"OK Computer": Classic Or Dud?

i.e. average.

I always forget that moment in "Exit Music" when the drums pound in and it goes from being comfortably gloomy to satirical and dangerous.

I love this record.

This makes me feel old. But not as old as Pablo Honey turning 20 next year is gonna make me feel.

Poliopolice arrest this man.

Can't believe I never contributed to this thread. Was I away on tour when it was started, or something?

Happy Bloomsday everyone!

bloomsday comparer

I still love this album. People talk about Kid A being their big leap forward into experimental realms but as far as I'm concerned OKC is an experimental rock record, a huge advance on The Bends.

Denying this is one of the best albums ever made is pure challops IMO.

surely if someone were implicitly to deny that by saying

'OK Computer is a good album....it is one of the best popular rock albums of the late 1990s'

it would be one of the least challenging opinions ever?

I really like about four tracks. The rest I can leave.

Challops

Seriously though, this blew my mind on first hearing it (had just finished my gcse's). I'd been a fan since creep and bought it the day it came out. I just remember how satisfying it all felt.

its alright i guess but i dont really go back to it like i would 'kid a' or 'in rainbows' tbh

"Challops" meaning "it's so obvious it doesn't need to be stated" ?

I guess it was on the Sandbox I stated my opinions on OKC. Not even the best RH release they put out that year. Talented group of people in a lucky time and place that caught a zeitgeist (they didn't invent) but nowhere near as ground-breaking as ppl like to make out. And yeah, I say that as an obsessive RH fan so you can't say it's just hateration.

This strikes me more and more as the best Radiohead album with every passing year. Not exactly groundbreaking but not really like anything else either, including other Radiohead albums.

There is no "best" with Radiohead. There is only "favourite."

I v. much loved and love the album and I would be happy to never hear anything from it again, live or studio recording.

Now...had we heard about this yet?

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Musikexpress-April-2012-Nr-0412/release/3671605

Do keep up, the fangirl thread was way ahead of you on that.

I only learned from DJP the other night, my brain being otherwise pickled in brine.

Yeah he found out about it from the fangirl thread!

(and he only barely made it out alive without mascara and Pablo Honey style blond hair extensions)

For me, Radiohead albums come out and are eagerly and deeply consumed but for some reason don't call to me over the years.

Agreed that "The Bends" is a bit played out, albiet excellent. OK-Kid A-Amnesiac is a fantastic, compelling set of sounds but lately I've been way into the Live From The Basement versions of the last two albums. The studio does them no favors it seems.

have never really been a fan, though i did go hot & heavy w kid A for a while there. feel sort of lucky because i'm not yet tired of radiohead and still get to "discover" great new songs every now and then.

I think the US release for this was two weeks later, because I remember driving to the record store the day it came out (on July 1) and hearing about Britian transferring sovereignty back to Hong Kong that day on the radio.

The track that first grabbed me, and still does, is Let Down, the way the beat shifts about amid those sparkling guitars

Seems to be a micro-generational divide at play, perhaps, on who likes this album best?

If you distilled this album verbally--"LP rock in the grand tradition," I guess--it wouldn't seem to suit my tastes nearly as well as 'Kid A'. My sympathies generally lie with more unusual, less sweeping stuff. But I can't deny that I like the stuff Radiohead were listening to making 'Kid A' a lot better than 'Kid A'. Whereas for what it is, nothing tops 'OK Computer' for me. I feel bad for Thom Yorke, because his real talents are in melody-based rock music, but his interests are clearly more eclectic. 'OK Computer' was the best work they did, then succumbing to thinking what they are really good at just wasn't cool. After 'OK Computer,' they want to be Can or Kraftwerk, but they're just not able to pull it off.

I adore Airbag and Paranoid Android but most of the rest leaves me cold. Let Down and Climbing Up The Walls are really good. Karma Police is a nice single, if clearly Sexy Sadie at one point. It's a very... well done... album. As evidenced by the way people go gaga for it.

Radiohead were supposed to play tonight in Toronto but the stage just collapsed and killed a tech. Cancelled, obviously. How very sad. :(

:(

So glad Melissa is okay. This is so fucked up.

