I was waiting to see if it was going to wear off. It didn’t.
I thought I’d sleep on it to see if I’ve changed my mind. I haven’t.
I thought spending time away from it would give me a different perspective. I was wrong.
My brains have been scrambled.
Radiohead probed my mind and I liked it.
I see visions of a distant future and I hear the universe’s newborn cry.
I see visions of a distant past and I hear the death rattle of a thousand dying star systems.
I feel the rumblings of ancient planets’ violent rotations.
I see astral anomalies and feel their quantum pressure.
I see all earthly matter violently and beautifully swirling around towards a wormhole, being replaced by antimatter and enveloping all it touches.
I see the Higgs Boson grow exponentially.
I feel the world as we once knew it cease to be.
I see it and hear it in Radiohead’s music. It’s frightening, unnerving and exciting and beautiful.
It’s the sound of the end of the world and Radiohead are the end of music on earth.
Radiohead may in fact be dark scientists, posing as musicians and artists adept at their craft.
Operating at forbidden frequencies and unlocking aural sequences the equivalent of cosmic code breaking (they may very well cause the cataclysmic celestial event we’ve been hearing so much about). Formulas and proofs along with theorems and algorithms replace measures and movements and tempos and time signatures. They’re speaking an entirely different language and when Thom speaks, it seems more alien and foreign than the Queen’s English even.
I once said of the band that “they’ve sold us jazz by convincing us it’s rock.”
After witnessing firsthand their musical mastery on tour this summer, a better charge might be that they’ve purged any arcane notions of dance music either audience or performer may have had and reprogrammed it into something completely unearthly and unnerving, which makes us uneasy. Luckily, the uneasy and unnerving becomes the familiar and comfortable, like a college student’s introduction to David Lynch films or anal sex.
Also too, there’s a reason there are so many sci-fi fantasy tales of the distant future resembling the distant past. The relationship between the two is closer and more intimate than either has with the present and the notion of both extremes has to be equally psychologically impairing.
The effects of one live sonic experiment caused the the audience to disintegrate – from the front row to the lawn, concertgoer molecules were disseminated, systems were corrupted and as everyone seized and convulsed and twitched and rolled in unison, we ceased to have any control over our bodies or our minds – and we liked it.
It’s frightening, unnerving and exciting and beautiful.
It’s the sound of the end of the world and Radiohead are the end of music on earth.
5 Conclusions of Radioheadtivity
1. Radiohead are the greatest dance music group of their generation (and probably yours).
2. The King of Limbs should be re-recorded and re-released right now.
3. Twitch n’ Roll should be a legitimate music genre.
4. Though great in their way, Weezer’s highest level of musical achievement remains their very un-Weezer-like cover of “Paranoid Android”
5. Thom Yorke is one sexy beast in those red leather pants.
(All photography by Mike Mittman)