Continued from here.
—
It is 1995.
I am walking back from an Offspring concert. From four years beforehand, when as I mentioned before that I saw them open for Fugazi, they have, through a combination of opportunity, promotion savvy, money and being in the right place at the right time, become Orange County’s biggest rock band, period. They have been all over the radio, MTV and more in the past twelve months, rivalling only Green Day for seeming out-of-nowhere omnipresence in whatever modern rock is supposed to be considered. They have had a few hit singles now and therefore have moved beyond simply being a one-hit wonder.
They are playing UCI for the second time in this period. First time through they packed out a good sized auditorium on campus, this time around it’s the Bren Events Center, the largest venue on-site. I am covering this show for the weekly campus newspaper, where I’ve been working about the same length of time I’ve been working at KUCI, since my arrival in 1992. My work bleeds over from one venue to another — my music column, like my show, is called ‘Ned’s Musical Dustbin,’ without apology. I have had the flattering feeling of being told more than once that it’s ‘the only thing in the paper I read’ — which makes me feel bad for a lot of my colleagues, some of whom are very fine writers indeed. Occasionally I cover big campus shows of interest and this is quite obviously one of them.
With me as the crowd streams out is someone I’ve been close to for almost a year as well. This is a period of time I do not dwell on much, however, because of things I’d rather not revisit that I’m not particularly fond of about myself during this time. She’s been taking some photos to accompany the review as she is an excellent photographer, though she’s not a regular staffer at the paper or in fact a student on campus. If I remember it rightly, she reacts because she either hears someone talking about them or because a passing car has some of their music blasting out.
“Someone at Capitol said they’d be getting me ‘Planet Telex’ remixes on vinyl!”
“That’s on the new album?”
“It’s the first song.”
“Hm, neat.”
It’s not exactly like this but that’s all I can remember, disconnectedly. I told you I don’t dwell on this time. It’s spring 1995 and The Bends is about to be released.
—
Backtracking.
1994’s a good year in general. I’ve formed a solid circle of friends through the newspaper and through KUCI, as well as through a few of my fellow grads (a few, not many — my social life is defiantly oriented away from the department, and that’s something necessary for sanity). I am mainlining MST3K repeats thanks to the good graces of my family taping them for me. The previous year I discovered alt.music.alternative and have started to get to know a few characters around there, as well as introducing friend Jennifer, who among other things works part-time for Sony‘s college department, to its joys. She uses it a bit as a promo experiment to talk to fans of bands on Sony and presents results to her superiors. They don’t get it and apparently regard computer talk as faddish stuff that will never have a wide appeal. Whatever smugness or horror this discussion generates in those involved or who hear about it is years away from being understood properly.
Using my small newspaper and radio roles as I can, I have been able to score a variety of phone interviews with people over this time, either for broadcast or for summed-up stories. They range, unsurprisingly. Among the most abstractly painful is the one with Bonehead from Oasis, a classic example of monosyllabic disdain (and I liked the band, even). Among the best, the one with Ian Crause from Disco Inferno, which I have since apparently misplaced, much to my continued annoyance and anger. If I ever find it again, it will be encoded and shared; at the time, I am just happy to talk the man behind some of the best music ever made (still).
In late 1994, Radiohead have released “My Iron Lung,” their first single since the you-don’t-want-to-hear-it “Pop is Dead” from about a year previous. Attention is high and initial critical reaction positive, and EMI in America are no fools and seek to stoke the flames. Ergo, college interviews and the like where possible. I therefore get a chance to talk with Colin Greenwood, who is an engaging and enjoyable interviewee to my recollection. I distinctly recall him saying how he was happy that I knew what an iron lung was in the first place, as apparently a lot of the other college newspaper people or whoever he had been speaking with had not heard of it. To be fair it was an outdated piece of technology but still it wasn’t entirely unknown, or so I would have thought.
The story is published in the newspaper. This is in the days before Internet publishing. The story is not archived anywhere to my immediate knowledge. I have it somewhere hidden away in a file. I have no immediate desire to dig it up. If I eventually find it, I will. At the time all I think is that it was a good enough interview and that I liked “My Iron Lung” a bit, even if the noisy chorus sounded a bit like the noisy chorus from “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana, in much the same way perhaps that “Creep” rode a vibe not dissimilar to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”‘s loud/soft/loud balance, if in a different style.
I read occasional stories about the band in Melody Maker. Life continues.
—
It is later in 1995. I have not seen Radiohead yet on tour — in fact, at no point do I see them at all for The Bends. Other things are keeping me busy, as well as other interests. There are lots of bands to pay attention to. In a fit of randomness, I have inherited a mailing list about the band Sparks, and have also set up a variety of mailing lists for other bands. Suede, Pulp, Oasis, T. Rex, the Go-Betweens, more besides. I have crashed a mail server a couple of times because Oasis are breaking huge everywhere and hundreds of people have signed up for it, especially since it has been featured on the band’s official homepage, and will be for the next four years.
Much talk about a rivalry between Blur and Oasis is going around, though from an American perspective it means almost nothing. An Anglophilic one is different and I’m still enough of one to wonder what’s going on where. Pulp, however, have been rising in my estimation over recent years and Different Class is an absolute killer of an album, vicious, inspiring, anthemic, sharp, lovelorn, thoughtful. Meantime there’s the Smashing Pumpkins, whom I adore even when everyone else hates them. Their loss. (Of their antics twelve years later, the less said the better.) I am devouring a bunch of bands on the Kranky label. I am hearing a slew of all over the place acts via KUCI. The beats on top 40 are getting suspiciously good bit by bit. I am still a starving grad student but I’m enjoying life to the full, and I’ve introduced new roommate Jake to friend Brian, and they’re getting along like a house on fire; at the same time I have finally met friend Stripey after a year’s worth of casual conversation online as well as her friend Anni. I get everyone together and for the next couple of years the five of us are, if not quite inseparable, at least often going out and having a blast.
