Here is a fun fact: It takes exactly 8 mins, 35 seconds for a man to
put on his wedding suit, drink two Solo cups of Brooklyn Lager, push the
jangly nerves from his body through the musical enterprise of great
friends, and get profusely excited about walking the few, rainy blocks
through the bustle of NYC on the way to marry the loveliest woman to
have ever let him see how her garden grows.
Of course, the meter by which this aggregated oddity is measured, is the
elapsed time of the best pre-wedding/fraternity haze jam ever to be
disgorged from the craw of Mephistopheles ...
Fuckin, amirite?
I really have to thank my old pal, Sanders, for recognizing a precarious
pre-sitch wedding freak-out in which I was apparently experiencing,
despite my insistence that I was feeling pretty fuckin' peachy. I mean,
I thought I was. I was just fine, dude.
But like putting on a seatbelt before driving off with Augie Garrido,
you get a wisdom-punch to the gut that insists this was just the correct
call. A little thrash metal is just the ticket, mate. Now let's go
get fucking married!
Who knows if someday that I'm that too-weird dad that awkwardly urges
the playing of this epic anthem before Enzo's big moment. God, I hope
not. Hopefully, he will keep the company of fellows who will sort him
out in dodgy situations, playing him R-A-W-K to calm his nerves when the
usual puss-rock and soul revival that we all hold dear won't cut it.
But ultimately, this is my lesson to him -- and that is, don't forget to
play the salve, either. Master of Puppets can begin your arsenal.
This is kinda mommy's contribution, since she's the house Rasta -- and I
don't know anyone who is happier to do a bit of dusting and mopping
around the homestead than Melissa, because that means Reggae dominates
the acoustic wavelengths -- I guess to put her in her happy place while
doing the worst chore mankind has ever known.
In a way, I highly respect that. Who, but a happy Jamaican-at-heart,
could find the small positives in the evilest of evils? Finding your
Jah while scrubbing filth is like the meeting of one's spiritual,
physical, and mental discipline -- otherwise, the delight of such a
happy tune might send one right over the moon never to be grounded
again.
This is pretty much how I interpret Pressure Drop -- and it is
highly subjective since there are about 10 different lyrics in the
entire song (freakin' Jamaicans and their brevity!) -- as in, finding
your way through frivolous daily barrage of bullshit and absorbing zen
instead, even if its in spite of yourself. This is an ability that
Melissa exudes with the utmost class -- and I don't have that gene at
all, but for three-minutes-and-forty-four seconds during this song.
I hope Enzo has collected this matrifocal ability to be zoned-in, while
contradictorily, being zoned-out to outside nuisances and aggravations.
He's got a 50-50 shot. But I think its something he might be able to learn otherwise through this jam.
I didn't even realize it until Melissa asked me to recount before last
Wednesday's show, but Radiohead have been making people invest in their
genius for twenty years.
Twenty years. They are really good at music!
I've lived 2/3rds of my life since hearing Creep for the first
time on the car radio in 1992, wondering who in the entire blue fuck
would write such a fantastically demented and poetic song -- and then,
nary a whisper about that band publicly again until a smattering of
praise here-and-there on MTV Europe while living in Denmark in 1995.
There was a wildly popular British gentleman on-the-air at that time by the name of Ray Cokes (whose scant Wiki page is unworthy of his greatness) who hosted a show called MTV's Most Wanted
that basically provided the gist of my musical experiences in Europe.
Danish Radio 1 was not providing anything but a very intense lesson in
late-millennial Euro club-pop, and the pub music tended to be the kind
of shit that could be sung to emphatically after 7 or 14 pints: Horrible, ghastly,AWESOME stuff like this.
Cokes was -- and very well might still be -- the biggest Radiohead fan
I've ever known. By looks of things, he's probably not doing too much
else besides listening to Radiohead in a dim closet somewhere -- but he
will always be the harbinger of Radiohead to the European masses, plus
one teen-aged American boy.
