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or not! like with roisin murphy, i'm much less of a superfan but like d trump said of diet coke, i'll still drink that garbage.

ꙮ (map), Friday, 17 November 2023 19:05 (six months ago) link

"transphobia is part of the infrastructure of patriarchy not a personality flaw that bad people have"

Yes but I was referring to Kate's experience as mentioned:

it's a lot of work to get pronouns right. a constant struggle. i know because i do struggle, four years after transition, with getting pronouns right. i'm working to train myself, every time i use a pronoun, to stop and think. in writing it's hard... out loud it's harder. last night i had to work to not misgender a longtime friend. i know she's a woman and yet these stupid he/him pronouns keep popping into my head. yeah, that's transphobic of me, that i sometimes see a woman and my brain says "he". it's not something i have immediate, conscious control over, and it's _not_ easy for me to get right after forty years of learning to do it the wrong way.

Sorry I should have clarified

Evan, Friday, 17 November 2023 19:06 (six months ago) link

Honest question: when you talk about struggle to use the correct pronouns due to ingrained habits, is there a better word than transphobic for that scenario? I know it's probably unnecessary semantics, but on the other hand calling it transphobic would seem to suggest the misgendering is at least somewhat intentional, rather than a pure accident.

― Evan

idk, personally i feel like "transphobic" _is_ the right word for that scenario. i think left's response to you explains why pretty well.

i guess in my own words, i'd say... one of my biggest frustrations is when people bring intent into a situation where intent just isn't really relevant. it confuses the issue, overcomplicates things.

a bigger issue than this, even, is the question of _why_ people bring intent into it, what purpose it serves. my personal take on it is that when someone brings intent into their evaluation, they're often doing it to aid in their making a moral judgement.

this points to a widespread systemic bias that applies to what in social sciences is sometimes referred to as "unmarked" people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markedness

one of the implicit assumptions around markedness is that unmarked people have the right to judge situations involving marked people - in fact, often a greater right than the marked people themselves. that's why i went ron swanson earlier. cis people don't have _standing_ to judge whether or not something is transphobic, any more than i as a white person have standing to judge whether something is racist, or i as someone who's not jewish have standing to judge whether something is anti-semitic. if my moral judgements should carry weight in the latter cases, it is a _failure of justice_.

it is true that there is some significant semantic confusion between transphobia as individual bigotry and transphobia as systemic bias. i can definitely see a circumstance in which failing to make that differentiation could hurt me. "this radical trans woman says that everybody's transphobic! if that's the case, why bother to support trans people at all?"

if anything, i'd differentiate between transphobia and bigotry. on some level i'm transphobic and j.k. rowling is transphobic, but that doesn't mean there's any sort of fundamental equivalence between us. rowling's actions go beyond systemic bias... her bias extends to personal bigotry against trans people. me, i just learned internalized transphobia for forty years or so, and i'm actively working to unlearn it.

there should probably be a word. i think. but there isn't one, and i'm not exactly in a position to coin neologisms.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 17 November 2023 19:33 (six months ago) link

cis people don't have _standing_ to judge whether or not something is transphobic

no, that's not right. cis people don't have standing to say publicly that something isn't transphobic. that's how i'd revise that statement.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 17 November 2023 19:43 (six months ago) link

Thanks, yeah I suppose to clarify I'm speaking in regards to phobia = fear and therefore the word for "fear of trans" could be confusing when you're talking about a habitual but not totally excusable mistake that you need to work on vs. conscious bigotry, if I'm understanding your own distinctions

Evan, Friday, 17 November 2023 19:54 (six months ago) link

Thanks, yeah I suppose to clarify I'm speaking in regards to phobia = fear and therefore the word for "fear of trans" could be confusing when you're talking about a habitual but not totally excusable mistake that you need to work on vs. conscious bigotry, if I'm understanding your own distinctions

