tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38373749074519789142024-03-05T18:41:58.901-08:00In Rainbowswierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-67603987932672858752008-10-25T20:14:00.000-07:002008-10-25T20:15:48.600-07:00<a href="http://www.ucubd.com/Index.aspx?id=657&type=ms" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.ucubd.com/UcubdImageServer/ShowMashupImage.gif?id=657" width="300" height="150"></a>wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-52039307483657472372007-12-30T19:43:00.000-08:002009-08-08T22:33:11.479-07:00In Rainbows<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7urOabbGTxs60Se1hvcpmfOcC-XJKaTjlYaORh5BWmy0YaxY6xxSu0oK43pdavAbJ852nO1H6UKXJz3pipRfBaBFhto45PDa3RrUWSCA41kiapa0J_RKtrbuVaK4LTWJVRHq1a2tUWo6/s1600-h/packshot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7urOabbGTxs60Se1hvcpmfOcC-XJKaTjlYaORh5BWmy0YaxY6xxSu0oK43pdavAbJ852nO1H6UKXJz3pipRfBaBFhto45PDa3RrUWSCA41kiapa0J_RKtrbuVaK4LTWJVRHq1a2tUWo6/s400/packshot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149978592284484962" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><blockquote>AVC: Hail To The Thief was piled up with sound, but it felt like that was where the album was coming from. The music, the artwork, even the title "In Rainbows" suggests this album is coming from somewhere else.<br /><br />TY: The title Hail To The Thief was pretty much stamped on the top of what was going on, just an anger thing. There was a lot of anger in that record—a lot. There's very little anger in In Rainbows. It's in no way political, or, at least, doesn't feel that way to me. It very much explores the ideas of transience. It starts in one place and ends somewhere completely different. That was the only way we could fit it together, but it turned out to be a real upside in the end. The first half of it is pretty raw, pretty hectic. Even though you have "Nude," what the lyrics are actually saying is pretty messed-up, nasty. After a while, everything calms down and you get it out of your system. You feel better; there's this feeling of elation. As far as the artwork goes, that was heavily influenced by the pictures NASA puts on their website. They have this great library of stuff online that we were looking at, and it coincided with [Radiohead album-cover artist] Stanley Donwood's experiments, throwing wax around. It was just experimentation, but it gave a sense of release, letting go.<br /><br />EO: Stanley is always in the studio with us when we're working.<br /><br />AVC: Is that by design?<br /><br />EO: He's either in a little room adjacent or above us in the mezzanine, or in the shed at the bottom of the gully. He's always with us, and we need him in that creative process. Not just for his artwork, but because he'll say, "I know nothing about music, but that was fucking brilliant!" By being there, the music seeps into him. He listens to things the same we do, having it repeated over and over and over again. It gets in him, and the stuff in that—the mood of the songs—is conveyed in the artwork. He's a receptor to that, and that's great.<br /><br />TY: There can be some really difficult times in the studio, but most of the time, we have a laugh in it. A lot of times, when we're doing the artwork and things, there is an element of comedy about it—I've been throwing wax at bits of paper! It's not exactly the punk ethic, but we always end up taking a piss.<br /><br />EO: The last few records, Stanley's started off with erotic imagery.<br /><br />TY: Right. His erotic topiary.<br /><br />EO: Erotic landscapes.<br /><br />AVC: You have to look pretty hard to find landscapes erotic.<br /><br />TY: No, no, not at all! I could tell you all about that. For days and days probably.<br /><br />AVC: You say In Rainbows isn't political, but the feeling of transition seems to match this country's feeling of political transition.<br /><br />TY: There is a certain way of a life, a certain way of being, that is, one way or another, going to come to an end. Hopefully something good to come to fruition, or maybe nothing will. A lot of background to this, for me, is the environmental thing. I didn't want to put that anywhere in the music, but it's absolutely there all the time, in my consciousness.<br /><br />...<br /><br />AVC: Radiohead is nearly 20 years old. Being older, having families, and so on—how has that affected your music?<br /><br />TY: It's harder to actually get time to work. It's harder to find your reason to work, and that isn't because you don't need to work, it's because you think, "More work? This is a young person's thing." But I don't agree with that at all. Music is music, and that's fucking nonsense. The reverse is true. There's that, but there's also the issues you face, that you're not the center of attention any more; you have children, and they are.<br /><br />EO: What I liked about arriving at this record, thematically, was the lyrics had changed. What's really strong to me about the record is, the lyrics are perennial in their scope.<br /><br />TY: They're positively evergreen.<br /><br />EO: It's a very human thing. Music, at the end of the day, is communicating something—emotion, a feeling, a rite of passage, where you are in life. This record really does that. It's not a thing that's being written by someone who's in an exclusive position. It's something that's felt by everyone.<br /><br />AVC: Was there a different tone from the start?<br /><br />EO: The first thing I heard in the first rehearsal was Thom playing "House Of Cards," and I thought, "Hello there! Well, all right!" It's very strong, and I was like, "Yeah! I'm feeling it too."<br /><br />TY: It's funny, because when I write lyrics and am using them in the rehearsal, people are like, "Well, I like that line, and I like that line, and blah blah blah" and usually, it's the lines I'm on the verge of throwing out. [Radiohead multi-instrumentalist] Jonny Greenwood is the best for that. I was writing this song the other day, and there's a line about voices down echo chambers, and I was literally about to delete it when Jonny goes, "That's the line I like!" It's the same thing on "Bodysnatchers," there's the line, "Has the light gone out for you? Because the light's gone for me." I was a bit unsure about it. When people respond positively to it, that's what stays in.<br /><br /><blockquote>Tuneful beauty has always been part of Radiohead songs (like the "rain down" climax in "Paranoid Android"), but such moments have seldom been allowed to linger. Asked the origins of the new mood, Yorke is as clueless as anyone.<br /><br />"I don't know where it came from, to be honest," said the 39-year-old singer, laughing heartily. "I think (`In Rainbows') has its moments of fraught tension, like `Bodysnatchers' obviously. But it ends up in a good space. It starts off pretty anxious, but the end of `All I Need,' by that point, everything is like, `Ahhh' -- getting it out of your system."<br /><br />"In Rainbows" may be a departure, but it's unmistakably Radiohead. Yorke is still singing about disconnection between people, which he cheerfully acknowledges: "It's part of my repertoire. It's what I do. Some people go and work at something they don't like, others talk about disconnection a lot."</blockquote>--<a href="http://encore.celebrityaccess.com/index.php?encoreId=131&articleId=26455"></a><a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/radioheads-thom-yorke-and-ed-obrien,14265/">http://www.avclub.com/articles/radioheads-thom-yorke-and-ed-obrien,14265/</a><br /><br /><blockquote>Colin Greenwood is talking about the weather, but not like people usually do, English people above all. The Radiohead bassist isn't thinking about the inconveniences of winter, but about what weather tells us about the lives we're living.<br /><br />Speaking on the phone, he recalls going to hear Portishead play in Somerset in December, as the rains lashed down on the naked trees, with rainbows appearing whenever the sun came out.<br /><br />You needed the rainbows, he says, to really grasp the starkness of the rest.<br /><br />"They both need each other to exist, these transitory moments of beauty and this bleakness," he said.<br /><br />So it is in life, and so also on Radiohead's latest disc, an album of beautiful, intermittently hopeful, but mostly despairing songs called In Rainbows.</blockquote>--<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080221.RADIO21/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Music/">globeandmail</a><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">How did you sense the various interpretations of this album ?</span><br />Thom: To be honest, we are certainly the two persons who never read nothing at all, never, of what is written about the band. We don't read any chronicle, any analysis. All that we've learned, we know it through what journalists who interview us repeat to us about what has been written or told.<br />Ed: Apparently, there have been unbelievable things put together about this album, theories developed by the most hardcore fans, who presumably listen to the album reversed, just to find clues in it.<br />Thom : My strategy is to confirm all the interpretations, to say 'yes' to all the hypothesises. Because after all I don't want to get anyone angry or upset...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">After all, is it so important to release <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> as a CD?</span><br />Thom: Extremely important. It was even one of the essential conditions to be able to act as we have. For two reasons: the first one is that we do not agree with the idea that the Internet would be the solution to any 'problem'--indeed, we do not agree either with this mental projection that there would be a parallel world, the virtual world of the Internet, in which things would be better... Then, we didn't like at all the idea to work so hard on an album and that people who like music couldn't hold a copy of it, as for our other albums. It seemed silly, closed-minded to us.<br />Ed : While we were recording the album, I remember that Nigel Godrich was getting annoyed all the time and kept repeating: 'I hate this fucking Internet'.<br />Thom: Yes, but at the same time, he spent hours reading comments on the Net. But why do that? Why read all that? You mustn't trust the comments of someone who doesn't tell you things face-to-face.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Has the decision to release <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> as MP3 format changed anything in the making or composition of the album?</span><br />Thom: It hasn't changed anything. It hasn't been a problem in the composition and it hasn't altered at all the final result. The problem was just to find the most appropriate way for the songs to go well together: it sounds simple to say, but it is really a fucking nightmare to do. Because, played in a certain order, the songs of this album can be very heavy to digest, not much bearable. Most of all, we deliberately decided to turn to the model of classic albums which lasted 45 minutes - or even less when it comes to some Marvin Gaye albums... It's in this way, I think, that you make the most striking statements, the ones that the listener comes back to, gives time to, again and again. Otherwise, things take too much time, stretch and one loses the interest to plunge into it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">While listening to the album, it gets more melancholic, and in that it is very different from <span style="font-style: italic;">Hail To The Thief</span>, which was released four years earlier.</span><br />Thom: Yes, in some way. But we also had to start the album with something very energetic, because we had been away for so long ... We had to find the best way to give people entrance doors, and also moments of rest within the album, while remaining very coherent with this idea of making the best possible thing. And also, I hope that when they reach a certain point of the album, people get totally lost, not knowing what to expect. I hope this album put them in a state of mind open to all possibilities.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Anyway it is a less angry album, less upset against its era.</span><br />Thom: Yes, but I don't know why.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is it more intimate because it took more time to make it?</span><br />Ed : I think that it's the time of the life that imposed itself on us. I was listening again to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bends</span> and I was struck to hear at what point that album was choleric, whiny, with a lot of energy, but hugely possessed by anger. There was a lot of it as well in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hail To The Thief</span>. But for this very album [<span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span>], anger was not the most appropriate emotion. For example, one of the things I love this time in Thom's lyrics, is their timelessness. The first lines of the song "House Of Cards"--'I don't wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover'--could be drawn from a song by Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Prince. These words hit right, at something very intimate.