Radiohead
Radiohead is an English musical group comprising radioheads. They were the first spark in a worldwide phenomenon that included shyness, intellectual and pretentious behaviour, and a preference for unlikeable music. The so-called Radiohead condition has done severe damage to the global economy, and has turned its victims into paranoid androids, subterranean homesick aliens and lately, spectres.
Epidemiology and history[edit]
Formation[edit]
1992 was a tumultuous time for music, as some musicians died and went to Nirvana, others took inspiration from Indians and played indie rock, and the bands had many guitarists, because anyone can play guitar.(This didn't make the guitarists good, per say, as many favoured the 'play-every-string-at-once-until-it's-just-white-noise' approach. This style was particularly favoured by Sonic Youth and Placebo.) Radio was popular at the time and had not yet switched to talk radio, and many listeners went on to become radioheads.
Scientists throughout England began to study the phenomenon, and notice finally spread to Oxford, where a few young men with autism began to mimic the music on the radio, though haltingly and incorrectly. Their imitation was mostly grunge, and almost disproved the assertion about guitars.
The pioneers met scorn and were shunned in school. They were called creeps and weirdos, and told they didn't belong there. After being locked up in an institution for their odd behaviour, the young radioheads chose the name Radiohead — on a Friday. Their mechanical minds couldn't comprehend their popularity, and so this led to glitches - for example, Thom Yorke's spastic eye.
Early stages[edit]
Radiohead believed in pixies — "Stop whispering!", the little creatures commanded, "start shouting!". Radiohead concurred, and started recording noise in a ill-fated scientific experiment codenamed Pablo Honey. A well-known part of this experiment was nicknamed Creep, and was originally written by Thom Yorke on a toilet when he was 16 years old. Nobody liked the song, and guitarist Jonny Greenwood wanted to destroy the song by adding loads of distortion guitar to it. The result: A worldwide hit single.
By mistake, this experiment was exposed to the general public, and the resulting epidemic was disastrous. Young, well-adjusted and cool people turned into introverted loners, read books instead of going dancing, and took inspiration in Radiohead's self-pitying lyrics. In other words, the hipster was born. The British government orded Radiohead banned, but another ethically dubious science project, now known as The Bends somehow escaped the contamination. The Bends was, despite the title, a musical version of a Saturn V rocket, a massive guitar explosion. Radiohead filled The Bends with so much guitar that it gives Eric Clapton nightmares...so much guitar that it became the musical equivalent of self-replicating robots, every strum of the guitar copied using sophisticated echo effects.
Computers become OK[edit]
Radiohead had achieved widespread effects, but in 1997, the band became computerized, becoming the critically lauded, canonized, beloved, overrated and pretentious art wank that it is today. The title OK Computer was chosen while the band was outside a Radio Shack shop in a Tulsa mall. It beat other titles including Alright Pocket Calculator, Decent ATM Machine, or Adequate Food Processor.
Conspiracy theories and paranoia had become parts of the Radiohead condition, and fans began to worry about the arrival of the Karma Police, even the non-Hindu fans.
OK Computer was so depressing that the entire music press called it the finest album of all time. Pitchfork Media were most smitten by the sadness, darkness, and depression of the Radiohead plague. Indeed, nowadays you can look up the word "depression" in a dictionary and find... well, you find the definition of depression, but it fits OK Computer perfectly. Once again, the Radiohead condition — now a severe mental illness — had shown its dangerous effects. The government tried to stop the depressing music by releasing music with the opposite effect. Happy and cheerful music like Aqua and Take That would compete with Radiohead on the charts, but to no avail.
Radiohead gets a kid[edit]
Radiohead's omnious and nearly occult experiments would carry on, now fueled by the support of a devoted fan base, and the satanic Pitchfork Media. With a method much like Rosemary's Baby, Radiohead became the first band in the world to procreate, and in accordance with the Y2K bug, they conceived a child in the year 2000. The child was named Kid A, and was a strange creation, unlike anything ever seen. The kid would feature mysterious Brian Eno-like soundscapes, odd samples and trippy electronic songs, that ripped off Boards of Canada, Kraftwerk and the complex songwriting of Vanilla Ice. The A in Kid A stood for Alien and indeed, this creature came from outer space, its voice resonating big bang and galaxies far, far away. As expected, Pitchfork Media went insane and declared Kid A the greatest achivement in the world ever. Despite being a piece of avant-garde weirdness that made Karlheinz Stockhausen sound like Hannah Montana, the Kid would top the chart in several countries; America, Australia, Afghanistan, Armenia and Antarctica - the letter A really struck a chord with these nations. Which chord? A major.
