Radiohead

Surely they reached their zenith around the OK computer/ Glastonbury appearance time? They seemed at once other worldly and totally normal. Aloof and unapproachable yet somehow warm. I was really impressed.

It's their earlier stuff that I like though. Something like Fake Plastic trees.

Although I do really like Just, especially with the video they made for it.
 
I get it you like Radiohead, I just can't get into them at all. It's nothing to do with the music being "too intellectual". In fact the music is far from being intellectual, perhaps you mean the lyrics, but the music is one paced, predictable, dull. whiny, boring and depressing. If you want intellectual music try some classic / early prog with its complex chord structures and time signatures & changes played by highly skilled multi instrumental musicians. Radiohead music is about as intellectual as Coldplay and just as entertaining.
I accept that is your opinion, and good luck to you, but to claim it isn't intellectual is ridiculous. You cite 'complex chord structures' (I think you may mean progressions?), time signatures and changes and highly skilled musicians as some measure of intellectual musicians. So lets look at that:

radiohead chord progressions and key signatures are anything but like coldplay and are some of the most complex of any popular artist going. They regularly use what people would refer to as Jazz chords, and complex and challenging progressions (examples including the overplayed but brilliant Paranoid Android and Pyramid Song) they regularly use modes that would frighten Chris Martin all the way back to a lunch meeting with Rhianna such as Mixolydian and Phrygian.

Time Signatures, again Pyramid song is a great example of changing time signatures in radiohead songs, but Videotape is probabl;y the best example of how radiohead mess with time signatures, a song that 95% of people don't understand how to count to because it's a very fast song disguised as a very slow one. It's very, very clever.

As for multi-instrumentalists...well lets just look at one member of radiohead for starters, Johnny Greenwood, known as a guitarist, but also an excellent keyboard player, master of the Ondes Martenot, some of the best live use of a Kaoss Pad, multiple synthesizers and electronic instruments and tools, wrote his own sampling and sequencing software, plays the glockenspiel, several wind instruments and the viola...oh and he has scored multiple orchestral pieces. Every member of the band is a multi-instrumentalist and have released solo albums other than Colin Greenwood who only plays bass.

The music couldn't seriously be described as one paced either, some songs change pace mid song, others have hidden tempos, some are slow some are fast (not thrash metal fast, but faster than your average non-ballad pop song).

I respect your right find them dull, whiny or boring. But your other comments are factually incorrect to the point of ludicrous. Comparing with Coldplay shows a real lack of knowledge of radioheads work, they're chalk and cheese.
 
Last edited:
That's cool: how did that come about?

He was doing a one off performance at the theatre I worked in and so I had to light the show and then, in effect, stage manage it as the producers weren't very organised. He clocked this and was a very grateful gentleman that I'd made everything fairly straightforward, so he invited me onstage, introduced me, thanked me and made me take a bow. The best thing was I got see my venue the way most technicians never see it, sold out to an appreciative applauding audience.
 
I'd rather hear people who disagree rather than have a warped perception that everyone agrees with me, so no problem with contrary views on here.

They're wrong, of course. Radiohead's music is astonishingly good.
 
He was doing a one off performance at the theatre I worked in and so I had to light the show and then, in effect, stage manage it as the producers weren't very organised. He clocked this and was a very grateful gentleman that I'd made everything fairly straightforward, so he invited me onstage, introduced me, thanked me and made me take a bow. The best thing was I got see my venue the way most technicians never see it, sold out to an appreciative applauding audience.
That's amazing!!!

Did you know he's one of only 2 people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony AND Pulitzer prize? You probably did but boy is that impressive.
 
How have I never heard this before, just wow.

Yes, love this version too. So this version is famous as a pre-release version that shows the underlying bpm a little clearer. When it's stripped back on the album it sounds like a slow funeral march, but it's exactly the same beats per minute as on this early live version.

They find it hard to play the album version live because it's lead by a piano that never plays on the beat, which makes you think the piano is playing the beat. When the crowd are also clapping the offbeat thinking its the beat, it messes the bands head up and unless they can drown it out and get in the right head space they can screw it up.

 
That's amazing!!!

Did you know he's one of only 2 people to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony AND Pulitzer prize? You probably did but boy is that impressive.
I did, Sir Tim Rice, who was a guest of his, told me with eyes as wide as a kid at Christmas.

I'm not really one for musicals or fawning over famous folk, but those two and Maria Friedman gave me one of my most memorable days in theatre. Elvis Costello gave me my other, but that's a whole other story.
 
A band I used to like. They're not one I took with me from my teenage years though. Just find Thom Yorke s singing to be a little too much.
It's the Radiohead fans I can't stand though. If you don't like their music it's because you don't understand it. Etc etc. Got this every time I went to the pub with music snob friends. Eeesh!

Generally if there's an article on someone I like there will be someone in the comments below proudly proclaiming they have never heard of them.
 
A band I used to like. They're not one I took with me from my teenage years though. Just find Thom Yorke s singing to be a little too much.
It's the Radiohead fans I can't stand though. If you don't like their music it's because you don't understand it. Etc etc. Got this every time I went to the pub with music snob friends. Eeesh!

Generally if there's an article on someone I like there will be someone in the comments below proudly proclaiming they have never heard of them.
As I stated earlier and you've just confirmed, radiohead haters always seem to have this reverse snobbery, see it all the time.
 
As I stated earlier and you've just confirmed, radiohead haters always seem to have this reverse snobbery, see it all the time.
I am absolutely an inverse snob. Guilty as charged. I was turned into one by all the indie snobs who couldn't handle the fact I liked popmusic. And like I said it's not the band - it's the fans.
 
I am absolutely an inverse snob. Guilty as charged. I was turned into one by all the indie snobs who couldn't handle the fact I liked popmusic. And like I said it's not the band - it's the fans.
that makes you even worse then, hating someone because of the music they like, baffling. I don't hate Take That fans, I think they have appalling childilike taste, but I would never hate them for it
 
that makes you even worse then, hating someone because of the music they like, baffling. I don't hate Take That fans, I think they have appalling childilike taste, but I would never hate them for it
As I said it's because of fans of "serious music" belittling my taste in music continually. Gatekeepers of taste. They just have a hard time imagining that anyone could like some girls by Rachel Stevens better than anything by Radiohead. Continually equating complexity with quality. Tedious to the extreme. Positing reasons why their music is objectively better. People who see abba songs as guilty pleasures. Etc.
 
As I said it's because of fans of "serious music" belittling my taste in music continually. Gatekeepers of taste. They just have a hard time imagining that anyone could like some girls by Rachel Stevens better than anything by Radiohead. Continually equating complexity with quality. Tedious to the extreme. Positing reasons why their music is objectively better. People who see abba songs as guilty pleasures. Etc.
It's the narcissism of small differences in action sheriff 😗😙
 
Back
Top