Radiohead LP9 Anticipation, Fangirling and random Cheesecake Thread (Do not read if you hate Radiohead or us)

"I can tell you what haircut Thom Yorke has had every year since 1993"
like watching people solve rubik's cubes in 30 seconds, i would very much like a demonstration of this.

I will probably forget a couple of head-shaves and other tragic haircuts in here but..

-There was the On A Friday schoolboy fringe in 86
-Then the blond chin-length bowl cut through most of art school
-1992 he did a headshave
-1993 the bleached yellow extensions arrived
-1994 the extensions got teased up, then Jonny cut them off for that photoshoot
-1995 short, spikey hair, first bleached then red
-1996 - red, Johnny Rotten stylee
-1997 - dyed black
-1998 - shaved, bald patches appear
-1999 - that Ed Grimley sticky uppy bit appeared
-2000 - natural hair colour returns, the beard appears
-2001 - Bernard Sumner sticky uppy hair
-Beard comes and goes for a while
Oh fuck it, I'm going by albums now
2002/3 Hail To The Thief era:
-the Art Mullet
-the Hitler Hairdo fringe to cover bald patch
In Rainbows era:
-the Hedgehog
-the longer Hedgehog
-the "Is he going to cut that thing?"
-Full hobo beard in effect
Solo shows:
-Oh wait, it's kind of a bowl cut
-Meg Ryan Aging Rocker hair
-"I wear headbands now, headbands are cool"
-Wow, That's Some Mullet, Thom
The King of Limbs era:
-Long, shaggy unshaped hair
-Hair gets kind of trimmed up to resemble, um, the haircut he had at art school actually
-That fucken ponytail
-???????

I'm sure I'm missing some, without checking pictures archives online and I may have a couple of dates wrong in the early 00s. The only ones I really hated were the shaved head, obv, and the dyed black hair. The cutest was definitely longer hedgehog to bowl cut. I think the haircut he had at the Latitude festival/Cambridge shows was the cutest he's ever had in his life. (Many people disagree.)

!!! that was !!!

It's kind of "!!!" to me that I've been lusting after Thom Yorke for nearly 20 years. That's like, half my life.

::deep shame::

"Freak monkeys with mediocre tunes."

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/8919071/Radiohead+nice+thom+haircut.jpg

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/westboro_baptist_church_protest_radiohead_show.html

WTF is wrong with me. There are two, count em TWO Radiohead related events in London tonight, and I'm not going to either one of them.

I think The Fandom has done in my fandom. I hate that.

Arseholes have charged me for two pairs of tickets with the same names on. What do you reckon are my chances of being able to get my friends in if their names aren't on the tickets? Bearing in mind this is the O2.

I feel that I am completely indifferent about a Radiohead album release now.

"In Rainbows" was a minor step in the right direction, then last year's release was their worst ever. Frankly, I don't care anymore. Not until they finally make a proper followup to "OK Computer", but they seem to have left that up to Pineapple Tree and Elbow.

I'm assuming you mean Porcupine Tree lol

Actually you're pretty OTM about them, although I think Steven Wilson's two solo albums (which are both excellent) are closer to OK Computer than PT are.

You two are definitely on the wrong thread. I mean, I have my doubts that DC might be a fangirl, but I think he's got it in him, but Geir has never and will never be a fangirl.

I am boycotting the O2 Centre forever so I have no idea how fascist bastardy the place is, but the tour seems to have had its share of ticketing problems.

Anyway. Tonight. I'm definitely not going to Penderecki, no matter how much the Barbican stalks me about it. (Sorry, I used up this month's budget for contemporary classical on the Nico Muhly/O-Palz thing, which actually I think I probably enjoyed more than I'd enjoy Penderecki in any format.)

I just wish I could stop being a mope about the Stanley Donwood thing tonight. Like, I do actually want that book (won't grumble about him biting my style, honest) but I don't know that I can deal with a ~signing~ and all that and there's all this gossip about ~who will turn up where~ because apparently TY often goes to his shows, but that's a reason that I would NOT go because the idea of running into him in the flesh in a little bookshop in Notting Hell is, well, ARGH so I should just order the book off the website and be done with it. But I feel stupid for feeling that way.

Someone post a picture of the red trousers so I feel better.

MUCH BETTER.

http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2008/8/2/lookinmeeyes128621592594368902.jpg

^^^^short dude with boner-pants complex.

Are those 501s?

I have a pair.

I don't know what they are but I LOVE it every time he wears them.

I mean, there were those 501s they all got on an early Japanese tour that they wore so tight that fangirls have known ever since who packs on which side (except for Ed, oddly, who got cut off by a page crease) but, erm, even those were not as, erm... revealing as those red trousers.

Do you understand now, the excitement when they resurfaced?