Shit! That's awful! What a thing to happen, especially on an anniversary.

It's weird to talk about this now, but I just got the covers album today.

I know I'm an overemotional tearbag who cries if I drop a fork - given recent events - but it really did reduce me to tears about halfway through Let Down.

Hearing these new versions of the songs really is doing something pretty special for me. Like looking at an over familiar landscape from a different angle, it's brought back so much love and beauty for an album I thought I never needed to hear again in my life.

I guess it's really well curated - and the artists they chose have been really sensitive in their interpretations - going for sparse and thoughtful rather than the sometimes overblown bombast of the original. Taking things back to the bare bones so you can see how graceful the lines really are. This was something I needed, especially today.

What covers album?

What covers album?

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Sunday, June 17, 2012 3:04 PM (45 seconds ago)

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Musikexpress-April-2012-Nr-0412/release/3671605

http://www.musikexpress.de/news/meldungen/article302527/teil-4-a-tribute-to-ok-computer-unsere-cd-zum-juli-heft.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqlxr0IKPPQ

http://soundcloud.com/pmwtumblr/school-of-seven-bells

etc

(those are the only two non-snippet tracks I can find - curious to hear the Ada/Anika/Emika tracks when they surface)

I v. much loved and love the album and I would be happy to never hear anything from it again, live or studio recording.

i'm with ned on this one. i lived inside okc for a couple years when it came out via that kind of obsessive listening that's only possible when you can't drive yet or have a job. i listened to it every single day, often multiple times, for over a year, and then even after that i kept listening to it obsessively. the only thing that really broke the streak was Kid A coming out. sigh. but yeah, there's no reason to listen to it because every sonic detail is already there in my head, every lyric (even though i'm terrible at remembering lyrics).

this is a load of bollocks isn't it? less convincing than the Floyd/ Wizard Of Oz thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cEOct6CEidc#!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEOct6CEidc

i should say

Oh, come on, Gary Numan? "Cars" sounds like it was written by a nitwit child with a synth (and not in a good way), with lyrics written by his older brother who just read 1984 in tenth grade English class. And you can go on all you want about how it was an amazing bit of paranoid futurist chart pop, but between "Cars" and "No Surprises", which is/will be more dated?

Heh heh heh...

― Dave M., Tuesday, 8 May 2001 00:00 (14 years ago) Permalink

Hi there from 14 years in the future. I can confirm with absolute certainty that 'No Surprises' is more dated than 'Cars'.

lol

I haven't listened to this album for what feels like a very long time - in fact, I can't remember exactly when I last listened to it, but nevertheless I've always rated the album quite highly. So, I put the album on tonight and... christ, this sounds far more "stadium rock" than I remember it being. It's essentially U2 and Pink Floyd in a blender with (in the case of 'Paranoid Android') a pinch of Yes thrown in. I remember I loved this record and thought it was so deep when I was 15... tonight I found the album more funny than anything else. I definitely rate Kid A and In Rainbows higher these days, it seems.

I still ride or die for The Bends, but I care very little about any of the other ones. Especially anything from Kid A to present.

the dark and impenetrable amnesiac is the one to keep. there they reached a solitary peak. i never understood why ok computer was hyped as hell. i always found it derivative and unoriginal.

Agreed. I need to relisten to OK though, it has been years and years.

I remember liking the slow songs aka 'no surprises'. They are reminiscent of my favorite tracks on Obscured By The Clouds. Maybe there is more to Pink Floyd/Radiohead comparisons. I wonder if we could pair up all the most similar tracks and make some sort of RadioFloyd Rulez mixtape.

I've never really understood what it is about Amnesiac that makes some people rate it and none of the others.

OKC is far and away the best thing they ever did. I'm hoping they will go back one day to that kind of music and drop the tedious electro stuff, but I fear it's a lost cause.

I like "Cars" way more than anything Radiohead has done.

the "what a wonderful world" biting always distracted me from "no surprises." for some reason the equally obvious "sexy sadie" biting doesn't really compromise "karma police" for me, though

"no surprises" and "let down" are great songs, also they are a twang and a lap steel away from being contempo country hits