<br />Thom: <span style="font-style: italic;">Hail To The Thief</span> was trying to start a fight, a battle. But I think that when recording <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span>, I was very tired of absorbing the external world within our music. And the intimate nature of this album is a kind of personal answer to a strange climate of general fear. It's our way of closing the shutters, to let the survival instinct guide us: not trusting anything else and relying only on the people around you.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is it easy to do? What was profoundly different this time?</span><br />Thom: I work with what I have, I make do with what is at hand. For now, I have more than enough of the copy/paste. But also of the 'stream of consciousness', of the fact of setting down my thoughts on pages and pages. This time, the first draft imposed itself most of the time. It's doubtlessly the first time that I leave it so much to my instinct. Usually, the songs take time to come out, I think a lot about their meaning. Here, I tried to avoid this process and I tried to spit everything out, to make everything spurt at one stroke. What I feared with making interviews, was having to explain all these things that I actually wrote in a very spontaneous way.<br />Ed: There have been very similar moments to what we used to do before. But it was obvious that there were different things occurring there. And it's only afterwards, during the interviews, that I understood, by listening to Thom expressing himself, analysing himself, that he had really changed some things, but also that this time he didn't want to explain too much about his lyrics. Personally, I've been very touched by the lyrics of this album, by what they tell on the human condition and how they get to universality : after all, we are not different from other people.</blockquote>--Les Inrockuptibles (French magazine)<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why is it called <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span>?<br /><br /></span><span>'Um,' says Thom Yorke in the manner in which he begins most answers to most questions. Often he'll scratch his head, too, making him look totally Stan Laurel. 'Because it was the desire to get somewhere that you're not. I thought of that last night.'</span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So it's nothing to do with the theory posited by Cony </span> Abbatemarco, director of food and nutritional services at Gaylord Hospital in Connecticut, who writes (and I quote): 'According to Genesis 9:1 (9+1 = 10!), God created the very first rainbow for Noah (Thom Yorke's son's name) as a symbol of gratitude and a promise of peace. This is known as the Noahic Covenant and in it God blesses Noah, his sons and all modern humankind. God promised Noah that never again would there be complete destruction to all living things. Is the In Rainbows title related to this?'</span><br /><br />'Ha ha ha!' laughs Ed O'Brien. 'Excellent. I love this shit! Fair play to somebody who works this stuff out!'<br /><br />'Uh-oh,' says Thom Yorke. 'No. That's pure coincidence. Having not read that particular section of the Bible ...' he adds with a wryness so thick you could eat it with a fork.<br /><br />'Some people,' notes Phil Selway, 'have far too much knowledge for their own good, you know.'<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">'The <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> cover art departs from the impersonal and apocalyptic imagery of recent albums. The music does the same. It's warm and inviting. The whole aesthetic points to a shinier, happier Radiohead. Do the band agree a shift has occurred? If so, why do they think it happened?'--Wes Jarrell, 25, USA</span><br /><br />Thom: 'Uhm, yeah, kind of. More sort of explosive and ... Explosive is perhaps not the right word but in-your-face, spontaneous. That's what we were aiming at.'<br /><br />Ed: 'I think the big thing was Thom's lyrics really. That always heralds something. The music always seems really strong, but the lyrics were ...'<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Where has that come from within Thom?</span><br /><br />Ed: 'I think not being scared to be personal. And not being scared to ... I think it was really liberating for him to do [his solo album] The Eraser. His voice is really upfront. That's the most noticeable thing. He's not hiding. And after OK Computer he sort of withdrew a bit. I think it's also being bold enough and brave enough to be personal. And you know what... there's stuff to write about in your late thirties. You've lived. You've started families up.'<br /><br />Jonny: 'You're a different person.'<br /><br />Ed: 'Yeah, you've stopped dealing with, "Me, I'm the centre of everything." Because you've got kids you can't do that. So, it changes. It was like, "Wow, there's a warmth to these songs, it's very human."'<br /><br />'<span style="font-weight: bold;">Lyrically<span style="font-style: italic;">, In Rainbows</span> seems to revolve around infidelity and relationships. This is a big jump from the more world-focused, environmentally-charged lyrics in the previous two-three albums. Was Thom more focused on family life and dealing with personal matters during the songwriting process for this album?'--Bianca Carlson, 30, Denver, Colorado</span><br /><br />Thom: 'More focused on not getting into large generalities, definitely. Other than that, I couldn't really say, to be honest.'<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">'To what extent is <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> about middle-age malaise and the sort of drifting moods you find in the corners of 15-year-old marriages?'--Anthony Strain, 28, Modesto, California</span><br /><br />Thom: 'It was much more about the fucking panic of realising you're going to die! And that any time soon [I could] possibly [have] a heart attack when I next go for a run. You know what I'm saying.'<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Out there in the blogosphere, some people think super-brainy Radiohead do have all the answers. Many respondents to OMM's posting were seriously exercised by the conspiracy theories (they felt were) embedded within <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span></span><br /><br />Jonny Greenwood sits up at mention of this. 'You know all these, don't you?' says Ed O'Brien - the heartiest, most gregarious Radioheader--to his fellow guitarist. Greenwood, the youngest and possibly shyest member of the band, replies by looking sheepish.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">These theories include the 'tenspiracy', so named because <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> came out on 10/10, the title has 10 letters, as does <span style="font-style: italic;">OK Computer</span>, and it's out 10 years after said album. There is supposedly some binary coding at work here. This is what Cony Abbatemarco was on about when he wrote 'According to Genesis 9:1 (9+1 = 10!)'.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">So for the record: with regards to 'the Kid 17 and tenspiracy theories' (Neil Dooley, 19, Dundalk, Ireland); the idea that The Golden Section of <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> occurs at exactly the moment in 'Reckoner' when the backing vocals sing the words "in rainbows" (Tom Ballatore, 37, in Kyoto, Japan); that the bonus disc's tracks correspond to the Star of Ishtar in Taoist philosophy (Curtis Perry, 19, Ontario, Canada); that <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> is a 'Pynchonian citation' (Carlo Avolio, 22, Naples, Italy); that it relates to Conrad's Heart of Darkness (Alex Drossart, 18, Wisconsin); that it is conceptually linked with Goethe's <span style="font-style: italic;">Faust</span>, notably in 'Videotape' ('When I'm at the pearly gates/this will be on my videotape/Mephistopheles is just beneath/and he's reaching up to grab me') - in definitive response to all those: Radiohead don't know anything about any of that stuff.<br /><br /></span><span>Thom: 'All good records have a heart of darkness.'<br /><br />Phil: 'You've been asked that one before, obviously.'<br /><br />Thom: 'I have, yep! I vaguely know the story of <span style="font-style: italic;">Faust</span>. But that would involve me having remembered it in some detail or picked it off the shelf. Which I didn't. But yes, hmm, Goethe's <span style="font-style: italic;">Faust</span>. I'm going to have to look that one up, actually, 'cause that sounds suitably pretentious. We live in Oxford, after all.'<br /></span></blockquote>--<a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,2221299,00.html">observer.guardian.co.uk</a><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">The first thing I saw when arriving at St. Pancras Station in London-–at your request, to spare the environment--was a rainbow.</span><br /><br />Thom: Well, seems like Him up there has kept to our deal then, ha-ha.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why did you name the record </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">In Rainbows</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">?</span><br /><br />Colin: It was one of many suggestions, but it sounds cool, like it has an open ending. I immediately liked it, because it has lots of possible meanings. It has nothing of a slogan, nothing provoking...<br /><br />Thom: Nothing polarising. It’s related to the artwork as well. That’s so weird. It happens a lot that the artwork gives you ideas... Stan was doing this wicked ink explosion thing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stan is your designer?</span><br /><br />Thom: Stanley Donwood. It all started with him dropping a candle.<br /><br />Colin: Seriously, when he was working at home one night.<br /><br />Thom: That’s how the Big Fire in London started. He scanned the wax, which looked amazing. It fit very well with the rainbow idea. I started focusing on the words In Rainbows. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to go with the idea of trying to reach something you can’t. It’s there but you can’t reach it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A number of songs seemed to be about nature, and the human being, as a part of it, who doesn’t realise what he’s doing.</span><br /><br />Thom: Wow! I haven’t heard it put like that yet, but it sounds great.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">For example, the song about fish, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi. People are poisoning the sea, you’re singing, where do the poor fish have to go?</span><br /><br />Thom: You know what it is? The entire time I was busy writing, I wanted to get away from these things. I was worried about those themes entering my work. But it was just there, whether I wanted it or not. To me, the most important line on this record is the word denial in "House of Cards", because that’s what it all comes from. Denial in every possible meaning. It was the only time I was aware of that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What you’re talking about. At the end of the song, you sing your ears should be burning. Burning with shame, no? The human race should be thoroughly ashamed.</span><br /><br />Thom: Yeah, you could say that. But of all the lyrics I’ve ever written, I hope that the ones on this record will deliver the widest range of interpretations.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">In almost every song you constantly change perspectives: actor(???), victim, hunter, prey, polluter and endgangered species.</span><br /><br />Thom: Bonkers! Fascinating interpretation, I hope everyone sees it like that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">You could interpret <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> as a portrait of the 21st century man, who--despite trying to do what’s right--can’t fight them. ‘You can fight it like a dog and they brought me to my knees.’ The Bodysnatchers will get you in the end.</span><br /><br />Thom: Well, the lyrics of "Bodysnatchers" came from cutting and pasting lines from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Stepford Wives</span>. So there you go. I got obsessed with <span style="font-style: italic;">The Stepford Wives</span>. I wrote lots and lots of excerpts from the book next to each other and started cutting.<br /><br />Colin: It’s a book from the seventies. There’s movie now, too. It’s written by Ira Levin, who recently passed away. He also wrote <span style="font-style: italic;">The Boys From Brazil</span> [and, more famous: the horror story <span style="font-style: italic;">Rosemary’s Baby</span> (1967)].’<br /><br />Thom: The idea that you can be captured by something external, a ghost, comes from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Stepford Wives</span>. At the end of the movie you see a new conscience entering someone’s body.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The first song, "15 Step", starts with ‘How come I end up where I started? How come I end up where I went wrong?’. This seems to fit you guys. Every idealism dies in the cynicism of reality. For example, when I arrived here I started thinking: Oh God, these guys are no logo, but gosh, there’s a label on my T-shirt and one on my jacket as well. Then I started looking around and the only thing I saw was logos.</span><br /><br />Thom (pointing at his own white trainers): Here, a logo as well! You can’t escape it. I wrote this album from a very harmonious thought. I didn’t want to fight anything, but at the same time I didn’t want to be apathetic. That kind of mood. The others caught up on it as well--that it was a personal record, or at least a human one. It felt good not to attack in any way for once. I didn’t want to judge everything, just sing like how I am, like what I’m feeling.