In Rainbows

Spoiler alert: Radiohead is freaking awesome.

Hi Son,

As I was getting myself caught up with the Alternative Rock I had missed while growing up in the 1990s, there was one band that I always avoided. Music for me through my early 20s had to be straightforward. I just wasn’t down with abstract or melancholy. Rock had to be your traditional lead, rhythm and bass guitars and drum kit. Anything outside of that wasn’t for me. Electronic? No thanks. I just couldn’t do weird. So whenever Radiohead came up in conversation I immediately shut down the thought of listening to them. Radiohead was strange and more importantly depressing. At one point I was so interested in validating my perception, I Googled “most depressing songs ever” and low and behold a Radiohead song came up with a link I clicked. I won’t name that song, but I did play the first minute of it and just felt like I confirmed my hypothesis. There just wasn’t any room for weird and depressing when it came to my music.

The only song of Radiohead’s I could get into was “Creep.” It was probably their first big single in the early 1990s, which was a grungy sounding emotionally charged song that Thom Yorke said “I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.” You can already see I’m being hypocritical of my dislike for this band. Creep was a very melancholy song. However, it was loud and dominated by guitar riffs that felt more straightforward to me than abstract. When I was a graduate student, at a bar in Lawrence somehow Radiohead came up with a friend of mine. He pretty much told me what a mistake I was making. He stood firm in his opinion that Radiohead was awesome and I needed to give them a shot. To make a long story short, I brushed off his advice and continued to move on with my life void of Radiohead. However, there would soon become an opportunity for me to try ears with the band and do my best to open my mind.

On October 10, 2007, Radiohead did something fairly unprecedented. This was still a time before music streaming was a thing and it was also moving out of the age of Napster-like platforms. If I wanted to hear a full album, I had to purchase it. However, Radiohead bucked that by making their new album “In Rainbows” available to the public through a platform called PacketExchange. The 10-track collection could be downloaded as a ZIP folder for the price of…whatever you wanted to pay. This included paying nothing at all! So how could I pass up this opportunity? What’s to lose on my end other than 40-50 minutes of my life? I downloaded the ZIP folder and uploaded the song files to my iPod mini, another obsolete piece of technology that makes me feel old.

The first track was “15 Step.” Right off the bat, I get electronica and then the distinct voice of Thom Yorke. Yorke could be described as having a “whiny voice.” It was usually higher pitched and could stick out like a sore thumb from the backing music. That in itself was no excuse for me to look down at Radiohead. Mind you, I was really into Led Zeppelin so I had nothing having become a fan of Robert Plant. Then the guitar comes in. It’s smooth, not abstract. I’m actually enjoying this. Then the next track is “Bodysnatchers.” Oh shit, I’m in trouble…

It had everything I wanted out of music. There was a bad ass guitar riff right off the bat and Thom vocals blend right in. Then the drums and bass. Damn this song is good. Then the electronics! Wait…it works! It really freaking works. The sound was kind of this haunting ghost type of whaling. It all worked together. The sound just kept building. Thom’s vocals kept intensifying. It was just a perfect combination of sound and lyrics that blew me away. Then track 3, “Naked” comes on. It is a huge shift in tempo and intensity. One of my favorite things an album can have is extreme contrast between one track to the next. Either you stack a mellow track behind an intense track, that makes the beginning of the second track pop even louder, or the inverse where you are just pumped with adrenaline and then are immediately floored with calm. “Naked” was the perfect contrast to “Bodysnatchers.” Then track 4, “Weird Fishes/Appregi” completely hooked me in. It was a nice steady, mid-tempoed song with this really catchy drum beat. If I were to start a roadtrip off with a song, “Weird Fishes/Appregi” would be a great option. You just get this feeling of travelling at a steady, mid-tempo pace.

The next 2 tracks, “All I Need” and “Faust Arp”, took the mood down to a slow. Then Track 7, “Reckoner”, really made this track listing round out. It’s upbeat until the bridge, where you get Thom’s melcancoly tone backed with a violin. Then it picks right back up. Track 8 is “House of Cards” that just makes you feel like you’re floating. It’s a beautiful song. Track 9, “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” is up tempo, but not heavy. Finally, track 10, “Videotape” is just Thom and a piano for the most part. A fairly dramatic ending to the album with the sound and lyrics. Then it just suddenly ends. It was perfect. My perception of Radiohead, completely changed. I would immediately get hooked on “In Rainbows.”

So begin the domino effect! Where do I go next? The buy their most acclaimed album to date, “OK Computer.” Hooked. “The Bends” was next. Hooked. “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” took me a little while to warm up to, but by this point their sound had built up so much equity with me that I had to keep going until I got each of those albums. “Hail to the Thief” was good for the most part, but had three of my favorite Radiohead songs by far in “2+2=5”, “There, There” and “A Punchup at a Wedding.” Then I finally go back and listen to their first album, “Pablo Honey” which had “Creep” on it. Listening to “Pablo Honey” after hearing the rest of the catalog was kind of weird. It is their most straightforward recording, but became somewhat out of place considering what they became later in the 90s. I was all-in on Radiohead, so much to the point that I had and still consider them one of my top 5 favorite bands of all time. All because I felt I had nothing to lose with a free download. Now regarding the free download, I would eventually go and buy a CD copy of “In Rainbows.” I had to. This album was more than worth it’s $15. So what’s the message from this whole sphiel? It’s pretty obvious. Give things a chance before you blacklist them from your life. That’s not just in music. Inform yourself before making a decision. Especially in today’s society where two polar opposites in humanity and politics immediately go nuclear when they learn of someone’s beliefs. Even if you feel strongly on the left or the right, give the individual a chance by learning about them and not assuming they’re everything you hate.

Love,

Dad