― Evan

oh i'm a basically a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, though language is particularly complicated when it comes to queer identity. like people who call themselves "gender critical" will say that "TERF" is a slur... honestly i don't take that argument very seriously but you know, they want to be called "gender critical" i'll call them "gender critical". i don't really believe it makes their bigotry look any more respectable, so i don't have a problem with it. basically they're bigots. they can argue that "bigot is a slur" if they want, but i'm not going to stop pointing out their bigotry.

point being don't take most of this shit literally, god knows i don't.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 17 November 2023 20:55 (six months ago) link

intolerance is always and forever pathetic. you'd like to think cambridge-bred musicians would perpetually get it but sometimes inherited privilege has a way of short-circuiting routine vibe-check updates

reggie (qualmsley), Friday, 17 November 2023 22:11 (six months ago) link

Kate I really appreciate what you do but it seems exhausting. I find it much easier and more cathartic to just be flip about it. at this point people should know how this works. why not make cis people have to prove themselves for a change?

I guess your more considered / less reactive approach is more likely to win hearts and minds I just wish it wasn't necessary

― Left

it's a really good question and i've thought about it a lot. you are right, i think, in that there's... a tactical advantage to the approach i'm taking. i hope that there might even be a broader benefit than what you point out. my personal experience is that a lot of people really _want_ to be allies, _want_ to support trans people, but aren't really sure how to do that. my hope is that by talking about this stuff, it'll help people gain the understanding and confidence to be better allies.

because you're right, it is fucking _exhausting_ to have to talk about this stuff over and over and over again. it's the expectation that's been placed on us, historically, and you're right, that expectation is bullshit. what i'm hoping for - and maybe i'm being ambitious here - is that there's an opportunity to change that. i'd love to get to a point where i didn't feel like, well, i guess i'd better say something, because if i don't say this shit nobody else will. the only way to do that is... not just to get people to where they know this stuff, but to a point where they know why transphobia is bullshit, and despite not being trans themselves, feel confident in going toe to toe with the next "gender critical" asshole to start talking shit.

i was watching a video a friend posted last week where some nice lady is arguing with some jerk on the internet who's insulting her and calling her "sick" and "disgusting" because she, uh, _breast-feeds her child_. i mean, come on! why would any of us feel an obligation to _talk_ to somebody saying shit like that? why would _anybody_ consider it _acceptable_ to say shit like that to a woman? i guess we all get to make our choices but god knows i wouldn't talk to somebody who has that little respect for motherhood.

-

ultimately though i don't say the stuff that i do for tactical reasons. i don't get involved in things the way i do because i think it'll be more effective. it's important for me to value and care for myself, and saying stuff like this is part of how i do that, part of how i manifest my transness in the world.

i'm dealing with some negative coping patterns that could be described in a number of ways... today i'll go with cPTSD. i'm going through a DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) course to try and help me learn the skills, and i'm trying to put those skills into practice. anyway one of the ways my particular problems are characterized, one of the symptoms, is not having a very strong sense of self.

as a trans person this is a particularly fraught topic for me. i'm actively working on the skills to build a more resilient and stable sense of self. at the same time, however, i frequently encounter a particular form of bigotry that aims to erase, in a systemic sense, a crucial component of who i am - my gender.

this is a real struggle for me. when i encounter that form of bigotry, i feel a really strong emotional urge to push back by asserting my continued presence, loudly and defiantly. "trans as in fuck you". i think this is effective, even necessary! trans rights, by and large, i don't believe they came from being polite and conciliatory. i believe they came from being defiant and in-your-face about it.

the reason i don't engage in that way is because i don't believe that sort of behavior benefits _me_. my emotions can come on strong, nearly overwhelming. the ways i express them are not always healthy. for me, talking about trans stuff - talking about a topic i'm personally invested in, a topic that means a lot to me - gives me a chance to practice what's called in DBT "wise-mindedness", a sort of adaptive synthesis of emotion and reason.

in some sense, i talk about things the way i do because, contrary to one might expect, it's a fairly _low-stakes_ way of doing this. it's difficult to do, but if i do it badly, shit, i feel like the "worst-case scenario" just winds up with me saying "fuck you, i'm trans". a lot of times when i don't quite make it to wise-mind, the consequences involve me alienating people who i care a lot about and who are personally close to me. who the hell do i alienate by saying "fuck you, i'm trans"? assholes, mostly. in the meantime a lot of awesome people are, quite appropriately, cheering me on. not exactly the worst of all possible fates.

so yeah, i don't _have_ to do the work to engage the way i do, but how could i ever refuse? i feel like i win when i lose.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 17 November 2023 23:00 (six months ago) link

(xp) Oxford actually.