Cokes championed their then-current album -- The Bends -- on a nightly basis, then would serenade us with the massively profound video to the song Just, with
its famously tactile opening chords and brilliant cinematic
conception. They say that today's action becomes tomorrow's habit, and
so I would sit in front of the tube at 9PM on weeknights to hear -- and
watch -- what would become the most important band I would ever be
subjected to. This was just how you had to do it before the convenience
of YouTube.
When I got back to America, and the buddings of Oasis, Blur, Supergrass,
Sleeper and other Third-Gen Brit-wavers were freebasing everyone's
brains like crack-cocaine, Radiohead was notably absent. It seems that
they considered Britpop, Britpoo, and would have none of that jangly nonsense and musical dickheadery.
Still, this country would not recognize the complexity and the labor
that this band was embodying, even though there was some marginal
rabble-rousing in response to their theatrical soundtrack debut in Clueless -- a notion so absurd to think about at this point, that its almost ironically unironic.
Then, an album dropped that changed the way everyone -- EVERYONE -- perceived popular music.
OK Computer is what falcon punched American right in its FUPA. People
became stupidly berserk about this band, and for a majority of 1997 --
my sophomore year at UT -- its all that anyone listened to. House
Party: OK Computer. Bonfire: OK Computer. Asian Fraternity Party: OK Computer. Spice Girls pay-per-view Live! In Istanbul! watch party: OK Computer. We just couldn't get it out of our 6-disc changers.
OK Computer was a 12-song album that, if a dozen friends chose to listen
to it together, all the way through, each could identify an entirely
different song as their favorite. I even think it was the last time
Rick appreciated a musical note. This thing was molding lives.
Radiohead had basically had made the perfect album -- from production
quality, to track sequence, to the volumes and volumes of textures and
layers within. This album so much more than the overt the genius of its
melodies, lyrics, and vocals. This was a gamechanger.
What got me through all the shitty coursework of the second year of
college -- the worst for anyone in that time before meeting your future
life-friends and being able to legally drink -- was track 5, Letdown. It felt like I could not shovel itinto
me ears and through afferent neurons towards my cerebral cortex at a
quick enough pace or voluminous enough amount. I took all the other
discs out of my changer. I pretty much mutilated every other song until
only Track 5 would play. It was something that I had been hungry for
since hearing and loving The Queen is Dead.
Then, just about when Radiohead apostolic hit critical mass, the cheeky
punters choked their entire fandom in the face with something called Kid
A.
Kid A made everyone question their loyalties. Few bought the album. I
think Selken accounted for the entire inventory of Kid A CD purchases at
Tower Records on The Drag. Napster was peaking, and so were heavily
shared music files with terrible bit rates. With all of the irony of a
band whose whole identity was the technological pursuit of harmonies,
all of it was being lost through horribly rendered electronic data. It
was too far advanced to be released when it was -- a horribly overused
and cliched notion for sure -- but the mis-timing of this album was akin
to Kubrick shelving A.I.:Artificial Intelligence until the technology was advanced enough to convey the his vision.
Kid A was weird. Radio ignored it entirely, and popular music
morphed into the shittastic rap-rock phenomenon. We felt like they had
let us down by not pursuing all of the momentum they had gathered. But
Radiohead was developing -- only without an audience -- and we
were forced to pay attention to trash goblins like Crazy Town and Sum
41. I've yet to receive a formal apology.
Only years later, when I went back to bridge the gap between OK Computer
(album #3) and Hail to the Thief (album #6) did I start to understand
the brilliance of Kid A, and their subsequent release: Amnesiac. It was
now going to be apparent that Radiohead would be eternally evolving,
with or without us -- an ethos that most people resist in their favorite
bands -- but necessary to shed infantile ideas from one stage of their
development to the next.