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is it hard not to judge yourself as well?</span><br /><br />Thom: I’m only human, so... it’s about me, but... [long sigh] I’ll let this question pass.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Alright, "Nude" is an old song. What changed that made you get it right?</span><br /><br />Thom: That’s the classical case of a song that hasn’t made sense for years, don’t you think, Colin?<br /><br />Colin: One of the frustrating things of being a member of a band is that some songs mean everything to one person, but not to all of us. So one of us keeps going on and on about it, while the others try and look away. But that’s cool, you know.<br /><br />Thom: I also felt very insecure about the way I had to sing "Nude". I didn’t know in what pitch. And the lyrics were too intimate, but too sweet as well. It’s only when Colin started knocking about with the bassline, that I could figure out how to sing it and get away with it. Also, the lyrics have fallen into place, while at the time... Nothing has changed about them, but still. They didn’t seem to make sense, and now they do.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">It makes me think of a story where one band member wants to leave with a groupie, and the other saying: don’t do that, don’t get any big ideas, don’t give in to the temptation.</span><br /><br />Thom: I don’t remember for sure , but Nude was written in the <span style="font-style: italic;">OK Computer</span> era. It was more something like: 'Don’t play up your imagination, boy. Watch out so you don’t become something you aren’t.'<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">You didn't answer my question about judging yourself in your songs, but is it mere coincidence that Faust ("Faust Arp") as well as Mephistopheles ("Videotape") get a mention? The devil and the man who sold his soul to the devil?</span><br /><br />Thom: Such literary references on this record! No, seriously, before today's interview sessions it hadn't crossed my mind for one second. [Half laughing, half surprised:] So weird.<br /><br />Colin: Don't pay attention to that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Reckoner's" on the record.One of the most beautiful songs. What is "Reckoner" about?</span><br /><br />Colin: About nature and what we discussed earlier. A friend of ours is making a video for "Reckoner". He's filming a lane, from up on the hill all the way down. He asked biologists to write down the names of all the different animals and insects living around this lane. He's filming from last summer to the start of this winter. He expected a few hundred species, but apparently it's more like a few thousand.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What exactly is a 'reckoner'?</span><br /><br />Thom (with a difficult expression on his face): Actually I don't know what it is.<br /><br />Colin: Jonny and Phil know what it is. It's an old word from the Bible for Peter at the Gates of Heaven.<br /><br />Thom: Really?<br /><br />Colin: Yes, the one that makes the Last Judgement, who weighs your good deeds against your bad ones.</blockquote>--Oor<br /><br /><blockquote>Steve: First time I heard this record, and you know me, I always give you an honest opinion, fessing up time, first time I heard it, what... the thing that I found really strange was there was no ...there didn't seem to be a center to this record. It didn't seem to have a certain sense of focus. You know, with previous, if you go back to say, <span style="font-style: italic;">Hail to the Thief</span>, lyrically, there's various themes running through it: Fatherhood. Maybe the political landscape outside of you know the family home...<br /><br />Thom: Ok...<br /><br />Steve: But there was something, sort of holding it together. Less so with this record. Do you think?<br /><br />Thom: Mnnn..No.<br /><br />Steve: Right...<br /><br />Thom: But, um, only because... no, the center is "Reckoner". I think.<br /><br />Steve: Do you?<br /><br />Thom: Yeah, it's cos that's where it goes into a space of its own. The central point: "Because we separate like ripples on a blank shore", is .... that's the center. Yeah. Everything's leading to that point and going away from that point.<br /><br />Steve: Right...so literally it's quite like..<br /><br />Thom: For me anyway...<br /><br />Steve:... dropping a pebble...<br /><br />Thom: And I tell you what though, we did something this morning, we were talking to someone this morning, and, there's all these mad theories on the net. I mean, I don't know, I'm not one of those people who reads em, but someone read one out to me, it's all about Tens and apparently, mathematically that IS the centerpoint!<br /><br />Steve: Is it??<br /><br />Ed: The golden section.<br /><br />Thom: Was that the thing?<br /><br />Ed: The golden section theory.<br /><br />Thom: The golden section theory, so if you really, really, really, really, really stuck for something to do, you could always read up about that!<br /><br />Steve: Um, ok! Musically though, as well, you've mined various things with different albums, tested different parts of what the band is about and what it's capable of doing, this one feels like you've gone down, you've gone down...down the mine, but possibly found different seams. You're working on different parts, stretching different parts of your music.Instead of going particularly in one direction.<br /><br />Thom: Really..? Huh... I think, I think there was less of trying to follow an aesthetic and more of trying to sort of be true to the songs themselves, and what was going on with the words of the songs. Ed was big on the words in this record. He kept ...kept sort of focusing back on that.<br /><br />Ed: That to me is the ...I kind of, you know, for me music, with music in the last four years, I went through, personally I went through a phase of like not being able to really listen to music, like four years ago. And the thing I came back to, is , a song. A song is lyrics, you know? A song is a singer, that's eighty percent of it, and the music is like twenty percent, it's the thing that backs it...<br /><br />Thom: Have we discussed this with our publishers lately?<br /><br />Ed: *laughs*<br /><br />Thom: Sorry, carry on...<br /><br />Ed: Well, it's about half and half with respect to... Um, that was the thing for me, was like, the most noticeable thing for me when we reconvened was: there were these lyrics, and sort of really latching onto the lyrics, cause I felt like they were sort of, they were universal, there wasn't a political agenda, it was being human, you know, there's a lot of humanity in them.<br /><br />Steve: I think that's the intimacy thing...<br /><br />Thom: Yeah.<br /><br />Steve: That connection<br /><br />Ed: I was getting a buzz hearing the lyrics, and that had been on a genuine very sort of profound level. And, so, I think it was really, I think, what you'd done on the Eraser as well, the voice, for us, hearing the voices up front, you know, you weren't...you didn't pull the voice back. And so the voice is up front, so that was really good to hear. We were like, wow, we need to do that. And, it was just getting the songs right, and getting the background right to the vocal and to get these lyrics heard, because that's basically what it's about....</blockquote>--Thom and Ed (2007-11-19)<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> carries some of Radiohead’s most beautiful tracks. Soulful and melodic, it’s a u-turn from the harsher electronic sound of earlier albums <span style="font-style: italic;">Kid A</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Amnesiac</span>.<br /><br />The eerily delicate "House Of Cards" and the stunning "Reckoner" are among the highlights.<br /><br />Colin says: “I also love Reckoner, because it’s like happy/sad music. It reminds me of Lucky on OK Computer or Yellow by Coldplay.<br /><br />“You listen to it because you want to but it still tugs at you.<br /><br />“When Thom’s singing the main melody, it repeats again and again. We recorded our own breaks and we are all playing little percussion instruments and recorded it on this one piece of tape.<br /><br />“But my favourite is "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi", which is amazingly beautiful. The song gives you hope and then it goes down again.<br /><br />“It’s up and down, with self-belief and self-doubt and emotional rushes and surges.”<br /><br />Old track "Nude" made it on to In Rainbows, even though it had been played live as far back as 1998.<br /><br />Colin says: “Thom felt it was right now, as he is in a place in his life where the words make sense to him.<br /><br />“When we wrote it in the early Nineties, it didn’t feel right to him. Thom would say this album was also right for it because I finally came up with a bassline. It’s a soul thing.<br /><br />“It was like a picture that wasn’t right for years and now it works for him.<br /><br />“And in the context of the record it’s kind of about love so it works in that setting.”<br /><br />So how did Radiohead decide which tracks featured on the original download album and as the extra tracks on the box set?<br /><br />“It wasn’t a case that they weren’t good enough. They just didn’t fit. I like the fast ones on the record and I love the slow ones on the other one.<br /><br />“The song "4 Minute Warning", I love. It starts with this white noise. Thom was writing it around that period of the July 7 terrorist attacks and that air of panic and fear. It’s really downbeat and downtempo and deals with really heavy stuff.<br /><br />“Then the song, "Last Flowers" is about dealing with crap on a daily basis. How you deal with a bad day.<br /><br />Thom said that <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span> “was much more about the f**king panic of realising you’re going to die! And that any time soon I could possibly have a heart attack when I next go for a run. You know what I’m saying?”<br /><br />Do Colin and the rest ever quiz Thom about his lyrics?<br /><br />“No. Thom doesn’t have to explain his lyrics to us as they are really clear.<br /><br />“These songs are so beautiful and so personal, about who you could be with and the choices you’ve made in your life.<br /><br />“They’re love songs or songs with the promise of love. They’re emotional songs that relate to people’s lives directly. Everyone falls in and out of love.<br /><br />“Thom is such an emotionally honest person. He’s either on or he’s not,<br /><br />“There’s no pretending to put the light on, which is why he’s such an amazing performer. He doesn’t take a back seat and fake the emotions.”<br /></blockquote>--Colin Greenwood (Sun | December 2007)<br /><blockquote>It's about that anonymous fear thing, sitting in traffic, thinking, 'I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something else'.<br />Interestingly enough it's similar to <span style="font-style: italic;">OK Computer</span> in a way. It's much more terrifying. But <span style="font-style: italic;">OK Computer</span> was terrifying too -some of the lyrics were.</blockquote>--Thom Yorke, NME<br /><br /><blockquote>Five shows into the first leg of their North America tour, they played confidently. At one point, Yorke urged the soaked crowd to “cuddle,” an unthinkable prospect for a Radiohead concert. Tuneful beauty has always been part of Radiohead songs (like the “rain down” climax in ‘Paranoid Android’), but such moments have seldom been allowed to linger. Asked the origins of the new mood, Yorke is as clueless as anyone.<br /><br />“I don’t know where it came from, to be honest,” said the 39-year-old singer, laughing heartily. “I think (‘In Rainbows’) has its moments of fraught tension, like ‘Bodysnatchers’ obviously. But it ends up in a good space. It starts off pretty anxious, but the end of ‘All I Need,’ by that point, everything is like, ‘Ahhh’, getting it out of your system.”<br /><br />‘In Rainbows’ may be a departure, but it’s unmistakably Radiohead. Yorke is still singing about disconnection between people, which he cheerfully acknowledges: “It’s part of my repertoire. It’s what I do. Some people go and work at something they don’t like, others talk about disconnection a lot.”</blockquote>--<a href="http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2008/05/22/5637936.html"></a><br /><br /><blockquote>Pitchfork: With Kid A and Amnesiac, the band almost totally reinvented its sound, and Hail to the Thief was restless in its way. But In Rainbows seems more comfortable and relaxed. Was there a turning point for the band during the recording of the record?<br /><br />CG: We handed ourselves over to our producer Nigel Godrich. We did one session in a crumbling country house and one in a reconditioned country house and then we reconvened in February of last year-- that was the turning point. We recorded "15 Step" and "Arpeggi" in our studio in Oxford in two days and it was really good. We'd recorded those songs a half dozen or a dozen times, but we went back in and played them again and everyone wasn't thinking about what they were doing as much. I think if it's quite painful and it takes a while it tends to be good...which is sort of a contradiction of what I said earlier.<br /><br />Pitchfork: In an interview before the recording of In Rainbows, you suggested the band might be feeling too safe in terms of your close relationship with Nigel Godrich.