I'm assuming you mean Porcupine Tree lol

No, I mean Pineapple Thief.

Porcupine Tree aren't that Radiohead influenced. Pineapple Thief are sort of a cross-inbetween Porcupine Tree and Radiohead, actually. :)

haircut rundown justifies the thread

I totally missed a really key and important stage!

Kid A - brushed-forward Caesar crop

(I am slightly embarrassed to confess, I don't actually hate Popcorn Superhet Receiver. I thought it was going to be awful artwank, but it sounds like the weird tapes that HSA's sound artist friends used to make. I don't like having to re-evaluate my dismissal of artists like this.)

You should listen to 48 Responses to Polymorphia, I think you'd be surprised.

But but but I hate Penderercki so why would I willingly listen to music that was a response to one of his pieces?

I think I'm too attached to the idea of hating that I don't want to have to change my mind any more.

"Luckily I quite enjoy feeling guilty"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdjc2Ipt-0M

(Are you sure about that not-being-Catholic thing, Jonny?)

48 Responses to Polymorphia honestly sounds almost nothing like Polymorphia. Just listen!

I am, I am!

And fuckinell... I'm utterly gutted. I ... I ...

::whispers::

((I like this.))

Pacay Tree is absolutely awesome.

I hate that I like this.

You shouldn't though! It's a genuinely great piece.

It's like Jonny Greenwood did to Penderecki what Radiohead did to the fringes of electronic dance music. He cleaned all the rough edges off, gave it a pop sensibility and a good choon, and made it listenable.

I think the interesting thing about it is that in the process he created something that's quite unique? I listen to a lot Penderecki & friends and a lot of classical music in general and there really isn't anyone else who's carved out this weird space between Polymorphia and something far more lush and Romantic.

This is where I just don't have enough knowledge of classical music (Romantic era or contemporary) to respond in any kind of meaningful way except "I like the way it sounds." He occasionally touches on that terrifying atonal noize that Penderecki excels at bringing, but he seems to fill in around the edges with these soft, fluttering, harmonious bits. That there are passages of reassuring beauty, as opposed to Penderecki's full on DOOM DOOM EVERYTHING IS TERRIFYING all bold all caps sans serif text. Jonny's music is a serif font.

Oh god this makes no sense at all to anyone but me.

Things Radiohead fans say: "Dear Jonny Greenwood, your compositions are in a serif font."

SHOOT ME. NOW.

You should listen to Doghouse. I think it's my favorite piece by him by far.

Is it anything like "In A Doghouse"? Otherwise I'm not having it.

Anyway, stop trying to make me listen to Greenwood. You know I'm a Yorkist. I feel all disloyal. I might have to go and sack St Albans.

Oh, and I'm going to answer here to that artsdesk review that you posted on The Other Place.

I mean, the reviewer played his cards in the first paragraph of the piece - whenever anyone says "I like my genre X x-ish and my genre Y y-ish and NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET" you know you are in the presence of someone so small minded that they probably also say things like "I don't know much about art but I know what I like" which means it's perfectly OK to just go ahead and not read the rest of the review.

I find theartsdesk often baffling because they have one or two really good critics/writers, and then seem to make up the rest of the team with people who stubbornly fold their arms across their chest and refuse to have their preconceptions challenged - and the editorial team goes for it because they know that nothing brings the pageviews like challops.

We get it! You don't like synthesis, homage or genre-fusion. We got it from the first paragraph. We continued to get it over the pageview-grabbing two-page split to double advertising revenue on what was a really boring and tedious 1-note review. And we continue to get it. Now fuck off back to Covent Garden you Britney-loving rebel you.

Sorry I couldn't have responded in The Other Place. I still feel awkward and unhappy about how things went down over there.

smdh at that Arts Desk critic. You're right - the first paragraph makes the rest of the review redundant.

It's also a very common anti-middlebrow pose dressed up as if it were iconoclasm. Like critics who say they only like Iranian arthouse and Transformers 3 and nothing in between.

Have to say that I thoroughly agree with both MB and DL here. And also with Owen Pallett on another thread who said that the Worst 200 Songs Project was redolent of the kind of book-burning “THIS IS SHIT” English mentality that made him sick. It really gets my goat too (but then I’m not an Englishman).

You see it all over the place; Ian Martin’s Guardian column today, the Popdose website (don’t waste your time; I look at these things so you don’t have to), too many other places – the underlying message being “Don’t bother with that awful new music that is so difficult to listen to, stick with what you know, let’s all like the same things and that will simplify our demographic reach, make our lives easier.”

Fair enough, Mr Petridis tries to readdress this issue in today’s edition (with the substantial aid of his daughter). The difference being that when young Richard Williams was making his way as a music writer in the late sixties, he already knew about Ligeti and Stockhausen, but I recognise that these are different times.