The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Friday, 17 November 2023 23:03 (six months ago) link

potatoiohead, potahtoiohead

reggie (qualmsley), Friday, 17 November 2023 23:40 (six months ago) link

"potatiohead"
About 3 results (0.20 seconds)

"another slice of death, please." (Austin), Saturday, 18 November 2023 00:27 (five months ago) link

you're fucking amazing just because I don't reply to every point doesn't mean I'm not taking it in. there's always a lot to process xps

on a subject I'm much more comfortable talking in broad strokes about - sorry if any present company passed through oxbridge but ime people from those hellholes tend to be worse on this and other issues than the average person. few if any other institutions have produced and nurtured so many world-historical monsters and low-to-mid-level wankers over the years

Left, Saturday, 18 November 2023 00:55 (five months ago) link

also this band is boring everyone should listen to something else

Left, Saturday, 18 November 2023 00:57 (five months ago) link

nodding vigorously to the last two posts

ꙮ (map), Saturday, 18 November 2023 01:01 (five months ago) link

there's a typo in the thread title

should be Radiohead, without the capital A in RAdiohead

i really like that!! (z_tbd), Saturday, 18 November 2023 01:01 (five months ago) link

mods

ꙮ (map), Saturday, 18 November 2023 01:02 (five months ago) link

Please change thread title to "R.J.Dio-head"

Halfway there but for you, Saturday, 18 November 2023 01:21 (five months ago) link


when greenwood "accidentally" liked that transphobic tweet, he had a pretty good opportunity to clarify that he supports trans rights. he did not, in fact, say that he supports trans rights.

^^^

there is a place for analysis of what needs and desires are driving someone's behaviour but the persons social and political positionalities are the most relevant factors here - locking it all away in someone's inaccessible subjective experience not only centres them and their feelings but it just makes the obvious perpetually up for debate - did he really mean it? isn't he a good person at heart? how do you know he doesn't secretly mean well when he hurts you?

great post thank you


i was the biggest radiohead fan for years and years, high school through my mid twenties. i go back now and there are a few undeniably great songs but whatever it is i found so compelling about them before now rings very empty to me!

maybe because rock and "alternative" was so four-square by 1997 that swiping a few ideas from Bitches Brew made them appear godlike, if you're of a certain age.

Deflatormouse, Saturday, 18 November 2023 01:47 (five months ago) link

also this band is boring everyone should listen to something else

― Left, Friday, November 17, 2023 4:57 PM

fantastic rec, big co-sign

"another slice of death, please." (Austin), Saturday, 18 November 2023 01:57 (five months ago) link

the kinks album is great! mind you ray davies would go on to write one of the most famous and influential expressions of pop-culture transphobia of all time, in addition to writing racist and anti-semitic songs. great songwriter though.

the eddie cochran song is great too... since he died at 21 he doesn't have much of a legacy of saying and doing shitty things, i guess.

i mean maybe radiohead are boring and maybe being from oxbridge makes someone more likely to parrot upper-class imperialist bullshit. idk. people change. stuff that was buried resurfaces. john cleese started out parodying upper-class twits and at some point became an upper-class twit himself.

in 1995 radiohead had this great b-side called "bishop's robes" where thom sings about the institutional abuse he suffered as a child, "children taught to kill", the way he's still terrified of someone dressed in bishop's robes. he probably doesn't mean it the way i, as someone who was raised catholic, hear it, but he might, you know? he might. it's a cycle. abuse is a cycle, and places like oxbridge perpetuate that cycle.