<br /><br />CG: It wasn't about being too safe with him, he just wasn't around because he was working with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Beck. It wasn't like he was twiddling his thumbs and we were like, "Ah well, we won't give him a ring." So when we tried to work with with [producer] Spike Stent, it was more out of a desperation to try to get things moving. It didn't work out. But Spike actually turned the crank to get the engine going.<br /></blockquote>--<a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/49337-interview-radiohead"></a></blockquote>wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-76865525309320978922007-12-20T01:32:00.001-08:002007-12-20T01:32:12.826-08:00In Rainbows Widget<object id="W476a369b23719dfb" width="391" height="366" quality="high" data="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/476195e50dfcd954/476a369b23719dfb" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="movie" value="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/476195e50dfcd954/476a369b23719dfb" /><param name="allowNetworking" value="all" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="flashvars" value="" /></object><br />wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-23623504679086211532007-12-18T11:21:00.000-08:002008-10-26T13:09:10.094-07:00In Rainbows<object id="radiohead_bars_300250bg_univ.swf" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" height="250" width="300"><param name="movie" value="http://radiohead.tbdrecords.com/tags/radiohead_bars_300250bg_univ.swf"><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://radiohead.tbdrecords.com/tags/radiohead_bars_300250bg_univ.swf" id="radiohead_bars_300250bg_univ.swf" name="radiohead_bars_300250bg_univ.swf" bgcolor="#000000" quality="high" height="250" width="300"></embed></object>wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-57741239590988897622007-10-11T11:52:00.000-07:002007-11-23T14:04:24.897-08:00In Rainbows by RadioheadLyrics from the songs in "In Rainbows" by Radiohead. These are the official lyrics from the lyrics booklet in the album. I'll post the scans from the pages when I have them. I do realize there are lines that are not actually what Thom sang in the album versions, and some lines are missing that he did sing. But I merely transcribed the official lyrics.wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-75359725356694946712007-10-11T11:50:00.000-07:002008-12-07T09:04:13.101-08:0015 Step<a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-09716064625789606 visible" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/L1c5bE10tnk&hl=en&fs=1"></a><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/L1c5bE10tnk&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/L1c5bE10tnk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><blockquote>you used to be alright<br />what happened?<br />did the cat get your tongue?<br />did your string come undone?<br />one by one<br />in procession<br />it comes to us all<br />it’s as soft as your pillow<br /><br />you used to be alright<br />what happened?<br />et cetera et cetera<br />fads for whatever<br />15 steps then a sheer drop<br /><br />how come I end up where I started?<br />how come I end up where I went wrong?<br />won’t take my eyes off the ball again<br />you reel me out then<br />you cut the string</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>The first song, "15 Step", starts with ‘How come I end up where I started? How come I end up where I went wrong?’. This seems to fit you guys. Every idealism dies in the cynicism of reality. For example, when I arrived here I started thinking: Oh God, these guys are no logo, but gosh, there’s a label on my T-shirt and one on my jacket as well. Then I started looking around and the only thing I saw was logos.<br /><br />Thom (pointing at his own white trainers): Here, a logo as well! You can’t escape it. I wrote this album from a very harmonious thought. I didn’t want to fight anything, but at the same time I didn’t want to be apathetic. That kind of mood. The others caught up on it as well – that it was a personal record, or at least a human one. It felt good not to attack in any way for once. I didn’t want to judge everything, just sing like how I am, like what I’m feeling. (???)<br /><br />Is it hard not to judge yourself as well?<br /><br />Thom: I’m only human, so... it’s about me, but... [long sighing] I’ll let this question pass.</blockquote>--Oor (2007)<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>John: “15 Step”, where does this figure in that timeline that we were just discussing in such great detail?<br /><br />Thom: [laughs] Um, uh…<br /><br />John: Is it worth trying?<br /><br />Thom: Yeah, no. It was kind of a cool one because um… uh, I think for a lot of people it was a sort of breakthrough song for us because it came together very fast. I mean, what you just heard is basically one take, um, with almost nothing changed at all. Um… uh… so and it was… it evolved in a very interesting way as well because it was originally extremely electronic, and very much sort of… um, stripped, and noisy. Um, and then we sort of wanted to work out a way of doing it live, um, and then out of that came the one that you heard. And it’s sort of just, you know, everything’s sort of… it turned into something… we agonized over like whether um, the real scrouchy electronic one was good, or whether this one was good, and it was a sort of blindingly obvious that what we ended up with was miles better. And it was very much in the sort of vein of when we finished Kid A and stuff, like say, “Idioteque”, which was, you know, has a very specific sort of sound on the record and then when we sort of try to work out how to play it live, it became something even more sort of bigger and madder. Uh, and the “15 Step” is sort of the same sort of thing, really. Um, it’s sort of got an important lesson that we learned during that period.</blockquote>--2008-01-03 | XFM Radio Interviewwierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-38004224473467466242007-10-11T11:48:00.000-07:002009-08-08T23:09:31.743-07:00Bodysnatchers<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/TZEpfICFkfQ&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TZEpfICFkfQ&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><blockquote>I do not<br />understand<br />what it is<br />I've done wrong<br />full of holes<br />check for pulse<br />blink your eyes<br />1 for yes<br />2 for no<br /><br />I have no idea what I am talking about<br />I am trapped in this body and can't get out<br /><br />you killed the sound<br />removed backbone<br />a pale imitation<br />with the edges sawn off<br /><br />i have no idea what you are talking about<br />your mouth only moves with someone's hand up your ass<br /><br />has the light gone out for you?<br />because the light's gone out for me<br />it is the 21st century<br />it is the 21st century<br />it can follow you like a dog<br />it brought me to my knees<br />they got a skin and they put me in<br />they got a skin and they put me in<br />on the lines wrapped around my face<br />on the lines wrapped around my face<br />are for anyone else to see<br />are for anyone else to see<br /><br />I'm a lie</blockquote><br /><blockquote>....the waterfall of gadgets family cars and paperback books.<br />irrelevant struggles<br />"as specific causes of disease disappear, a growing proportion of people die of what are called stress diseases, or diseases of degeneration caused by stress, that is, by the wear and tear resulting from conflicts, shocks, nervous tension, frustration, bilitating rhythms.."<br />that's real life. my everyday life.<br />What about this feeling of never really being inside your own skin? Let nobody say these are minor details or secondary points. There are no negligible irritations: gangrene can start in the slightest graze. A man carried along by the crowd, which only e can see, suddenly screams out in an attempt to break the spell, to call himself back to himself, to get back inside his own skin. The tacit acknowledgments, fixed smiles, lifeless words, listlessness and humiliation sprinkled in his path suddenly sur into him, driving him out if his desires and his dreams and exploding the illusion of being together. People touch without meeting; isolation accumulates but is never realised; emptiness overcomes us as the destiny of the crowd gathers. the crowd drags e out of myself and installs thousands of little sacrifices in my empty presence......<br />after Raoul Vanegeim the revolution of everyday life</blockquote>--Radiohead site 2<br /><br /><blockquote>"I don't know if anybody else has this feeling. When you're walking down the street and you catch your reflection in something like a car window or a shop window and you see your face and you think, 'Who's that?'. You know: 'That's not me, that doesn't represent who I am'. And I think I've recently discovered what the problem is and it's a feeling that essentially you're just in a room full of mirrors. You can shoot at all the reflections, but basically it's all meaningless because you're just trapped and you put yourself there. I've realised recently that it's actually worrying about it that's the fucking problem. It's actually saying, 'No, this is me, that's not me', and being precious about who you are, because I believe now that everyone changes all the time. I think the most unhealthy thing for a human being is to feel that they have to behave in a certain way because other people expect them to behave like that, or to feel they have to think in a certain way because what happens then is basically your mind goes round in circles."</blockquote>--Thom on Thom<br /><blockquote>i do not understand what it is ive done wrong<br />i've been skating on surface now my ice has finally melted<br />the top has come off the gas is escaping<br />i do not understand what it is ive done wrong</blockquote>--'scrapbook' radiohead.com<br /><br /><blockquote>'BODYSNATCHERS CAME and took the real me'</blockquote>--(2006 radiohead calendar)<br /><br /><blockquote>you gotta close your eyes... and groove out to this one. And think of uhh trying to escape from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Stepford Wives</span>. That's what I think of.</blockquote>--Thom Yorke<br /><br /><blockquote>You could interpret In Rainbows as a portrait of the 21st century man, who – despite trying to do what’s right – can’t fight the system. ‘You can fight it like a dog and they brought me to my knees.’ The Bodysnatchers will get you in the end.<br /><br />Thom: Well, the lyrics of "Bodysnatchers" came from cutting and pasting lines fom The Stepford Wives. So there you go. I got obsessed with The Stepford Wives. I wrote lots and lots of excerpts from the book next to each other and started cutting.<br /><br />Colin: It’s a book from the seventies. There’s a movie now, too. It’s written by Ira Levin, who recently passed away. He also wrote The Boys From Brazil [and, more famous: the horror story Rosemary’s Baby (1967)].’<br /><br />Thom: The idea that you can be captured by something external, a ghost, comes from The Stepford Wives. At the end of the movie you see a new conscience entering someone’s body.</blockquote>--Oor (2007)<br /><br /><blockquote>John: And “Bodysnatchers” is the next song. Was this road tested as well?<br />Ed: Yeah.<br /><br />John: This is road tested. Is that fuzzy guitar? Is that guitar or bass?<br />Thom: Yeah, it’s guitar. It’s um… uh, Nigel has this really wicked old mixing desk that he managed to get off a studio in L.A., which was… it’s the same… exactly the same model—if you’re interested in this, if you’re not then turn off—the…<br /><br />John: [laughs] [whispers] Don’t turn off!<br />Thom: No, go on, they won’t. It’s a Motown desk. It’s from like late 60’s. It’s the exact model that they used to record Motown stuff. Um, of course, and if you turn on everything on full, it sounds exactly like a guitar and it sounds like that.<br /><br />John: I think it sounds brilliant. It kind of sounds like Sabotage or something like that, but at least it was in that fuzzy…<br />Thom: In my dreams, yeah.<br />Ed: [laughs] You’re just saying the right things!<br /><br />John: That’s how it sounds to me. Is it a film reference at all? Invasion of the Bodysnatchers? Near the end I thought…<br />Thom: Actually, it was a film reference but not that one. It was a… I started the tune um, watching the original Stepford Wives… bizarrely…and cutting and pasting bits from that. But I think it never actually got used. That’s where the tune started from. I got a little bit obsessed by Stepford Wives. Watched it several—three or four times.<br /><br />John: So in a way I guess that’s about bodies being possessed.<br />Thom: Yeah, well there’s the bit at the end where uh, yes all the women are finally being turned into the robots or whatever. Anyway… uh. But also the song actually—the title actually came from a very strange ghost story—a Victorian ghost story.<br /><br />John: Any further elucidation on that?<br />Thom: No. Pfft. Just, you know… digging up bodies, you know, Sun in the morning and then the bodies come back and get ya.<br /><br />John: Right. Okay.<br />Thom: Good stuff!<br /><br />John: Yeah. The author, do you…?<br />Thom: No. I can’t remember.<br /><br />John: [laughs]<br />Thom: It’s an anthology. Victorian ghost stories.