[SOUNDTRACK: RADIOHEAD-Live, August 28, 2008 (NPR download) (2008).
This was the first concert that I realized was free to download from NPR. (Which started me on a downloading frenzy!) I was really psyched to see it because Radiohead has been one of my favorite bands for years but I’ve never seen them (and only really know their live stuff from the Live EP. This concert is essential listening for any fan of later Radiohead (they play all of In Rainbows).
I was thinking about Radiohead’s history. They had a sort of left-field grunge hit with “Creep” and seemed like they would be destined to play their one hit in every show until they retired. Then The Bends was released and it had a whole bunch of hits, solidifying that they were not just a one hit wonder band. Then OK Computer blew everyone out of the water and Radiohead were easily the best band of the 90s.
Even though “Creep” was a huge smash, it would seem weird to hear them play it now. Their discs since Kid A have turned Radiohead into a hugely different band. So during this set when someone shouts out “Anyone Can Play Guitar” it’s almost as unexpected as hearing someone shout “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” (They didn’t play it…although they did play “The Bends”, which sounded kind of, but not totally, out of place).
The rest of the set includes 4 songs from Kid A, 3 songs from Hail to the Thief and 4 songs from OK Computer (and one from Thom Yorke’s solo album). Nothing from Amnesiac.
The band sounds great, they have such a wonderful sense of mixing techno drums and squiggles with rocking guitars. And the songs from Kid A forward are really great. “The National Anthem” from Thief substitutes the crazy horns from the disc with wonderful samples from commercials, which works wonders.
The songs from OK Computer sound good but rather different, as if the band has a different set of instruments or technology. “Lucky” sounds great as do the simpler tracks of “Karma Police and “No Surprises.” The only song that I was vaguely disappointed in was “Paranoid Android” (one of my favorite tracks ever). It sounds good, just different. And that song is so complicated with so many bits and pieces that hearing it in a stripped down to an almost acoustic version is unsettling.
What I did like about “Paranoid” and many other tracks was the backing vocals. In my studio experience the only voice we hear is Yorke’s, but live, someone is doing some great backing vocals, remaining faithful to Yorke’s original sound but just different enough to be really interesting.
We obviously miss a lot by not seeing the visuals of the show, but the audio is great. The quality of the recording is fantastic and any Radiohead fans would be foolish not to download it.
[READ: December 23, 2010] “Hammer and Sickle”
I feel like DeLillo is a such an influential author, I can’t believe that he’s a) still alive and b) publishing stories in the New Yorker. This story starts in such a mundane setting that I was worried it was going to be a run of the mill tale of life in a minimum security prison. We see the narrator dressed in an orange jump suit on the side of the road with a group of other prisoners. He is thoughtful as the traffic whizzes past.
But the scene quickly switches back to the prison and this is where DeLillo becomes “DeLillo.” In the central prison room, the prisoners begin watching a show every day. The show consists of two teenaged girls reading the financial news. Except that their news is more like free-form poetry.
“The fear is Dubai. The talk is Dubai. Dubai has the debt. Is it 58 billion dollars or 80 billion dollars?”
“Bankers are pacing marble floors.”
“Or is it 120 billion dollars.”
“Sheiks are gazing into hazy skies.”
“Even the numbers are panicking.”
…
“The world’s only seven-star hotel.”
“The world’s richest horse race.”
“The world’s tallest building.”
“All this in Dubai.”
…
“But where is the oil?”
“The oil is in Abu Dhabi. Say the name.”
“Abu Dhabi “
And the prisoners (most of them guilty of financial fraud of some kind) love it. Even the Elder Prisoner (sentenced to over 700 years…his fraud caused some MAJOR international problems), the man who controls the remote, has deemed it appointment TV.
The girls talk about the collapse of Greece and the potential collapse of Ireland. It’s amazing how current the story is. When the news veers towards the positive, the inmates watch less, but as soon as a new collapse is on the horizon, it’s high demand TV. And as their show continues over the weeks, the production values go from sub-basement to actual real studio (they go from a table to a desk).
DeLillo ties this wonderfully odd story to the narrator when we learn that the girls are his daughters and their script is written by his ex-wife. He only tells his cellmate about this; he doesn’t want the rest of them to know his relation to the show.
And these are just two parts of this fascinating look at criminal life. There is so much back story that we don’t see, and then there is also so much that we catch just glimpses of (like his cellmate’s love of art). There is no way that this is intended to be a short story, there’s simply far too much going on. So I am assuming that this is part of a forthcoming novel.
Blanket assessment: I have not read enough of DeLillo’s works. I consider him a kind of godfather of the contemporary authors that I like, and I really must go back and read his earlier books. (I’m embarrassed to admit that I have only read Underworld).
I Just Read About That... 
I loved this story, and hope that it is part of something else, though it also had a lot of echoes of other Delillo work in it, I thought. Go hence immediately and read White Noise, one of the greatest – and funniest – books ever written. Then, if you liked this story, read Cosmopolis a particular favorite of mine, short but not as short as some of the more recent spate of novellas.
I was supposed to read White Noise in a class on PostModernism. But I never actually took the class, I just sort of sat in, and I think we never actually read White Noise. I still have the book and think of it wistfully. We’re on Vacation next week, maybe that will be my vacation book. (Disney…seems like a good book to bring there).
An even better Disney book would be Cory Doctorow’s “Makers,” which I’m just finishing now, or his earlier book that I haven’t yet read, “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.” Both are Disney heavy, and probably as good as reading “A Supposedly Fun Thing…” while actually taking a cruise.
Oooh, I forgot about Down and Out. I loved Little Brother and meant to read his other books. Is makers his new one?. I’ll have to see if I can score one of those before next week.
Yes, Makers is new. All his books are available (creative commons) at craphound.com, and you can “buy” other copies for libraries and such if you like. I’ll be reviewing some of them over at InfiniteTasks.wordpress.com over the next few weeks.
I found “Magic Kingdom” in our library (we have all his books! good for us), so I’ll certainly be bringing it. I look forward to your posts.
[…] loved Doctorow’s Little Brother. And when I recently said I would be going to Disney, an astute reader said I should read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (which I’d never heard […]