Wherein I Come Clean About Radiohead

This morning I bought Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele, among other reasons, because it transported me back to a time when Radiohead was what I wanted them to be.

I had a pretty intense relationship with The Bends and OK Computer, which came out the summer after my freshman year of college.  What always drew me to Radiohead was the fragile, human voice struggling to be heard under this electro-symphonic crush.

Is there any vocal and lyric more naked than Creep?  When I was 16, that rawness punched me in the gut.  There are no barriers, no twee, no irony.  You're so fucking special.  I wish I was special.

But it's a little obvious.  The Bends made me work harder to find that emotion.  There would be the dense cacauphony of My Iron Lung before the plaintive yearning of a song like Black Star.  And even then, Thom seemed quick to shrug the questions off to some cosmic forces conspiring against him.  Blame it on the Black Star.  Blame it on the Satellite that brings me home.

I should have seen what was coming, but it didn't really hit me until about the 500th time I listened to OK Computer.  I think every song on that album has been my favorite at one time or another.  On that afternoon, I was deeply into Let Down, and listening closely.  The album was all about humanity lost in a digital age - that was obvious - so I knew I had to listen harder than ever before. 

And there in the middle of the song was a line that told me something important: Don't get sentimental; it always ends up drivel.

How could I hear a line like that and not think back to Creep?  To that moment Thom stood in the slow of that grunge, slow-fast-slow and told us he wanted a perfect body.  He wanted a perfect soul.  Now I could hear the struggle against that sentiment, right there in the song.  He goes on to say that one day he is going to grow wings, but then dismisses it as just a chemical reaction, hysterical and useless.

It's a beautiful, complex song.  It was also a real turning point away from something about Radiohead I'd always loved, from Creep and Fake Plastic Trees and High & Dry and Subterranean Homesick Alien.  I kept waiting for Radiohead to turn back, just a bit, but the chaos and noise kept growing louder, the human voice growing fainter.  It was still there, and that umpteenth listen when I found it could still be transcendent.  But there was something self-conscious about burying it so far.  I missed The Bends.

I no longer sit with the cool kids.  The band went down a rabbit hole I was reluctant to follow, so I'm the old guy at the concert waiting for them to break out some of the old tunes.  Oh well, it happens.

But it's nice to think someone as hip and interesting as Amanda Palmer might share my feelings.  All but one of the tunes on her record are from OK Computer or before.  And she plays Creep twice.

Or maybe the older tunes were just easier to arrange for ukulele.

Dick Prall in a Backyard

Last night, we joined about 50 friends in a backyard for a "house concert" from Dick Prall.

After more than a decade of touring, often with a full band, Dick's put together a tour "from Portland, Maine to the Napa Valley" playing in people's homes.  It's an innovative idea, and it makes for a hell of a show.

Dick played without amplification, but his percussive guitar and booming voice didn't need it.   The pop of a beer can or the rattle of a lawn chair sometimes caused a moment of distraction, but it was all in the spirit.  And it sure beat the cracking pool balls and TV sports chatter of even the most intimate club shows.

He build his set entirely on requests, with someone in the crowd occasionally helping remember a lyric for the more obscure numbers.  Brief gusts of wind and other surprises from the natural world highlighted the organic feel.

And after the show: Drinking.

Today we'll be rolling out to Day 1 of 80/35 and hopefully have enough left in the tank for Poison Control Center tonight.

80/35 Festival

Naura, Henry and I were able to check out the inaugural 80/35 Festival in Des Moines this weekend and had a great time.

With a great lineup, perfect weather, reasonable prices and manageable crowd (for a festival), it was without a doubt the best music event I've been to in Des Moines.

I caught the Flaming Lips and a bit of Andrew Bird on Friday night, then Frank Black, Drive-by Truckers and Jacob Dylan on Saturday. If I'd have had the time, I'd also have enjoyed seeing The Roots, Pieta Brown, Poison Control Center and The Envy Corps.

For more photos of the Flaming Lips spectacle, as well as the rest of the festival, there's a great Flickr feed.

My own private radio station

I have taken up arms in the social music revolution and joined the irregulars of Last.FM. In other words, if you scroll down the right hand side of this page, you can now listen to a radio station based on my musical tastes.

For those of us who are no longer young, I'll explain that the service works by tracking the music I play on my home computer. So the music you'll hear is not necessarily the high-brow, arty stuff I say I listen to. No friends, this is the stuff I actually listen to. Stephen King recently pondered this gulf in his Entertainment Weekly column, reckoning his "Best of '07" list with what iTunes told him he really listened to.

But please feel free to publicly shame me if you are subjected to something really trivial and awful on "bgodar radio." I, in turn, will counter that it must have been something Naura listened to.