</blockquote>--2008-01-03 | XFM Radio Interviewwierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-76010619041545015622007-10-11T11:47:00.001-07:002010-09-06T01:55:12.143-07:00Nude<a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-09716064625789606 visible" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/5ZT_nrrpe8c&hl=en&fs=1"></a><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/5ZT_nrrpe8c&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/5ZT_nrrpe8c&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><blockquote>don’t get any big ideas<br />they’re not gonna happen<br />you paint yourself white<br />and fill up with noise<br />but there’ll be<br />something missing<br /><br />now that you’ve found it it’s gone<br />now that you feel it you don’t<br />you’ve gone off the rails<br /><br />so don’t get any big ideas<br />they’re not gonna happen<br />you’ll go to hell<br />for what your dirty mind is thinking</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>nude* it is a mans world. and this one is very confused and will have sex with anything woman who comes within a mile radius. but feels bad about it. so doesnt.</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>This next one is a new song …this is a song about believing you’re wonderful when you know it’s not true.</blockquote>--Thom (<span style="font-style: italic;">Meeting People is Easy</span>)<br /><br /><blockquote>MTV: Thom, the new song you’re doing live called "Big Ideas (don’t get any)", I love that title, by the way too.<br /><br />Thom: That’s good, actually. I didn’t have a title. I wanted to call it—I mean I don’t know what I’m gonna call it. Recently... when you get a mortgage in Britain for you house, in all the adverts for mortgages and so on they always have this thing at the bottom saying: your home is at risk if you don’t keep up repayment. I wanted to call it that but I don’t know if it’s catchy enough”</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>Steve: See, the thing for me, about having, and this only came sort of begun to come through, after a few listens, but it strikes me as being a very intimate record. And I think actually being able to do "Nude" and doing it very well... it was quite an interesting ..<br />Thom: Yeah, I don't think we had ever been able to do that song until now. Even though it's been kicking around for ten years, because, I don't know, it didn't, whatever it meant then, it means something to us now. It's one of those weird things... Um...<br /><br />Steve: Cause that's the song that's one of the songs, as you say, which has been around for a while,<br />Thom: I think it was because I hated...I used to hate the way I sung it.<br /><br />Steve: Right..<br />Thom: Or at least I, it was just, and probably, as you say, too intimate, and I had felt real uncomfortable with it.<br /><br />Steve: It's an intimate sounding record though, in places. "All I Need" is very intimate.<br />Ed: Mmm!<br />Thom: "Videotape" as well. "Bodysnatchers", not so.<br /><br />Steve: No!<br />Ed: *laughs*<br /><br />Steve: Which is, uh, that strikes me as being one of the, that's the sort of the slight shift in mood this time around.<br />Thom: There you go! You've got to have some of that.</blockquote>--Thom and Ed (2007-11-19)<br /><br /><blockquote>Alright, "Nude" is an old song. What changed that made you get it right?<br /><br />Thom: That’s the classical case of a song that hasn’t made sense for years, don’t you think, Colin?<br /><br />Colin: One of the frustrating things of being a member of a band is that some songs mean everything to one person, but not to all of us. So one of us keeps going on and on about it, while the others try and look away. But that’s cool, you know.<br /><br />Thom: I also felt very insecure about the way I had to sing "Nude". I didn’t know in what pitch. And the lyrics were too intimate, but too sweet as well. It’s only when Colin started knocking about with the bassline, that I could figure out how to sing it and get away with it. Also, the lyrics have fallen into place, while at the time... Nothing has changed about them, but still. They didn’t seem to make sense, and now they do.<br /><br />It makes me think of a story where one band member wants to leave with a groupie, and the other saying: don’t do that, don’t get any big ideas, don’t give in to the temptation.<br /><br />Thom: I don’t remember for sure, but "Nude" was written in the OK Computer era. It was more something like: 'Don’t play up your imagination, boy. Watch out so you don’t become something you aren’t.'</blockquote>--Oor (Dutch magazine)<br /><br /><blockquote>Old track "Nude" made it on to <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span>, even though it had been played live as far back as 1998.<br /><br />Colin says: “Thom felt it was right now, as he is in a place in his life where the words make sense to him.<br /><br />“When we wrote it in the early Nineties, it didn’t feel right to him. Thom would say this album was also right for it because I finally came up with a bassline. It’s a soul thing.<br /><br />“It was like a picture that wasn’t right for years and now it works for him.<br /><br />“And in the context of the record it’s kind of about love so it works in that setting."</blockquote>--Colin Greenwood (Sun)<br /><br /><blockquote>Ten years ago, when we first had the song, I didn't enjoy singing it because it was too feminine, too high. It made me feel uncomfortable. Now I enjoy it exactly for that reason - because it's a bit uncomfortable, a bit out of my range and it's really difficult to do. And it brings out something in me...</blockquote>--Thom (Mojo, 2008)<br /><br /><br /><blockquote>I love the title. But when you get mortgage in Britain, they always have this thing at the bottom saying: 'Your home is at risk if you don not keep up with payments'. I wanted to use that as the title. But I‚m not sure if it‚s catchy enough.</blockquote>--Thom<br /><br /><blockquote>its not gone. i havent forgotten it. its just we have not done it recently and the one we did in meeting people just didnt end up anywhere so..</blockquote> Thom | Meeting People is Easy<br /><br /><blockquote>POSTED BY Jonny ON MARCH 06, 2001 AT 02:13:13: <br />IN REPLY TO: Is Big ideas going to be a b side.. :P <br />POSTED BY GregD ON MARCH 06, 2001 AT 02:08:58: <br />unless we do it tomorrow. <br />we wont, tho.</blockquote><br /><br /><br /><br /><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-09716064625789606 visible ontop" href="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1109226&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"></a><object height="225" width="400"> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1109226&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"> <embed src="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1109226&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="225" width="400"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.vimeo.com/1109226?pg=embed&sec=1109226">Big Ideas (don't get any)</a> from <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/user354216?pg=embed&sec=1109226">James Houston</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/?pg=embed&sec=1109226">Vimeo</a>.wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-36537085101226952172007-10-11T11:43:00.000-07:002008-12-20T17:35:57.363-08:00Weird Fishes/Arpeggi<a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-09716064625789606 visible" href="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=935317&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"></a><object height="276" width="400"> <param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=935317&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1"> <embed src="http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=935317&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" height="276" width="400"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.vimeo.com/935317?pg=embed&sec=935317">Weird Fishes: Arpeggi</a> from <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/flight404?pg=embed&sec=935317">flight404</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/?pg=embed&sec=935317">Vimeo</a>.<br /><blockquote>in the deepest ocean<br />the bottom of the sea<br />your eyes<br />they turn me<br />why should I stay here?<br />why should I stay?<br /><br />I'll be crazy not to follow<br />follow where you lead<br />your eyes<br />they turn me<br /><br />turn me onto phantoms<br />I follow to the edge<br />of the earth<br />and fall off<br />yeah, everybody leaves<br />if they get the chance<br />and this is my chance<br /><br />I get eaten by the worms<br />and weird fishes<br />picked over by the worms<br />and weird fishes<br />weird fishes<br />weird fishees<br /><br />yeah I<br />I hit the bottom<br />hit the bottom and escape<br />escape<br /><br />I<br />I hit the bottom<br />hit the bottom and escape<br />escape</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>"Through working with Spike, we realized we were perpetually wedded to Nigel," Greenwood says. By the time Godrich returned, something had shaken loose within the group, and a new way of being uncomfortable presented itself to a band that often seems to thrive on unease.<br /><br />"On previous records, Thom [Yorke] had a very strong idea of what he didn't want the music to sound like and of the sounds he was interested in," Greenwood says of the band's most demanding member. "On this one, he was more uncertain as to how it should be, with all the stresses and uncertainty that that implies."<br /><br />You seldom, if ever, hear that in the music, whose lustrous beauty continually runs up against Yorke's anguished lyrics. In Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, for instance, guitar arpeggios roll serenely as Yorke sings about being held captive (by love or some other power), falling to the sea bottom and being eaten there by worms and fish.<br /><br />"That's one of my favourite songs that we've ever done," Greenwood says, "because the chord sequence is so emotional and melodic, and epic and expansive. It reminded me of Isaac Hayes, and of another song of ours called Let Down, from OK Computer. ... I love the way the words thrash around, and the immolation in the middle, and being buried at the end. It's like emotional scales, with weights being laid out. There you are in your life. Should you carry on? Should you tell the truth, or lie to yourself?"<br /><br />The other songs approach the same crossroads from different directions, each with a different measure of consolation and desolation. Maybe it's fitting that In Rainbows has been seen as a crossroads disc for the music industry.</blockquote>--<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080221.RADIO21/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Music/">globeandmail</a><br /><br /><blockquote>“But my favourite is Weird Fishes/Arpeggi, which is amazingly beautiful. The song gives you hope and then it goes down again.<br /><br />“It’s up and down, with self-belief and self-doubt and emotional rushes and surges.”<br /></blockquote>--Colin Greenwood (Sun)<br /><br /><blockquote>Colin: "At the moment we're playing some new ones from the next record..."<br /><br />dEUS: "...do you prefer to play. What are you favourites? What are the most instinctual..."<br /><br />Colin: "I don't... I like them all! I mean, I don't... it sounds boring. I like, um... what do I like at the moment, ehhh... I don't know, new ones I guess, like '15 Step'... 'Arpeggi'. A song called 'Arpeggi'."<br /><br />dEUS: "Absolutely."<br /><br />Colin: "Which is a beautiful song."<br /><br />dEUS: "It is."<br /><br />Colin: "Yeah. Do you know that song?"<br /><br />dEUS: "Yeah I know, yeah."<br /><br />Colin: "It's lovely, 'Your eyes, they turned me. The bottom of the ocean... the little fishes...' It's a beautiful song! It's beautiful 'cause it's a mel... so melodic and beautiful, and so desolate and sad, but so uplifting and beautiful at the same time. </blockquote>--2006-06-15 | dEUS Podcastwierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-48503958336594422212007-10-11T11:41:00.000-07:002008-12-07T09:28:55.766-08:00All I Need<a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-09716064625789606 visible" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/DV1hQSt2hSE&hl=en&fs=1"></a><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/DV1hQSt2hSE&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/DV1hQSt2hSE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><blockquote>I am the next act waiting in the wings<br />I am an animal trapped in your hot car<br />I am all the days that you choose to ignore<br /><br />you are all I need<br />you are all I need<br />I am in the middle of your picture<br />lying in the reeds<br /><br />I am a moth who just wants to share your light<br />I’m just an insect trying to get out of the night<br />I only stick with you because there are no others<br /><br />you are all I need<br />you are all I need<br />I am in the middle of your picture<br />lying in the reeds<br /><br />s’all wrong<br />s’alright<br />s’alright<br />s’all wrong<br />s’alright<br />s’alright<br />s’alright</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>Songs like "All I Need" are about obsession, aren’t they?<br />Thom: That’s why it’s called <span style="font-style: italic;">In Rainbows</span>. That obsession thing, thinking beyond where you are at the time. It’s a phrase I had for a while. It kept coming up in my notebooks. And I don’t know why, because it’s kind of naff. But it seemed to work – it’s one of those weird things. It stuck and I don’t know why.”