But when you have someone say, in today’s paper, that “we want to turn our readers into a resource,” then it’s a revolver-reaching-for situation, I’m afraid.

Sorry MB, I didn't notice this was your thread, feel free to delete and I'll go off and have a moan elsewhere

*exits sheepishly, stage left*

The only ownership that I assert over this thread is that it is specifically ~for fangirling~ - i.e. one should only post on it if one is actually a fangirl or else if one is prepared to put up with, support, condone or otherwise just not-be-awful-and-negative-about fangirling as a mentality. Anyone who is prepared to do that, is welcome. Anyone who isn't won't be deleted, they'll just be squealed at, loudly, until they go away.
;-)

But yeah, the whole schtick of that article was just so distasteful. In point of fact, what it screamed was I DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ART, BUT I KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!

Like, I understand the appeal of hating. It's very comforting, in a way. I know I do it myself, that there are artists I just *take against* and it becomes almost part of my identity that I hate Artist X. Because it's easier to establish one's identity in opposition to something, rather than by positive qualities. Maybe also lazier, and avoids actually ever putting oneself out there emotionally by committing to something as ~uncool~ as love. Because loving something or someone, really renders one quite vulnerable.

But, for me, Hating An Artist is kind of an active process, it's something I'm often testing. Like, I will, every year or so, go and listen to artists I actively hate, to test myself, to test my preconceptions. Sometimes I listen to something I hate for about 30 seconds, and go "yup, so relieved, still hate that" and sometimes it will blindside me and take me by surprise and I'll have to evaluate, has this artist changed, or have my tastes changed, and it's this process of give and take, defining and redefining boundaries. (Relieved I still don't like Penderecki, but have had to adjust my opinions on Autechre and Neil Young in the past few years after being ambushed by unexpected emotion.)

But to go to a show by an artist you know in advance you hate, you have already decided to hate, and then just spend the whole article just missing the point of what other people actually *like* about said artist. There's just something so... *lazy* about that.

And I think DL is right about that, that it's kneejerk anti-middlebrow. That it's actually been established and accepted that to enjoy only highbrow material is limiting, snobby and perhaps even vaguely classist. But if you add in "oh, but I also like complete trash, look at how much I'm enjoying this lowbrow art (with a side order of condescension and lashings of irony)" then somehow that balances it out? No it doesn't! That's not Poptimism, that's inverse snobbery.

hahahah OK, I guess I don't have a choice in this Dogwood matter.

I just wanted to say...

http://mercphotos.slideshowpro.com/albums/044/363/album-321248/cache/ecct0413radiohead09.sJPG_900_540_0_95_1_50_50.sJPG?1334233284

Red trousers. Sigh.

http://mercphotos.slideshowpro.com/albums/044/363/album-321248/cache/ecct0413radiohead06.sJPG_900_540_0_95_1_50_50.sJPG?1334296190

^^^^what's so tantalising is that my father is also a photographer for this paper. If only he could have got the passes instead.

(hey, Thom and my dad could have exchanged ponytail tips.)

http://i.imgur.com/oUWPa.jpg

OK, I hate it, hate it, hate it, when people do this about women, and I'm well aware of how offensive I'm about to be, and yet, I cannot stop myself from shouting out...

JESUS CHRIST THOM YORKE EAT A SANDWICH.

I miss your belly. Your belly was super cute. Please grow it back for me? I will force feed you Cornish blue cheese until you comply.

wow, he looks really rough.

<img src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0dij1VUmo1robhpjo1_1280.jpg";>
<img src="http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1scp3ihzY1qa641uo1_1280.jpg";>

Just a weird angle on his face in the other one.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0dij1VUmo1robhpjo1_1280.jpg
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1scp3ihzY1qa641uo1_1280.jpg

Am I gonna be thrown out of the Thomosexuals if I admit I'm not crazy about the stuff he does with Modeselektor? (Though I'm not actually sure I like Modeselektor that much without Apparat to pretty them up.)

I love Shipwreck, but This and The White Flash are a bit on the dull side. I like the Burial/Four Tet singles with Thom from last year a lot more.

Too much creaky voice on Shipwreck.

Let's just bump this thread every time Thom exposes his abdomen.

http://distilleryimage9.instagram.com/45d94c628d7111e1be6a12313820455d_7.jpg

BELLYBELLYBELLYEBELLYBELLY

(I mean we could talk about Nigel's and Thom's clicky clacky bleepbloopfest, too, but it's still doing my head in.)

Knowing that shot was from the LA DJ MOCA thing they did, this just comes to mind:

And if the world does turn
And if London burns I'll be standing on the beach with my guitar
I wanna be in a band when I get to heaven
Anyone can play guitar
And they won't be a nothing anymore

Grow my hair, grow my hair
I am Jim Morrison