all of the shit i've had to unlearn, and i guess liking radiohead is one of those things. it would be easy for me to be embarrassed about my past in that sense. casey plett has this story where one of her characters remembers owning a tucker max book. remember him? i mean, when i was in my 20s i loved frank zappa _to bits_. absolutely one of the most vile, grossly misogynist people i can think of, and i just completely failed to recognize that.

today i recognize it. i still listen to his music sometimes. idk. i try to live in the present, but the past sometimes exists inside the present, y'know? a lot of people grew up as children absolutely adoring hogwarts. that came after my time. people nowadays point out the problems with rowling's writing, and yeah, there are problems, big ones, beyond the transphobia. if someone started reading those books when they were 11, though... it's almost like trying to explain to an 11 year old that the book they fell in love with is awful.

it's important to talk about the problems with those books, maybe, because there's so much overlap. all of these forms of bigotry, they tend to overlap and intersect. there's an underlying mindset, and rowling's writing may well have promoted that mindset from the beginning. i don't know. i saw a couple of the movies i think? with radiohead's music, i just have decades of personal history, personal emotional attachment. i'm not going to judge myself for developing an emotional attachment to radiohead any more than i'm going to judge myself for developing an emotional attachment to frank zappa, for god's sake. i made a lot of mistakes when i was younger, like listening to frank zappa and not wearing dresses enough and hating myself. i'm still learning and working to... make better decisions.

radiohead's music being kind of boring, radiohead's politics being, for the most part, the sort of milquetoast "progressive" politics that manifests mostly as complaining that they don't play public enemy on the radio enough... it's not the sort of stuff that has relevance to me personally. it might to others.

Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 18 November 2023 15:47 (five months ago) link

in 1995 radiohead had this great b-side called "bishop's robes"

i really should watch "the demon headmaster", though. i didn't know there was a 2019 remake. is the remake any good? or should i stick to the original?

Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 18 November 2023 15:50 (five months ago) link

soapboxing on cleese for a moment- ultimately he slots quite nicely into a long tradition of british satire that both mocks and reaffirms the pretentions and prejudices of the upper classes - private eye is a good contemporary example - it can be easy to mistake for this stuff for a scathing indictment of the establishment and the class system (I certainly did in the past) but now I see it more in line with the culture of ritualised bullying and abuse within the institutions that produce our elites - as well as with the more general sense of pessimism and nihilism that pervades contemporary british culture, towards both the status quo and (the possibility / desirability of) social change

I'm not sure how relevant this is to radiohead although I definitely see plenty of the latter tendency in them

no need to be ashamed of being a fan though I get it - I used to be a fan of a rapper/producer who turned out to be far worse than radiohead. it's tough when that fandom has been part of the construction of your identity - I see it as an invitation to interrogate that part of my identity - at least some of it was always projection and fanfiction on the part of myself and other fans. there may still be salvageable things there that don't need (or are better off without) the objects of my projection

Left, Saturday, 18 November 2023 16:43 (five months ago) link

it is worth interrogating, i think... for me, music was a lot of the way i coped with decades of crippling gender dysphoria... for something like that radiohead's lyrics being vague to the point of being essentially meaningless actually helped me connect emotionally to the songs. like the impression i got about how thom yorke wrote lyrics in the "kid a" era is that he would write stuff and then he'd take out bits until what was left was something that didn't really make any rational sense, just singing "yesterday i woke up sucking a lemon, there are two colours in my head, what, what was that you tried to say". it sounds meaningful because it _used_ to mean something, originally, it's not just word salad. it's more like when you remember fragments from a dream but don't remember what they meant. i like that approach a lot. if you read the draft online of those lyrics there's more context to where it makes sense, which does make it a lot more boring imo. the more specific their lyrics are the less they interest me. like doing a song about how tony blair sucks isn't something i could connect with emotionally the way i could connect emotionally with "everything in its right place" or "morning bell". _kid a_ was really quite striking, back when it came out.

