Music Writing by Carson Arnold
Music Writing by Carson Arnold
from Amnesiac
LET US DIE FOR ROCK 'N ROLL
It's peculiar and awfully dangerous when everybody in the world down from the right to the left is in love with a ground-breaking rock band that possesses one default: they don't rock, they're not ground-breaking, and once more (in return), you're not allowed to rock to them. Sound rather sci-fi? That's because it is. Welcome. Any hardcore music muse, analyst, or any free Ziggy sweepin' the swing of the wind would directly tell you this: suspicion, question it at all means. Shall we waltz?
Good ol' Radiohead. Dancing to the end of love with all the money in the world stuffed in their pockets while telling us everything is nothing, don't bother, we're not here, so why talk? How amusing. How important. What a long, short time has passed since The Byrds juiced together both the parody of Graceland and the proud exhibit of all revolution surrounding in {"So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star"}. Yadda-yadda, so forth Zeppelin, so forth Metallica, something or other about Nirvana, and lastly, Marilyn Manson, the final, honest spokesman for every vernacular element "rock 'n roll" had initially cranked and reckoned- gutting that Rock was sincerely dead and over, leaving a roasted culture prevailing eight miles high into hell, hung over with "heaven" as their next sign to a complete nowhere land. Manson hadn't invented this spectacle, he was the spectacle. Both the image of the Marilyn and the Manson of last century, and a chief foreshadow to what the public had both loved and hated all meeting and sinking at the same great scream (events include: Columbine, Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, white-rap, etc.). Other later or previous attempts to execute the fortune of rock or pop music were always selfishly weak, inevitably returned with some gushy eulogy within the precious mix (an "aren't we outlaws?" fleece shared warmest by most nerd-bands. Forget it). Yet Manson's dreaded image was the ultimate and fatal consequence over the Roll that millions had happily consumed in the last fifty years with no shame, and the very fat "Rock" that perhaps a million had died over each passing year since. And finally, within the chilling coda of the middle 90's, how it all came clashing to the ground in one glittering, charming disaster. It was uncool to be free...
It doesn't take much to hear this occur, either. Listen. All rock music at that point seemed to gale and cavalier around the elusive current of a volatile happening; emotional, delinquent but disciplined, intelligent, angry with heat but in-love with rage. A time when the stage could very well be rich and capitalistic but still strum the heart-ability to speak on behalf of an adolescent esteem and turbulence burning raw, somewhere, somehow encouraging it all forth. Yet, seemingly, when the music became consciously aware of its doing and creation, forget it- dissolved and infected, gradually parting, suddenly gone. The choices for our icons, heroes and best friends were either left to the following: shave your head, become parents, or blow your brains out to the other side of where your guitar could never excel. Since and now...limp and wasted. Instead of titles painting "vision", with references of classical light and mystery, we were shortly fed in a year's time "suffocation", with suburban references of divorce, tattoo-rape and suicide. What every long-haired kid had once been proud to represent and defend against the ruby-tool of authority, had transformed into a middle-class nightmare headlining a damp, cheap and provocative world, in the sense that nothing more leftover was to be censored leaving nothing more leftover to be innocently explored or wept- rock music overnight, cutting its hair, piercing its skin with the arch-enemy it had once scorned. Finally and presently, the entire spirit was miminalized into a lavish, tin-drum spangle of effortless talent, where just one...one pure, simple note of real punk, true metal or true rock, were indefinitely impossible to ever exist again. Well, that is unless you made it to the next afterlife. Thus Manson and his lyric.
But then Radiohead came. Uptight, British short-haired misfits who cashed in early with their loner-anthem "Creep", then bought a whole lotta vintage keyboards so they wouldn't be labeled as guitar dorks- did their thing- only to find themselves becoming even more genuine creeps soon afterwards. (And that, mates, is whatcha get when you SCREW rock 'n roll!). All that they had graduated with their name from The Talking Heads seemed far far away and even hypocritical with albums like Kid A and Amnesiac, which are dandy and supreme for popular music, but Radiohead themselves...a talking head just like the rest. This was opposed to their earlier power-rock in The Bends which, once again, was much much more of a divine and technical challenge to successfully venture into rather than pussying out with tons of studio equipment and affordable time.