</blockquote>----NME (8 December 2007)<br /><br /><blockquote>John: And it’s great the way it could’ve [undecipherable] to the end. What else can you tell us about “All I Need”?<br />Thom: Well, we actually used that version that someone recorded off the Chicago sort of phone as one of the reference points. [laughs] What else can I say about it? It was originally done—it was a sort of a beat sequence thing that Colin and I did very rapidly and then got out, and I found again. It was actually written extremely quickly. I got to rehearsal one day early, which is very unusual. I had twenty minutes to meself and wrote the words then… and then… I mean, that was it. It’s sort of, really… It’s extremely full-on. [laughs] That bit in the middle is extremely full-on.<br /><br />John: Is it about obsession? Is it about… something like that?<br />Thom: Oh, John! That’s up to you!<br /><br />John: Well, it’s sort of a personal interpretation.<br />Thom: Yes, I… Yes. Someone said it’s about music business, which I really think is stretching it possibly a little.<br />John and Ed: [laugh]<br /><br />John: What do you think, Ed?<br />Ed: It’s definitely about the music industry. That’s for sure.<br />Thom: Right.<br />Ed: Right. Spot on.<br />Thom: Yeah [undecipherable]</blockquote>--2008-01-03 | XFM Radio Interviewwierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-12646448245171673652007-10-11T11:40:00.000-07:002008-12-07T12:30:26.834-08:00Faust Arp<a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-09716064625789606 visible" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/YFYp_AK8G3w&hl=en&fs=1"></a><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YFYp_AK8G3w&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YFYp_AK8G3w&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><blockquote>wakey wakey rise and shine<br />it’s off again on again<br />off again on again<br />watch me fall like dominoes<br />in pretty patterns<br />fingers in the blackbird pie<br />I’m tingling tingling tingling<br />wt’s what you feel not what you ought to<br />what you ought to what you ought to<br />reasonable and sensible<br />dead from the neck up<br />I guess I’m stuffed<br />stuffed<br />stuffed<br />we thought you had it in you<br />but not<br />not<br />not<br />for no real reason<br /><br />squeeze the tubes and empty bottles<br />I take a bow take a bow take a bow<br />it’s what you feel not what you ought to<br />what you ought to what you ought to<br />the elephant that’s in the room<br />is tumbling tumbling tumbling<br />plastic bags with nothing in them<br />nothing in them<br />duplicate and triplicate<br />dead from the neck up<br />I guess I’m stuffed<br />stuffed<br />stuffed<br />we thought you had it in you<br />but not<br />not<br />not<br />exactly where do you get off?<br />is enough<br />is enough<br />I love you but enough is enough<br />enough of that stuff<br />there's no real reason<br />you've got a head full of feathers<br />you're gonna melt into butter</blockquote><br /><br />A reference to this song was found by 'patches' who posts in the Hodiau Direkton message board, who found in the book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Art of Jean Arp</span> the following poem:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Et frappe, et frappe, et frappe"<br /><br />et frappe encore et encore une fois<br />et ainsi de suite<br />et une fois deux fois trois fois jusqu'à mille<br />et recommence de plus belle<br />et frappe la grande table de multiplication et la petite table de multiplication<br />et frappe et frappe et frappe<br />page 222 page 223 page 224 et ainsi de suite jusqu'à la page 299<br />passe la page 300 et continue par la page 301 jusqu'à la page 400<br />et frappe ceci une fois en avant deux fois en arrière trois fois en haut et quatre fois en bas<br />et frappe les douze mois<br />et les quatre saisons<br />et les sept jours de la semaine<br />et les sept tons de la gamme<br />et les six pieds des iambes<br />et les nombres pairs des maisons<br />et frappe<br />et frappe le tout ensemble<br />et le compte y est<br />et fait un.</blockquote><br /><br />Translation:<br /><blockquote>And strikes again and once again<br />and then once more<br />and once twice thrice times up to a thousand<br />and then begins again most beautifully<br />and strikes again the big multiplication table and the small multiplication table<br />and strikes and strikes and strikes and strikes<br />page 222 page 223 page 224 and on and on to page 299<br />passes page 300 and continues with page 301 on to page 400<br />and strikes this once in front twice behind three times above and four times below<br />and strikes the twelve months<br />and the four seasons<br />and the seven days of the week<br />and the seven notes of the scale<br />and the six feet of legs<br />and the even numbers of houses<br />and strikes<br />and strikes it all together<br />and then adds up<br />and makes one.</blockquote><br /><br />And another reference in the same book:<br /><blockquote>"Place Blanche<br /><br />This morning I find nothing but memorials of death in my path.<br />They are trivial objects,<br />faded photographs,<br />empty bottles,<br />shells thrown up by the sea,<br />a looking-glass that reflects the serenity, the purity, the calm gaiety, the brightness that the inescapable shadow has engulfed.<br />I am spellbound by these objects that belong to people long dead.<br />Above these objects movements<br />as of wispy clouds<br />or plumes of breath.<br />They cross vaguely in front of me.<br />Clocks strike years each minute.<br />Each minute emits such a profusion of memories<br />that it assumes the importance of a year.<br />These minutes look like dark baskets overflowing with black fruit.<br />Years pass with a fan of ants on their heads.<br />Whilst keeping its form it writhes within itself and at the same time strives desperately<br />to divulge a sterile life, a grey desert.<br />A horny substance, reddish pullulates among these ghostly visions, down these years<br />and gives me the sensation of human beings swarming on the earth.<br />Years pass with their vegetal mouths and ingenious fins.<br />Years that are green lairs.<br />They give shelter to the fairies in their moulting season.<br />Years in which I wrote my first poems,<br />and my ingenious fins displayed themselves without any consideration for their surroundings.<br />Years pass and chase the little years.<br />Without pity they slaughter them destroying them in this way their due dissemination.<br />And one more rigid system is given as a bonus to the world.<br />Will it show the way towards the ineffable dream?<br /><br />I am one of the flock of poets and painters,<br />full of submissions to their shepherd, obeying him.<br />Like marionettes these poets and painters nod approval,<br />laugh disdainfully at what was white up to the moment<br />and is now said to be black.<br />The shepherd lights up.<br />The shepherd shines forth more and more.<br />He loses his human form,<br />but I hear his voice talking of art.</blockquote>wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-71014966564180359472007-10-11T11:39:00.001-07:002008-12-11T20:07:49.910-08:00Reckoner<a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-09716064625789606 visible" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/PC22Lcxumgk&hl=en&fs=1"></a><a style="left: 0px ! important; top: 15px ! important;" title="Click here to block this object with Adblock Plus" class="abp-objtab-02892160015766725 visible" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/PC22Lcxumgk&hl=en&fs=1"></a><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/PC22Lcxumgk&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/PC22Lcxumgk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><blockquote>reckoner<br />you can’t take it with yer<br />dancing for your pleasure<br /><br />you are not to blame for<br />bittersweet distractor<br />dare not speak it’s name<br />dedicated to all human beings<br /><br />because we separate like ripples on a blank shore<br />in rainbows<br />because we separate like ripples on a blank shoree<br /><br />reckoner<br />take me with yer<br />dedicated to all human beings</blockquote><br /><br />From Dante's "Paradiso" (Canto XIII):<br /><blockquote>Experiencing that Radiance, the spirit<br />is so indrawn it is impossible<br />even to think of ever turning from It.<br /><br />and not because that Living Radiance bore<br />more than one semblance, for It is unchanging<br />and is forever as it was before;<br /><br />rather, as I grew worthier to see,<br />the more I looked, the more unchanging semblance<br />appeared to change with every change in me.<br /><br />Within the depthless deep and clear existence<br />of that abyss of light three circles shown -<br />threefold in color, one in circumference;<br /><br />the second from the first, rainbow from rainbow;<br />the third, an exhalation of pure fire<br />equally breathed forth by the other two.<br /><br />But oh how much my words miss my conception,<br />which is itself so far from what I saw<br />than to call it feeble would be rank deception!<br /><br />O Light Eternal fixed in Itself alone,<br />by Itself alone understood, which from Itself<br />loves and glows, self-knowing and self-known;<br /><br />that second aureole which shone forth in Thee,<br />conceived as a reflection of the first -<br />or which appeared so to my scrutiny -<br /><br />seemed in Itself of Its own coloration<br />to be painted with man's image. I fixed my eyes<br />on that alone in rapturous contemplation.<br /><br />Like an old reckoner wholly dedicated<br />to squaring the circle, but who cannot find,<br />think as he may, the principle indicated -<br /><br />so did I study the supernal face.<br />I yearned to know just how our image merges<br />into that circle, and how it there finds place;<br /><br />but mine were not the wings for such a flight.<br />Yet, as I wished, the truth I wished for came<br />cleaving my mind in a great flash of light.<br /><br />Here my powers rest from their high fantasy,<br />but already I could feel my being turned -<br />instinct and intellect balanced equally<br /><br />as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars -<br />by the Love that moves the sun and other stars.</blockquote><br /><br />Thanks to emptylee for finding this quote from Dante's "Paradiso".<br /><br /><blockquote>AVC: "Reckoner" makes In Rainbows, as an album, feel like a transition for the band.<br /><br />TY: In a way, that's right. But, then again, Kid A was quite a bit of a transition, wasn't it?<br /><br />AVC: Radiohead seems to make a lot of transition records.<br /><br />TY: When you're making a record, you should be transitioning.<br /><br />AVC: Was "Reckoner" intended to usher in a different feel for Radiohead? Everything before that song sounds like your past few records, then "Reckoner" is like the break of dawn or something—everything after it is so subdued and calm.<br /><br />TY: It's definitely a first-thing-in-the-morning song. You don't write many of those until you have kids. It was something that happened despite us, really. It just happened. Once I'm in the flow of a record, and feel like I'm starting to cover some ground, it gives me a boost to write something that's appropriate to where I am and what we're aiming at. "Reckoner" is like that.<br /><br />AVC: If "Reckoner" is what you were aiming at, the band must have had something different in mind for the record.<br /><br />EO: There wasn't any kind of vision. But we were talking about making something a bit more bare-bones.<br /><br />TY: More space.</blockquote>--<a href="http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/radioheads_thom_yorke_and_ed"></a><br /><br /><blockquote>Thom: Um, but you know, I—it’s a genuine shock to me that, ‘oh, it’s not blindingly obvious’, ‘cause it’s blindingly obvious uh, to the person who writes it, I think.<br />Now you’re talking about the content of the lyrics, I suppose.<br />Thom: Ah, no, well… Uh, well, it’s all kind of the same thing.<br />Yeah?<br />Thom: To me. I mean, lyrics obviously is a different thing because the nature… if you’re words are any good then what you, what you’re trying to get across is is is always going to be, ‘meaning’ in the normal sense of the word is not exactly what you’re trying to do. I mean, I think uh—what’s on the top of my head?—a song, like “Reckoner, for example. I’m singing those words because I have to sing those words. Uh, it was necessary for me to sing those words with that [undecipherable] at that time. [laughs] Much like it’s necessary, you know, to have toast in the morning, I mean, or whatever. It’s uh, that’s what has to happen. And the words make you feel good, or they make you feel better, or whatever. They’re there to fulfil something that… some need in you, you know? But increasingly I fall into bad habits where I don’t worry about, you know, meaning afterwards or whatever, which I guess when you’re writing songs you kind of think, ‘Well, maybe I should worry about that’. But actually, I think it’s a deeply unhealthy thing to… you know, it’s sort of a…<br />Why is it unhealthy? ‘Cause they aren’t going to get the meaning of it anyway or…? Or it ruins it if you’re too straight-conscious?