if i'm gonna torture a metaphor about it, i guess it'd be like... there's this experience some of us have, where... when i was going through things but not ready to directly address things yet, i would try and talk to people about things, not openly, but vaguely, in a veiled manner, to kind of protect myself, and there were people who seemed supportive, who kind of helped me deal with things during that time. but then when it came time for me to come out they turned out to be super transphobic. it was really unexpected and disappointing. maybe they weren't actually that supportive in the first place and i just read stuff into them that wasn't there, or maybe they just changed for the worse, or maybe some of both. it just sucks to deal with, is all.

i don't have the emotional connection to music that i used to, and i guess that's an improvement, that i can express myself emotionally in more healthy ways. listening to music now, a lot of times it's like trying to hang out with an ex who i like but who i had a really fucked up long-term relationship with. like this is someone i was naked around. a lot. fine, they don't care, it doesn't mean anything to them, but it's still weird and challenging for me to deal with.

Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 18 November 2023 17:53 (five months ago) link

two months pass...

new album is really sleepy

ufo, Saturday, 20 January 2024 12:20 (three months ago) link

i'm annoyed they got my hopes up a little with "bending hectic"

ufo, Saturday, 20 January 2024 12:23 (three months ago) link

that & "teleharmonic" are the highlights but i don't care about the rest at all

ufo, Saturday, 20 January 2024 12:29 (three months ago) link

Yeah feeling the same. Really disappointing after reading that glowing review in the Guardian: "imaginative and viscerally thrilling". Right, I'm still searching for those moments

julian cage (sawdust lagoon), Saturday, 20 January 2024 16:09 (three months ago) link

Finally caved and listened to the leak. It’s odd some of the reviews I’ve read don’t really talk about much about Teleharmonic and I Quit as those are the ones I liked a lot on first listen. Teleharmonic might be the best song from them as The Smile so far, will relisten when it gets officially released on Friday to make up my mind.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 03:38 (three months ago) link

The album is...not good. Filed a review in which I straight-up asked, "Why does this band exist?" There's one song — "Friend of a Friend," I think — that reminded me of Elton John, which is never a good thing, ever.

Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 03:54 (three months ago) link

is it so they don't have to play Radiohead songs anymore / as often?

Reeves Gabrels' Funko Pop (majorairbro), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 04:16 (three months ago) link

yeah... honestly i bailed on this schitt at "bending hectic." total one listen yawnfest. i'll relisten to the new songs+see what i think. but overall a very mighty meh to the smile.

(i still support the idea of bringing back atoms for peace, supplemented by frusciante. maybe bring ed along for a laugh.)

she fell asleep with her hand around my throat (Austin), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 04:16 (three months ago) link

"bending hectic" is beautiful imo but yeah, everything else I've heard from the Smile has been zzzz

Roz, Tuesday, 23 January 2024 04:48 (three months ago) link

I feel that this music contains all the same characteristics of my favourite Radiohead tracks— excellent drum recording, fun production addendums, Greenwood’s love of finding the relationships between mediant-related chords and writing the most economic arrangement solutions to the problems that these chords create, the gorgeous timbre of Thom’s voice (and a gentle blind eye turned toward the lyrical content). It has a quotidian quality that exists in opposition to Radiohead’s widescreen canon-aspirations and I like that for me and my ears, I think I’m going to listen to this album a lot.

flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, 23 January 2024 05:57 (three months ago) link

Great post

H.P, Tuesday, 23 January 2024 06:34 (three months ago) link

the issue for me is that radiohead used to be able to weave all their interesting ideas into compelling songs and they don't manage that here much.

ufo, Tuesday, 23 January 2024 11:39 (three months ago) link

off topic but imagine being stuck with the name Radiohead when your music is like that

assert (matttkkkk), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 12:18 (three months ago) link

the issue for me is that radiohead used to be able to weave all their interesting ideas into compelling songs and they don't manage that here much.

They haven't managed that since Hail to the Thief. I can't remember how a single song on In Rainbows, The King of Limbs or A Moon Shaped Pool goes.

Tahuti Watches L&O:SVU Reruns Without His Ape (unperson), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 16:08 (three months ago) link

Now that's just a mind-bending statement, at least as far as IR and AMSP go

Jordan s/t (Jordan), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 16:12 (three months ago) link

Hell even for TKOL!