I like The Bends. I think it’s a good album, with a couple of killer songs in particular.
—
One thing that’s always struck me about The Bends, whenever I listen to it — and it’s been years now, but here we are. It shimmers. It glows. It is bright.
It’s warm.
Radiohead is a warm band. Much like happiness is a warm puppy. Radiohead are allegedly bloodless, the antithesis of sloppy. Precise, focused, cold, alien. Nope, not true. They are warm, they are, for lack of a better term, alive.
Think of the way “Planet Telex” arcs in (and it arcs in, it doesn’t just simply appear, these are parabolic swoops of sound, Phil Selway’s drums punching in like radio signals once again received, the wash and flow on the chorus a gossamer overload that isn’t shoegaze at all but has the most enveloping feeling to it, a drowning cascade).
In large but not entire partk, John Leckie is the reason. Interesting career, Leckie’s. Look at this career list through 1999 alone. Believe it or not, one of the things that makes me most happiest is that credit for the Adverts. Heard that album? A punk classic because it’s simultaneously crash-and-bash and a massive art statement. Credit the band, credit Leckie too. About the closest equivalent producer I can think of is someone like Conny Plank was for Germany, one of those guys who grew up in rock and roll and knew how to make it sound great but wasn’t interested in just producing the same people over and again for the rest of his career.
Not long before this he’d produced Verve’s debut album, aka one of the most perfect albums in time and space. Back in 1999 I went on about it here, and most of that still holds true, regardless of my fever dreaming about it. To say he equalled here is to understate — but it’s also true it’s not only him about it. There is, after all, a band here. So the way that Yorke sings “I wish I wish something would HAPPEN” and the guitar chopschopschopsBLAMinto the full arrangement — that’s good, that is.
You know the band had heard it all at that point from EMI. “‘Creep’ Pt. 2, buster, and make it snappy. We’ve got a good thing.” Only the band didn’t and so they took a different approach — “What if we did Pablo Honey again but made it better and with more good songs?” So they did. Listening now I’m surprised, given this is an album I don’t ever recall playing into the ground, how many of these songs come back to me just by looking at the tracklisting. “Bones” and “Sulk,” those aren’t sinking in, but everything else, I at least know the chorus if not more. And listening now I remember why that’s the case. (And in listening to “Bones” right now I’m thinking, “Oh right, that song, I knew that one!”)
Radiohead are a good rock band that allegedly are more than that, so their many conventional moves are seen as something else. They can’t be appreciated for what they are sometimes, which is a pity, because that does make their unusual moves more interesting. For a band still sounding like ‘a band’ in the studio on The Bends, things are still, like on Pablo Honey, thorny. Conventional structures at points, unusual ones elsewhere. When the harmonies appear as they do (like on “[Nice Dream],” how they suddenly slip in on the chorus) I choke up a bit, a touch, whenever they do, and I don’t do that often with harmonies. When everything cuts off cold in the middle of “Just,” that’s a pure moment of perfect drama no matter what the musical mode. On “Black Star,” that’s a great glam descend mode on the chorus, the way the guitars sound triumphant for a second and then collapse downward.
Then there’s “Fake Plastic Trees.”
Here’s my story about “Fake Plastic Trees.”
In 1995, I saw Kitchens of Distinction on their last American tour. During “Drive That Fast,” I did something I didn’t normally do and took out my earplugs, to feel it all. A couple of days later I realized something — the ringing in my ears, low-key but there, hadn’t gone away. A couple of days later confirmed it further — it was never going away. On a quiet level, it never has. I’ve got tinnitus and always will, and that was the song and action that did it. Oh well — I made my choice and must take my lumps.
Since then I have always worn my earplugs through every show without fail, every song. With one exception. You can guess what. And maybe without me saying it, perhaps you can sense why.
—
It is late 1996. I am lying in my bed in my apartment in grad housing, where I have lived for over four years now. It is Thanksgiving weekend and as has been the case for the last couple of years, ever since my folks moved north to Carmel, I am spending it in OC, enjoying the company of friends for the holiday. I am in a good relationship that unbeknownst to either of us will collapse in a few months after a random conversation goes spectacularly awry. I am alone and I am sweating bullets.
Grad school is crushing my head. I am supposed to be gearing up for my exams. I have not been. Nothing about the prospect interests me. I hate the idea of reading up on things precisely to be quizzed about them. My grad fellowship has ended and I had to pony up the fees for fall quarter that year, which was disconcerting. I have recently learned that a language requirement I thought I could get out of by means of a test can’t be. I know I’ve been wasting time having fun rather than studying up but frankly I don’t regret it, at least, until now.
“I’d feel so much better if I wasn’t in grad school,” I say out loud.
I pause. A light turns on in my head.
“I’d feel so much better if I wasn’t in grad school!”
The paperwork takes a while but in mental terms, I have just left.
Radiohead is the last thing on my mind.
—
Thank you, YouTube:
Interviewed in Vancouver:
“The Bends” on Jools Holland:
“High and Dry” on Dutch TV
“My Iron Lung” on French TV
“Fake Plastic Trees” on Conan (that clip of “Creep” I linked yesterday? according to this clip, that appearance meant Radiohead was the first musical guest on Conan ever — not a bad distinction)
Thom doing “[Nice Dream]” solo:
Ned Raggett Ponders It All 