<br />Thom: No, it reduces… Yeah, it can reduce it. Uh, you reduce the initial energy, your initial response to things, because initial responses are always best, uh, in this particular case. [laughs]<br />Now, your set of words right there confuse the hell out of me. [laughs]<br />Thom: Oh good! [laughs]<br />[laughs]<br />Thom: So, I’ve illustrated my point.<br />Very well! [laughs]<br />Thom: Alles klaar.</blockquote>--2008-02-14 | NPR Interview<br /><br /><blockquote>Colin says: “I also love Reckoner, because it’s like happy/sad music. It reminds me of Lucky on OK Computer or Yellow by Coldplay.<br /><br />“You listen to it because you want to but it still tugs at you.<br /><br />“When T[h]om’s singing the main melody, it repeats again and again. We recorded our own breaks and we are all playing little percussion instruments and recorded it on this one piece of tape."</blockquote>--Colin Greenwood (Sun | December 2007)<br /><br /><blockquote>Steve: You've got to..um, did you have people emailing in all the time, saying, when are you going to do this? Are you going to do this? Uh, which, why we've, through our webpage, people like Dan in Hastings saying, uh: "The New version of Reckoner, surprised everybody,<br /><br />Thom: Yeah that's because it's not the same song...<br /><br />Ed: *laughs*<br /><br />Thom: Um, well there was a song called Reckoner, and, then I like ended up writing a second part to it. And that mutated into the only part to it, and then Jonny wrote another part of it. And, the song, as it was, left the building.</blockquote>--Thom and Ed (2007-11-19)<br /><br /><blockquote>John: What else can you tell us about “Reckoner” apart from the Golden Section, which comes up midpoint?<br /><br />Ed: Well… it’s… What can I say? Um, it was one of the songs that really, truly evolved in the studio. It hadn’t been road tested. It was exciting for the… it was… for us probably it’s one of the most exciting tracks on the record because we didn’t really have a vision for it. It just evolves and I think to hear Thom singing falsetto is really new and it’s uh… It’s kind of… it feels… we weren’t trying to do it, but we were just trying to get it out and do it, you know, try and present something with a percussion and do it differently, and looking back it sort of has a real gospel-y feel. And I think it’s very…<br /><br />Thom: Really? Reminds me of early rave 1992. It’s just the drumbeat thing, I guess. Uh… um… early rave isn’t 1992. Get your facts right, boy! Anyway, the funny thing was that to be honest the guitar on it was really influenced by… I went to see the Chili Peppers a few times and I really like the way John Frusciante plays. And uh… it was sort of a homage to that, in my sort of clunky ‘can’t–really-pick kind of way.</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>The breakthrough for Radiohead on ‘Reckoner’ a song that underwent multiple incarnations on its way to ‘In Rainbows’came by way of what Jonny Greenwood calls a “big percussion fest.”<br /><br />Recording in an English country house, all five members of the group make a loud, cathartic racket, a habit-busting trick the band has practiced since primary school, says bassist Colin Greenwood.</blockquote>--<a href="http://jam.canoe.ca/Music/2008/05/22/5637936.html"></a>wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-366951723847282052007-10-11T11:38:00.001-07:002009-04-04T19:50:00.098-07:00House of Cards<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8nTFjVm9sTQ&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8nTFjVm9sTQ&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cyQoTGdQywY&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cyQoTGdQywY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br />The making of the "House of Cards" video.<br /><br /><blockquote>I don’t want to be your friend<br />I just want to be your lover<br />no matter how it ends<br />no matter how it starts<br />forget about your house of cards<br />and I’ll do mine<br />forget about your house of cards<br />and I’ll do mine<br />fall off the table and get swept under<br /><br />denial denial<br /><br />the infrastructure will collapse<br />from voltage spikes<br />put your keys in the bowl<br />kiss your husband goodnight<br />forget about your house of cards<br />and I’ll do mine<br />forget about your house of cards<br />and I’ll do mine<br />fall off the table and get swept under<br /><br />denial<br />denial<br />denial<br />denial<br />(your ears should be burning)<br />denial denial<br />(your ears should be burning)</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>Uh, this is most definitely a love song.</blockquote>--Thom Yorke (2008 August 4)<br /><br /><blockquote>Thom [when asked if the lyrics from "House of Cards" were drawn from his personal life]: "I wish! Well, no, I don't wish. That key-party stuff was a big thing here in the seventies and eighties, and it always fascinated me."<br /></blockquote>--Rolling Stone, February 2008<br /><br /><blockquote>John: Very impressive! Uh, “House of Cards” is the next track. A question that can relate to some—well, quite a lot of the songs: Are they more personal lyrically venture for you, Thom? I mean, are they personal things that you’re… Let’s say, well…<br /><br />Thom: It was very much um, uh… psychic dumping… um, where I was deliberately trying to uh… as much as I possibly could, except for “Faust Arp”, to write quickly and not think about how… what sense could be made about it or not, so… Um, you know… in essence, one of the things I’ve been most wary of—talking about the record at all—is actually taking any responsibility for the lyrics, or having to comment on them, because um… it was…[sighs] I kind of don’t feel answerable to them in a way. Sometimes with these lyrics I’ve done sort of paste them together in a sort of much more constructive way, and you sort of feel there’s a point to explaining how you’ve done it. And I kind of… To me, of all the records we’ve done, this is the one I feel I can least explain anyway. [laughs]<br /><br />John: Hmm. No, that’s interesting because I was listening to it the other day and thinking that there’s a kind of dream-like quality to the album as a whole, in a way. If you listen to the whole thing… say, if you’re driving along, it’s just kind of there, around you. And it’s almost as if the band are kind of lost in the music as you play together. And there are points when the singing seems as if it could be a shaman, or a shaman dancing as part of some kind of ritual, or something like that. Loosing, getting lost in the music, and…<br /><br />Thom: Well, there are things… One of the reasons it took so long—and yes, I would love to be a shaman…<br /><br />John: [laughs]<br /><br />Thom: [laughs] One of the…<br /><br />John: Maybe you are…<br /><br />Thom: Maybe I am… I don’t think I do enough drugs for that. Um, one of the things that was really important—one of the reasons it took so long—was to get this… the pulse right on each tune—“House of Cards” being the most obvious example—where you kind of lose yourself in the pulse, and then the vocals can come in, sort of thing. Which is much like… you know, which is a much more… a dance music thing…much less a rock music thing. You can argue the Stones do it. And sometimes it happens. So I would agree to some extent that there’s this thing about being lost in stuff. I mean, “Reckoner” is absolutely that. You know, I think Nigel… that’s one of the things Nigel’s really, really good at… is finding the bits when we play, when we are lost in stuff. And it’s not necessarily the bits, but we’re enjoying it. It’s usually just before all that. [laughs]<br /><br />John: [laughs]<br /><br />Thom: ‘Cause by the time we’re enjoying it, we’re thinking ‘Ey, we’re good!’ And that exact point is where it gets crap.<br /><br />John: Excellent.</blockquote>--2008-01-03 | XFM Radio Interview<br /><br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">There’s also a lyric in "Jigsaw…" about exchanging phone numbers, while "House of Cards" has a line: 'I don’t want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover'. Is this Radiohead’s, um, sexy album?</span><br /><br />“Oh yeah, most songs on the record are seduction songs. My version of it anyway. I guess it’s something that is not very often apparent, but it became apparent as time went on.”</blockquote>--NME (8 December 2007)<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">While listening to the album, it gets more melancholic, and in that it is very different from <span style="font-style: italic;">Hail To The Thief</span>, which was released four years earlier.</span><br /><br />Thom : Yes, in some way. But we also had to start the album with something very energetic, because we had been away for so long ... We had to find the best way to give people entrance doors, and also moments of rest within the album, while remaining very coherent with this idea of making the best possible thing. And also, I hope that when they reach a certain point of the album, people get totally lost, not knowing what to expect. I hope this album put them in a state of mind open to all possibilities.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Anyway it is a less angry album, less upset against its era.</span><br /><br />Thom : Yes, but I don't know why.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Is it more intimate because it took more time to make it?</span><br /><br />Ed : I think that it's the time of the life that imposed itself on us. I was listening again to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bends</span> and I was struck to hear at what point that album was choleric, whiny, with a lot of energy, but hugely possessed by anger. There was a lot of it as well in Hail To The Thief. But for this very album [In Rainbows], anger was not the most appropriate emotion. For example, one of the things I love this time in Thom's lyrics, is their timelessness. The first lines of the song House Of Cards "I don't wanna be your friend, I wanna be your lover" could be drawn from a song by Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Prince. These words hit right, in something very intimate.<br />Thom : Hail To The Thief was trying to start a fight, a battle. But I think that when recording In Rainbows, I was very tired of absorbing the external world within our music. And the intimate nature of this album is a kind of personal answer to a strange climate of general fear. It's our way of closing the shutters, to let the survival instinct guide us : not trusting anything else and relying only on the people around you.<br /><br />Is it easy to do ? What was profoundly different this time ?<br />Thom : I work with what I have, I make do with what is at hand. For now, I have more than enough of the copy/paste. But also of the "stream of consciousness", of the fact of setting down my thoughts on pages and pages. This time, the first draft imposed itself most of the time. It's doubtlessly the first time that I leave it so much to my instinct. Usually, the songs take time to come out, I think a lot about their meaning. There, I tried to avoid this process and I tried to spit everything out, to make everything spurt at one stroke. What I feared with making interviews, was having to explain all these things that I actually wrote in a very spontaneous way.<br />Ed : There have been very similar moments to what we used to do before. But it was obvious that there were different things occurring there. And it's only afterwards, during the interviews, that I understood, by listening to Thom expressing himself, analysing himself, that he had really changed some things, but also that this time he didn't want to explain too much his lyrics. Personally, I've been very touched by the lyrics of this album, by what they tell on the human condition and how they get to universality : after all, we are not different from other people.</blockquote>--Les Inrockuptibles<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">For example, the song about fish, "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi". People are poisoning the sea, you’re singing, where do the poor fish have to go?</span><br /><br />Thom: You know what it is? The entire time I was busy writing, I wanted to get away from these things. I was worried about those themes entering my work. But it was just there, whether I wanted it or not. To me, the most important line on this record is the word denial in "House of Cards", because that’s what it all comes from. Denial in every possible meaning. It was the only time I was aware of that.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">What you’re talking about. At the end of the song, you sing your ears should be burning. Burning with shame, no? The human race should be thoroughly ashamed.</span><br /><br />Thom: Yeah, you could say that. But of all the lyrics I’ve ever written, I hope that the ones on this record will deliver the widest range of interpretations.</blockquote>--Oor (2007)wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-12696423793482251232007-10-11T11:36:00.000-07:002008-01-26T12:21:47.271-08:00Jigsaw Falling Into Place<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHiY8ybTx6SyN-ec50PAu4b8-VSuWYNwyJLtguJX7OI6w4dj6ghPO3lFgPKnNDhyRAg4Zm0SsuvxYgVmR6RiloEmtM_j8qrr_havbl4lzcwYOIMRj5c_hsIm5npZ3c8AAqB-9etOaMXkWu/s1600-h/heiroglphuniversethatsenuff.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHiY8ybTx6SyN-ec50PAu4b8-VSuWYNwyJLtguJX7OI6w4dj6ghPO3lFgPKnNDhyRAg4Zm0SsuvxYgVmR6RiloEmtM_j8qrr_havbl4lzcwYOIMRj5c_hsIm5npZ3c8AAqB-9etOaMXkWu/s400/heiroglphuniversethatsenuff.