Separator (and Staircase) are some of their best tracks of all time.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 21:32 (three months ago) link

But yeah not remembering even a single song of In Rainbows sounds to me like there has to be some minerals missing in your diet.

✖✖✖ (Moka), Tuesday, 23 January 2024 21:45 (three months ago) link

lol moka,

Not to pile on, but in rainbows main deficit imo is how bloody stock-standard and by the numbers everything is! You don’t get the surprises in it that the previous albums had, for better and for worse. Everything is weaved together with such polish, there’s no “wtf, that’s a bit of a change of pace ain’t it Radiohead?” Moments like how the first two tracks of kid A + nearly all of amnesiac/httt hit you with on their first listen. Part of that can be attributed to career trajectory creating expectations that of course 15 steps child choir will be followed by body snatches classic-rock number followed by nudes bassy spacey mood, all finished with videotapes doomy-gloomy-tech-march. But most of it is down to the fact that there’s not a single wasted moment on in rainbows. Amplified by coming from httt, all the tracks on in rainbows are extremely economical in communicating their theme, sound, world.

That might all mean nothing, so to condense: every song on in rainbows is masterfully weaved into a compelling product, almost too polished to be consumed without feeling sick, unless you’re willing to abandon the shame of eating a variety pack of 10 macarons.

H.P, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 00:04 (three months ago) link

in rainbows is polished, concise, and coherent sure, but that doesn't mean anything on it is 'stock-standard and by the numbers' and it definitely doesn't mean there isn't any stylistic variety.

ufo, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 00:29 (three months ago) link

Oh I can totally understand not liking their music or feeling it’s less challenging or impactful than what came before it..Yeah, they mellowed out, and why not? They earned it… they’re almost in their 60s now… I’d argue they kept doing some pretty good music all things considered -but saying you can’t remember a single song HTTT onwards is wild to me.

Of course I’m biased, I remember even their most non-descript b-sides… hey, I’m not big on In Rainbows myself, but it’s filled with some of their “hook-iest” songs. I’ll meet halfways and concede TKOL or AMSP being mostly formless and “vibe-y”…

✖✖✖ (Moka), Wednesday, 24 January 2024 00:29 (three months ago) link

have to agree; "weird fishes" was instantly memorable for me. on first listen, i couldn't wait to finish the album and go straight back to it. maybe their best song?

she fell asleep with her hand around my throat (Austin), Wednesday, 24 January 2024 01:18 (three months ago) link

It’s Radiohead being Radiohead in their most stock-standard, by the numbers form. As differentiated from Radiohead being a stock-standard by the numbers band on in rainbows (this is not what I’m saying). Not a value-judgement, sometimes that’s exactly what wets my appetite

H.P, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 03:24 (three months ago) link

There’s better descriptive terms for in rainbows though. Stock-standard Radiohead by no means explains the whole album, and yeah maybe it’s a bit too reductive to put it like that.

H.P, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 03:25 (three months ago) link

most of in rainbows is still covering new ground for them so i'm really not sure where the idea that it's 'by numbers' comes from. it's not like they're just rehashing ok computer or something

ufo, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 03:30 (three months ago) link

to me it felt like streamlining everything they had gotten right up until then.

she fell asleep with her hand around my throat (Austin), Wednesday, 24 January 2024 03:38 (three months ago) link

to some extent, but there's this warm, tasteful, soul-influenced vibe throughout the album that was then new for them. like, what sounds like "reckoner" or "house of cards", or "nude" on previous albums?

ufo, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 03:51 (three months ago) link

Yeah Austin putting it more succinctly. It’s by no means a rehash of their previous stuff, but Reckoner and House of Cards are in There There imo, Nude is in a mix of How To Disappear Completely and The Tourist. I just think In rainbows they polished everything up to that point into a beautiful product, without rehashing, and also without losing their identity.

H.P, Wednesday, 24 January 2024 04:37 (three months ago) link


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