"OK Computer": Classic Or Dud?

his soul/funk influences definitely creep in those basslines

Worth reading the interview upthread

yeah Colin talks about how he writes his basslines in that interview, it's a great read & i agree he's generally outstanding. there's the occasional one that Thom wrote though - "The National Anthem" is the obvious one but he played a lot of bass in the Kid A/Amnesiac sessions so there's probably a few others from that time. "Where I End And You Begin" is another

there are also bass lines that might be the result of nigel/thom cutting things up after the fact - 'airbag' comes to mind as a possibility there. the drums, at least, are heavily edited, and the start/stop bass line sounds like i might have been created using a similar process. however it was made, it's one of my favorite radiohead bass parts

airbag wasn't cut up, it was just Colin left gaps where he hadn't come up with parts yet and intended to finish it later but they ended up happy with it like that

Ah, that’s cool.

On some of the early rehearsals of ‘Airbag’ on the recently leaked minidiscs, it sounds like he was playing his True Love Waits part over the top

excellent: https://thequietus.com/articles/26675-radiohead-minidiscs-hacked-review

the kind of brash confidence a band exhibits when it isn’t really confident about the material

this will stick with me

I liked reading that Quietus piece, but to be honest, what little of this Radiohead content drop I've dug into has revealed that, at least to my ears, it hasn't revealed much. That is to say, it's so all over the place it doesn't give away the secrets to the universe or anything. It reminded me of the U2 sessions that leaked right before Achtung Baby. They're full of all sorts of stuff, from blues jams on up, and one of the few things that paves the way to Achtung Baby, a song or riff they keep coming back to, doesn't even end up on the album. Just an interesting snapshot of a band working things out.

yep pretty much. I agree with the reviewer that mostly you're hearing an easier road not taken. A lot of earlier 90s style castaways. I thought the hype about Lift around the "OKNOTOK" reissue was overblown (and I heard and loved Lift from bootlegs in the 90s), all this stuff about not wanting the radio hit. But when you hear the sort of material that would've gone along with an album led by Lift (Attention, Funky Clothes, I Promise too), you know that wasn't just marketing talk.

xp Yeah the U2 sessions they play bits of in the Achtung Baby documentary.. it's exactly what these sessions remind me of; random bits that you recognise amid the mess, or in the 'wrong place'.

I wonder how much of this process — "Just an interesting snapshot of a band working things out" — is even that typical any more, given the decentralisation of recording/writing process enabled by laptops.