tracks that came with The Bends: Collectors Edition besides the My Iron Lung tracks.

It is probably silly to obsess this much over purchasing music, but I blame Radiohead themselves for making it more painfully obvious than ever that the relationship between a band, their fans, and the music industry money machine is more fragile now than ever. I also put in a search for Radiohead related articles on nytimes.com, curious when the earliest mention of Radiohead in the New York Times appeared and what it said. Of the more than 3,000 articles that came back, most appeared to be about Radiohead's decision to make their latest album, In Rainbows, a pay-what-you-will venture. I'll be discussing this more when I get further down the road.

Next up: bend, baby, bend.

PABLO HONEY

all systems are go!

I just listened to Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey.



ALBUM: PABLO HONEY

YEAR RELEASED: 1993

ARTWORK: I'm going to start off discussing the artwork of each album. Some people say that the album cover and insert artwork have nothing to do with the album itself, but I disagree. After all, the cover art is the first thing that you see when you pick up the CD off the shelf (or, I guess the first thing you see when you download it off itunes). Then you bring the CD home, unwrap it, and sit there staring at the cover for forty five minutes while you listen to the songs. The artwork on the cover will be forever linked to the music in your mind.

The most obvious adjective that I can use to describe the cover of Pablo Honey is 'pretty'. It's an attractive cover, the bright yellow whatever-they-ares (some sort of flower?), and the bright, multi-colored candies. Then comes the mystery: the black and white baby photo in the middle. Is it Thom Yorke? Is it Jonny Greenwood's dad when he was a baby? Is this Pablo? Who knows. The baby is not credited in the liner notes. Perhaps this is a nod to the Nevermind baby?

In the bottom right corner, the album's title is written in what looks like a child's scrawl. Some of the letters in "Pablo" are capitalized, some are not, again suggesting that a child was in charge of the cover layout. The baby in the photo doesn't look very happy, though; he actually looks somewhat anxious. There he is, the center of attention, surrounded by bright yellow (what are those things?) and brightly colored candy, and yet he is in black and white, and not looking very happy to be the Radiohead Baby.

The CD insert doesn't have much of interest: one black and white photo of the band wearing blank expressions, another photo of the band playing their instruments while looking in every direction except at the camera, and lastly a photo of a toy alligator and a live lizard. Not sure why the alligator and lizard were invited to the album photo shoot, but they make for the most interesting photo in the insert, so they're okay by me.

The back cover is a bit of a mystery. We see a nighttime cityscape; look closer and you'll see that this photo was either taken during a meeting of antique car collectors or it was taken during the 1920's or 30's when such antique cars could be found driving down the street. The signs appear to be in English but it's unclear what they are advertising, and we are unsure whether this is England or the US or anywhere else in the world. Take yet another step back and you'll see that we're looking at this photograph through another photograph; the border of the photo is actually the outline of a man with perhaps another man standing directly behind him. I can't make out anything other than the man's arms. This is easier to see if you turn the CD case sideways.

NOTABLE SONGS: The centerpiece of the album is Creep, which is not surprising since this is the song that brought the band fame and fortune. My understanding is that they soon tired of playing their hit song over and over again, and I can certainly understand why. It's a very well written song with a good arrangement, and worth all the attention and praise that was heaped upon it, but it is a bit of a downer. "Whatever makes you happy," Thom Yorke sings, "whatever you want." It's clear that the narrator of this song is tired of making this other person happy, having reached that point where there is no more sense of self, just the need to make this other person stop haranguing him and leave him alone. "You're so fucking special... I wish I were special... but I'm a creep."

This was the first time that I heard the f-bomb get dropped on this song. For all these years, I was unaware that I was actually listening to the 'clean' version of the song. The version they play on the radio has Thom sing, "You're so very special," which I actually think conveys the sarcasm better. It turns out that the CD I bought includes the clean version as a mystery 13th track, just in case I want to play the CD while my mom is around.

That's only a joke, I do not share an address with mom and dad anymore.

I need to take a second to say that I'm really happy with the selection of the word 'creep' for the title and chorus. The song would not be as cool if it were called "Jerk" or "Asshole" or "Dweeb". Okay, maybe 'dweeb' would have been funny. It's also worth noting that this song is a bit like the British cousin of Beck's "Loser", a song about someone who has given up on themselves and is ready to accept the fact that they suck as a person. Beck sings, "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?", and I think that the Loser and the Creep would have a big debate over who deserved the first bullet.

Musically, this track is simple but impressive. The sparse arrangement tells us more than the lyrics do about the mood of the song's antagonist. And man, that distorted electric guitar that kicks in right before the chorus still sounds amazing. It must be one of the best guitar tones of the decade. The story is that lead guitarist Jonny Greenwood hated the song Thom Yorke brought to the table, and was determined to mess it up. He ended up unintentionally adding the punch and fury that the song needed to be a hit. Such sweet and delicious irony. I also give kudos to Thom for delivering the awesome falsetto bridge that turns into a howl; such great contrast to his low-key approach to the rest of the song.

ALBUM REVIEW: Before I hit 'play', I thought about how I didn't know what to expect from this album. I knew Creep from hearing it on the radio (albeit the censored version), but didn't know what kind of tone or feel the rest of the album would have. I know that Radiohead's later stuff can be a bit more ethereal and even challenging to listen to, so I was surprised by the album's pop influences.

Most of the songs were in a major key, and very pleasant. Pleasant isn't quite the right word, but it's more accessible than I was expecting. This is not a bad thing. I was also surprised by how short most of the songs were. Most of the songs were right around 3 minutes long, and a few were less than 2 minutes 20 seconds. Since we all know that Radiohead soon branched out into different directions, it's difficult to separate the music from the band's legacy, in the same way that I might listen to With The Beatles today and enjoy it but not enjoy it nearly as much as listening to Revolver or Abbey Road; I'm only listening to get 'the full story' of the band rather than enjoy that Beatles version of "Til There Was You".

I was also surprised by Pablo Honey being such a guitar-heavy record. I don't think there was any synth or keyboards besides the piano outro on Creep. Although, I might have detected a bit of synth in the background of the album's final track, "Blow Out". That song was more like what I was expecting the rest of the album to sound like, and I think that the band intentionally put that song last (if it was even the band's decision to make, and not the record's producer during the sequencing). Blow Out hints towards the noisy, risk taking band that Radiohead soon became.

I liked Pablo Honey. I think that if I had bought this CD when it was new, I would have really loved it. I'll be listening to it a lot this week to try and get as familiar with it as possible before moving on to The Bends.

Overall, I was also surprised by how very early 90's this record sounds. There were more than a few touches of Blur, and you can definitely hear the band's 80's influences. It's fun to hear a band being influenced by other bands before Radiohead became the influential art rock band.