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143329564173957970" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><blockquote><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />just as you take my hand<br />just as you write my number down<br />just as the drinks arrive<br />just as they play your favourite song<br />as your bad day disappears<br />no longer wound up like a spring<br />before you’ve had too much<br />come back in focus again<br /><br />the walls are bending shape<br />you got a Cheshire cat grin<br />all blurring into one<br />this place is on a mission<br /><br />before the night owl<br />before the animal noises<br />closed circuit cameras<br />before you comatose<br /><br />before you run away from me<br />before you’re lost between the notes<br />the beat goes round and round<br />the beat goes round and round<br />I never really got there<br />I just pretended that I had<br />words are blunt instruments<br />words are sawn off shotguns<br /><br />come on and let it out<br />come on and let it out<br />come on and let it out<br />come on and let it out<br /><br />just as you spill the beans<br />just as you start unravelling<br />just as you take the mike<br />just as you dance dance dance<br /><br />a jigsaw falling into place<br />so there is nothing explain<br />you eye each other as you pass<br />she looks back and you look back<br />not just once<br />and not just twice<br /><br />wish away your nightmare<br />wish away the nightmare<br />you got the light you can feel it on your back<br />you got the light you can feel it on your back<br />your jigsaw falling into place (you just got paid)</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>John: I agree with you. Uh, and I mean, “Jigsaw” almost has a… Is it a reference to “Paranoid Android” with that guitar line at the beginning? I mean, it kind of reminds me of “Paranoid Android”. Or it almost seems as if you could’ve chucked it in there just as a nod to your past.<br /><br />Thom: Really?<br /><br />John: Yeah.<br /><br />Thom: I think it’s more that I only have about three ideas.<br /><br />John: [laughs]<br /><br />Ed: Oh, c’mon! I like this. I mean, one of the things for me in this record was I always kept on sort of saying was the lyrics. And one of the things I love about this whole song is that, if I may…<br /><br />Thom, Please, please do.<br /><br />Ed: Um, it’s the Friday night in the pub and it’s all kicking off. And there used to be a line in there that wasn’t there but that’s central ‘You’ve just been paid’. And, you know, and it’s all going off and I love that kind of…It’s kind of—to me—it’s totally, you know… For me, when we get our songs right it’s very visual. And I totally imagine kind of like a quiet, thin bar and it’s all kicking off. and people looking at one another, and it’s all in the music and buying more drinks, and that euphoria at the end of the week. And you get to that—you get to the last section and it’s all building up and it’s just that glorious feeling, you know? 11 o’clock and before it all goes nasty and you kind of have enough booze inside you, and it’s all… And the world doesn’t get better than this in this very moment and that is… that’s what I love about this song.<br /><br />Thom: And half an hour from now it’s all going to get [undecipherable]<br /><br />Ed: [laughs] Yeah, exactly! [undecipherable] that first kebab.<br /><br />John: [laughs]<br /><br />Thom: Or you wake up in the morning and you don’t know what her name is.<br /><br />John and Ed: [laugh]<br /><br />John: So that moment is when the jigsaw falls into place. Before it all goes wrong.<br /><br />Thom: Yeah.</blockquote>--2008-01-03 | XFM Radio<br /><br /><blockquote>With many of the lyrics on <span style="font-style:italic;">In Rainbows</span> written in the first person, are we to take it this is a more personal record?<br /><br />Thom: With <span style="font-style:italic;">Hail to the Thief</span> I was using the language of the impersonal, but the fact I’m using a different language on this doesn’t necessarily mean I am personally reflecting it on me.”<br /><br />What about the night out that you described in "Jigsaw Falling Into Place"? Did you experience that first-hand?<br /><br />“I would never say it was personal because it’s always a set of observations. “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” says much about the fact I used to live in the centre of Oxford and used to go out occasionally and witness the fucking chaos of a weekend around here. But it’s also about a lot of different experiences. Personally, I was really surprised that it’s going to be the single. The lyrics are quite caustic – the idea of “before you’re comatose” or whatever, drinking yourself into oblivion and getting fucked-up to forget. When you’re part of a group of people who are all trying to forget en masse it is partly this elation. But there’s a much darker side.”<br /><br />There’s also a lyric in "Jigsaw…" about exchanging phone numbers, while "House of Cards" has a line: “I don’t want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover”. Is this Radiohead’s, um, sexy album?<br /><br />“Oh yeah, most songs on the record are seduction songs. My version of it anyway. I guess it’s something that is not very often apparent, but it became apparent as time went on.”</blockquote>--NME (8 December 2007)<br /><br /><blockquote>We don’t actually pick the singles, unless we have a very strong opnion about it. Nowadays it’s what people play on the radio. We’re not the best judges of that. So we leave that to our very good friends who help us out on that. Kevin and our management. It was actually the last song to make the album. We had 16 songs and it nearly didn’t make it onto the record and ironically it’s the first single. I like this song. Thom kept saying it’s a Friday night record: You’re in the pub, it’s all kicking off. You had a few drinks, it’s the end of the week. You just got paid and this is what happens. You wanna have a dance, you see a girl in the corner. You’ve had a few drinks, you smile. The look, you know all that stuff. I love this song. It’s remembering what Friday nights were like.</blockquote>--Ed O'Brien<br /><br /><blockquote>At least tonight it's beautiful<br />I am yours and you are mine<br />BECAUSE I JUST GOT PAID</blockquote>--calendarwierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-56981713018794828192007-10-11T06:05:00.000-07:002009-08-08T23:19:06.326-07:00Videotape<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEige5wD3mrrT9kb8jBztBVB7RencrR-7hB0qn2usT8ShtVNQDJuFQLI_mjLZAUiZ7iWkjM1HbfxK75JY4Mb_77B058lYemV8-0ngdhmDADlWZjgK1sSXhkJdSWk4ZAI8fNhdiiB0ziardM4/s1600-h/badklee.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEige5wD3mrrT9kb8jBztBVB7RencrR-7hB0qn2usT8ShtVNQDJuFQLI_mjLZAUiZ7iWkjM1HbfxK75JY4Mb_77B058lYemV8-0ngdhmDADlWZjgK1sSXhkJdSWk4ZAI8fNhdiiB0ziardM4/s400/badklee.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5143329091727555394" border="0" /></a><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/isETL6R7x2w&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/isETL6R7x2w&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><blockquote>when I’m at the pearly gates<br />this’ll be on my videotape<br />my videotape<br />my videotape<br /><br />when Mephistophilis is just beneath<br />and he’s reaching up to grab me<br /><br />this is one for the good days<br />and I have it all here in<br />red blue green<br />red blue green<br /><br />you are my centre when I spin away<br />out of control on videotape<br />on videotape<br />on videotape<br />on videotape<br /><br />this is my way of saying goodbye<br />because I can’t do it face to face<br />so I’m talking to you before…<br />no matter what happens now<br />you shouldn't be afraid<br />because I know<br />today has been the most perfect day<br />I have ever seen</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>AVC: If "Reckoner" is what you were aiming at, the band must have had something different in mind for the record.<br /><br />EO: There wasn't any kind of vision. But we were talking about making something a bit more bare-bones.<br /><br />TY: More space.<br /><br />EO: "Videotape" is the best example. We've had a tendency to pile on overdubs and tracks and fill everything up. I can't help but feel that we suffered from that. We just piled stuff on. You look to the essence of a great song: You've got great vocals, with lovely lyrics and a great melody, and you've got something that backs that. After Hail To The Thief, it was great to hear Thom's Eraser. You've got great vocals up front, in your face, not back in the mix futzing with all the other melodies and stuff going on. Keeping that was definitely in the cards.</blockquote>--<a href="http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/radioheads_thom_yorke_and_ed"></a><br /><br /><blockquote>By then, several sessions has also taken place at Nigel Godrich’s Hospital Studio in London’s Covent Garden. There, in December 2006, Thom Yorke felt the first real glimmer of achievement. “We were looking for something that had a real effect on us, an emotional impact, and that happened when we were doing "Videotape" and I was semi kicked out of the studio for being a negative influence. Stanley and I came back a bit worse for wear at about 11 in the evening and Jonny and Nigel had done this stuff to it that reduced us both to tears. It completely blew my mind. They’d stripped all the nonsense away that I’d been piling onto it, and what was left was this quite pure sentiment.”</blockquote>--Mojo | February 2008<br /><br /><blockquote>John: Like it. “Videotape” is the next track. And when you were sequencing the album. Did you always think this is the best way to end the record?<br /><br />Thom: Well, no. Mm, Nigel and I for ages thought it should be the first track, until some… Chris, our manager, pointed out, you know—having come in from the outside, we’d been locked in the studio for a while—‘You must be bloody kidding! They’ll just play that and say forget it’, ‘cause it’s pretty dark, but um… I think that was only just because it was the thing at that particular moment that we were most proud of, you know? So…<br /><br />John: So usually I mean, that’s the one that you want to share first and say ‘Hey! Look what we’ve done!’<br /><br />Ed: Mm, not necessarily. I think—no, not necessarily. I think it’s like every song has its place and if I was… in the morning—well, I don’t play the songs to friends—but if I were to. I mean, it depends, if I come back from the pub and—maybe one o’clock in the morning—and sit and have a smoke that would probably be a good one to start with. But it might not be a good one at ten o’clock in the morning. You know what I mean? It’s like, I like that thing someone said once about ‘every song has its hour of the day’ almost.<br /><br />Thom: That’s true.<br /><br />Ed: So, it seems… I think the reason that Nigel… I remember Nigel said he wanted it to be at the start of the record because it’s just literally Thom’s voice. You’ve got the piano but you just got his voice, and we haven’t done that for a while, you know? The thing that was cool about the rest of us, when we heard The Eraser and it was like ‘Ooh… his vocals are loud! Ooh! I like that!’<br /><br />Thom: ‘Why can’t he do it with us?’ [laughs]<br /><br />Ed: [laughs] No, exactly. ‘Why does he want to bury it in all our noise?’<br /><br />Thom: Just giving you space, chap! It’s alright.<br /><br />Ed: That’s right. Hiding? No. And so I think that it’s great for that because it’s really—the voice is upfront and, you know? It’s such a great lyric.<br /><br />John: Mm, yeah. Well, it’s a great way to end the album, great way to start it, then. And, of course, people can shuffle it around if they want to.<br /><br />Thom: If they must.<br /><br />John: Listening to the whole of In Rainbows. Something: Phil has got in touch with the programme and wanted to know that in the past, at some point, Thom, you had said that “How to Disappear”, you reckoned, was probably the best thing that Radiohead...<br /><br />Thom: Oh, yeah.<br /><br />John: …had ever done. Is there anything on In Rainbows you think you could’ve, as a band, have reached that pinnacle again?<br /><br />Thom: Uh, me personally it would be “Videotape”. Because it was one of those songs where it was absolutely sort of—we just didn’t know how on Earth we were gonna do it; and, you know, and to end up with this really stripped-down thing where you’re hearing all this extra stuff—it’s maybe there, maybe not—you know, it’s just… it exists on a different sort of weird… There’s something else going on which you can’t hear, but it’s going on, and it transforms you hopefully, that’s the idea. “How to Disappear” was a similar thing. There’s a point in there where it’s like… You know the old Murakami?<br /><br />John: No.<br /><br />Thom: Uh, Japanese author. Japanese-American author. And in his books they always have this—well, it’s a constant theme of like having holes in walls that you go through and then you’re sort of a parallel… You break through to the other side sort of thing. And I think that’s the aim of records for us. Making music is—every now and again you get those bits where you break through to the other side.</blockquote>--2008-01-03 | XFM Radio Interviewwierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3837374907451978914.post-66718859213946292722007-10-09T21:53:00.000-07:002007-10-10T21:26:25.438-07:00In RainbowsWow!!!!wierd fisheehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01762003424374157129noreply@blogger.com5