The Radiohead condition had been embodied, and the next stage was amnesia. People affected would become amnesiacs, especially forgetting all music theory and good taste and instead enjoy far out electronic music filled with odd rhythms, abstract songwriting and endless, droning sounds. The resulting album, Amnesiac sounded like... Well... It was... Kind of electronic I guess. With some guitars on it. Or did they abandon guitars? I don't remember. I think the song was called... Eh, Airbag? No. That was the other album. Well. Listen to the album for yourself and find out. You can buy it... In a grocery store? No... You can get it somewhere.
Trolling the global economy[edit]
The Free World did what they could, but Radiohead had ignited a worldwide terror movement, inspiring hipsters everywhere to disrupt the system. After a group of Radiohead fans attempted - but ultimately failed - to live out the song How To Disappear Completely by hijacking aeroplanes, George W. Bush declared a War on Terror in 2001. Two years later, Radiohead retaliated in a project named Hail To The Thief. Bush had appearantly stolen Radiohead's huge collection of synthesizers, forcing the band to return to their guitars and stay in the 1990s. Thom Yorke's songwriting focused on brainwashing Bush, first telling him to do mundane things like Go To Sleep or Sit Down. Stand Up, but hoping to sneak in more ambitious political projects such as a radical new economic strategy called 2+2=5.
The strategy would have effect on Bush's kleptocratic policy, and the poor math skills led to a worldwide economic recession in 2008. As nobody had any money, Radiohead were forced to drastically lower the price of their new album, letting people name their own price. Who would have known, a lot of people decided that $0 was a good price. Now Radiohead finally had to learn how to count their money and realize that .
The Radiohead condition had not only entered the minds of young people, it had also messed up the global economy. Naomi Klein cheered, and people on the left wing could finally say that the free market was stupid. Radiohead reflected on all this in their songs; the song Bodysnatchers was an evil manifesto on how Radiohead would snatch their listeners' bodies, and House of Cards had the line infrastructure will collapse. Doomsday was imminent, and the world as we knew it would change. Who would take control of this new world?
Long live the king and his limbs[edit]
The new world order was the next result of the Radiohead condition. In 2008, King Obama replaced George W. Bush, and he was nicknamed the king of limbs by Radiohead. The celebrate, Radiohead went out in the dark, murky forest, looking for lotus flowers and doing weird dancing to awaken the dark gods. The dark gods replied, and the Radiohead condition was now a evil satanic curse, much like H. P. Lovecraft's writings. Radiohead would howl at the moon, claiming it was a pool. A moon shaped pool. Or perhaps a pool shaped moon. A moon and a pool. In a pool. This brings us up to date with the Radiohead condition, which has been ongoing for more than twenty years. The government and record music industry has tried to stop it with doing strokes, playing music in the cold and even an arcade fire, but it just can't be stopped.
Contaminated specimens (i.e. band members)[edit]
- Thom Yorke – His awesome vocal register ranges between moaning and whimpering, all the way to crying, wailing, and lamenting. Yorke is the band's lyricist. Pulling random words out of a hat has led to literary gems such as "Yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon" and poignant observations such as "After years of waiting, nothing came."
- Jonny Greenwood – Playing guitars, keyboards, piano and every other instrument ever invented, Greenwood is the band's musical genius, also its prime source of long hair and never aging, and to a lesser extent, (de)composing music.
- Colin Greenwood – Bass, cod and salmon. Colin is the elder brother of Jonny, and his hair is shorter. This makes him endlessly envious of his brother, a feud much like Cane and Able and The Gallagher Brothers.
- Phil Selway – The band's ostensible drummer in reality simply programs a drum machine, then goes to the pub. Cheers, Phil!
- Ed O'Brien – Plays guitar, guitars, and guitar. That's it. Same old Ed, same old guitars. O'Brien uses a lot of guitar effect pedals and special guitar amplifiers to make his guitar sound like a guitar. He plays guitar on all Radiohead albums, even the songs that don't have guitars, for which he uses a special foot pedal. His only spoken word is "EEEEEEEEEEEEED". Rolling Stone made him the 59th best guitarist of all time. And the 58th, and the 57th, and the 56th, etc.[1]
Referencehead[edit]
- ↑ It should be noted that Ed O'Brien plays guitar.