Radiohead are relatively a bunch of snobby white boys, wacked-out and intimidated by the experimental sound which seemed to bloom after the strike of their fame, and instead of imploring much-needed tips and lessons from Alice Cooper, they went out and cut two records which all tailored around a lot of non-conformist stew and basically a cubist-collage of their own indulgence, self-denial and self-pity of "making it big" off the simple song. Musically, Kid A and Amnesiac over-shadowed their heroes REM, but holistically failed in all qualities to guarantee the world- the world of rock and the world of home- as did and does the sojourned REM. What critics had raved as "ground-breaking" about the band was really nothing Krautrock hadn't already explored all throughout the 70's; an orchestral side that George Martin hadn't already composed thirty-five years ago in Magical Mystery Tour, and an avant-garde cheek that the face of the avant-garde itself, whether through techno or jazz, hadn't already assassinated in the last hundred years.
Yessir, a Petrushka rock album came at a late wrong time, for its colossal audience- a whirling wire of suburban cyber-culture- lived under no such temperature to practice the political "decline-of-Roman-Empire" medley that Radiohead was defying, and after a while it seemed, was serving. All a young kid could do at best was merely enjoy it as a limited entertainment value, which wasn't at all the case for the expanding Petrushka, The Beatles or anything before the wicker of '96/'97, where one first saw the final glimpse of Radiohead at its unique serenade in OK Computer. After that, which was it? Love, anarchy, liberation, murder? You couldn't tell. Thom Yorke drowning in a bucket of water in the video of "No Surprises" should have been the finale- done, now leave- but instead, they responded with two other albums that made it automatically hopeless for any passionate rock band with live instruments to exceed the intimacy further than the edge Radiohead had already chipped away. Yet, if it was sincerely attempted, 'twas decorated with so much carnal vengeance and intensity that the average lassie who would normally understand such a spirit, ran far far away in fear (again, the Marilyn and the Manson stirs).
Blur told it all with "Modern Life Is Rubbish" in '92. Do we need to hear anymore? Or do we? As whiny, piggish, egofied, and overacted as The Smashing Pumpkins were, they had the rare brain, a bleeding heart, and further more, a belief. Their apocalyptic-Sabbath-love lyrics and charcoaled doom-sound were a metalized chemistry between what writers DH Lawrence and Alfred Jarry would both find encompassing about rock 'n roll if they were living today. The literature and mad-persona of Jarry in particular, I'm sure like many, Radiohead envisions themselves to be, or at least similar in all neo-frowns. However, Pumpkin-frontman Billy Corgan would later appear on a local Chicago station for the final televised appearance of Bozo The Clown where he and forgotten-band, Pere Ubu, (borrowed from Jarry's fictitious-novel name), sang Dylan's "Forever Young" in what I imagine was a cat-yowl of choruses and cringing earth. Nevertheless, the insecure Radiohead would never once be caught dead in the middle of this spotlight, and for this, they fail to possess and see the micro-relativity of comedy, art, poetry, rock 'n roll, insanity, and all remnants of anything naturally occurring alive. They are merely wasted. Idle. Cashed-out. Singing about the reception of life rather than the event. Of course they would all love to think they behold the affinity of that cosmo-example of Bozo The Clown, but living they are not...they're animating. And as Dylan would go on to say thirty-years back, these rivers that Radiohead once waved in such things like The Bends- which by the way, eventually would flow to the real side of "Everything In Its Right Place" (not a sub-mockery of it, as it was in their song)- they threw...all away. Drink up, lads, for there's not a charm left.
To be a Radiohead, do the following: imagine what it all would feel like if you weren't here. Quite a nice feeling. What the majority would call "surreal", but overall a cold and empty decorum that I'm sure much of the earth could turn turn turn without. "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box", the first cut off Amnesiac, is almost a backwards replica of Kraftwerk's "Computer World" twenty-five years too late. But instead of their theatrical satire towards such an external lifestyle and void, Radiohead embellishes the electricity, lives and breeds by it, and at the same glare, claims to be art-guerillas against it. Figure it out. When people like Yorke drool out lyrics accusing the world as patrolling drones over the tracks of a highly-produced album, sung and sold over to a nation-wide plateau of middle-America, all must wonder who the real drone is, who the real enemy is, and who we're supposed to be killing and who it is we're supposed to be saving. Give us Janes Addiction's "Stop" in the loudest volume. The Yardbirds. Dylan. Marilyn Manson. Stravinsky!
Radiohead, though?. Nah, we see right through it. And if we don't now, we sure will.
--Carson Arnold - May 24, 2003
copyright 2003 Carson Arnold
H(ear) is an online music column consisting of interviews, articles, and investigations written by Carson Arnold. As a freelance writer for various magazines and liner notes, living in the woods of Vermont with his family, Carson widely encourages one to submit their art, writing or any interesting piece of material that you would like to share. H(ear) is accepting both promos and demos for review or any other valuable music-related subjects. If you wish to make a comment or would like to receive H(ear) weekly by email please contact Carson at [email protected]
Thanks and enjoy!
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