Kid A, the song, was their manifesto:
After the Kid A/Amnesiac interlude, the band returned to the gritty forefathers-of-awesome with the album Hail to the Thief. 2+2=5
was the first Radiohead track in a half-decade that made you remove
yourself from your water bong and move your ass. It was melting so many
faces left and right, no one was looking directly into cameras
anymore. It was a triumphant return to rock-and-fucking-roll for the
band.
The song I like to take from Hail to the Thief is less of a stark contrast as 2+2=5
was from their previous two albums. If I'm telling Enzo the story of
Radiohead, then I would choose something that aggregates the path the
band had taken between OK Computer and this album, and also the
direction they appeared to be heading.
Much like their touring history, Radiohead tends to take long hiatuses
from their masses, and though the reasons are always unclear, one has to
image that alchemy takes a long time to generate.
Four years after Hail to the Thief, we are gifted what is considered to be the band's masterstroke: In Rainbows.
One of the memories that will likely go the distance with me to my
grave, is the first time I heard a track off of this album: in the midst
of a long, peaceful, and silent cab ride through the rainy jam of
Buenos Aires with a few of my best friends. Fans of the band we all,
none of these participants really mentioned the in-the-moment magnitude
of hearing such a widely anticipated event -- so much so that it was
presented in full stereo to the people of the planet in full accordance,
including Argentina.
But when the track finished playing, and everyone was staring
thoughtfully out of the wet windows into the fussy city, I remember Mike
alluding to the fact that it was pretty special to have just heard a
track from In Rainbows for the first time -- in a cab; in rainy Buenos
Aires.
What is fantastic is that I don't even remember what song was playing.
Just that it happened. That detail doesn't even matter, because
sometimes when I listen to the album, I like to think that any of these
songs could have been with me inside that cab. That makes it better --
at least to me it does. This is the one I like to imagine the most
because it is likely one of the greatest songs ever scribed:
And still, Radiohead continues to evolve: From guitar alt band, to
electronic explorers, to psychedelic rock gnar balls -- and all sort of
congealed flirtations with each, going forward. King of Limbs was a
finessed album that is taking Radiohead somewhere that I cannot yet
imagine. Maybe its another bridge to a far off place yet undiscovered.
This is the final installment for this band on this day, but it is by no
means is it an end to the evolution of my interest. This track is a
perfect circular anomaly that reflects on the bands original artistry.
Right at 2:32 when Jonny Greenwood's skinny, deft riff slips in the
harmony, then fattens like a collapsed tire as the song progresses is my
favorite Radiohead moment in several years ...
Congratulations, son. Your daddy thought that this very poignant song
would be a great way to welcome you into the world -- loudly, clamoring;
just like you -- cos he thought, ya know, we bros. Its
something he likes to tell you all the time when you're fussy and
getting all demanding about things, because he believes its that
spiritual bond that will calm your ass down.
Remarkably, this tactic works. Cos, we bros. You are already starting
to understand the bond of man, and that of a son to his father. I can
see it in the clarity in your face -- the way you understand that there
is no immediate need that is going to go unmet, cos, you're thinking: we bros.
Eventually, you grow tall and wise and make other important
relationships in your life. Stick by those who call for your comfort
and fight for their cause with impudence. You bros.
On this day in 1836, this call for help was finally answered --
Commandancy of the Alamo
Bexar, Feby. 24th 1836
To the People of Texas &
all Americans in the world --
Fellow citizens & compatriots -- I am besieged by a
thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna --
I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannon-
ade for 24 hours & have not lost a man -- The enemy
has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the
garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken
-- I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, &
our flag still waves proudly from the walls -- I shall nev-
er surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name
of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the Amer--
ican character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch --
The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no
doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five
days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain
myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never
forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his coun-
try --
Victory or Death.
William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt.
P.S. The Lord is on our side -- When the enemy
appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn --
We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bush-
els & got into the walls 20 or 30 heads of Beeves.
Travis
-- and because it was so, you can proudly eat chicken fried steak, drink
Lone Stars, slow dance to Willie, and wear boots like a proper Texan.
