give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves.

awhile back radiohead announced they wouldn’t be release a full album for a while. instead they’re going to do a series of singles, eps, and whatever else they think up. here’s a round up of what they’ve done so far.

“these are my twisted words”

“these are my twisted words” is available free on w.a.s.t.e., there no reason you shouldn’t have this song. it’s classic guitar based radiohead, sounds like a track left off in rainbows. i like how the lyrics don’t start until halfway through the song, setting up the feeling of longing that the words describes.

“harry patch (in memory of)”

“harry patch (in memory of)” was written for the last surviving british soldier from the first world war, and was recorded a few weeks before harry patch’s death in late july. the opening strings are a new direction for radiohead, i hope they continue to explore that. jonny greenwood is really developing his modern composition style. this song is available for purchase on w.a.s.t.e. and the proceeds go to royal british legion, an organization that aids british veterans and their families.

here’s what thom has said about harry patch.

i had heard a very emotional interview with him a few years ago on the today program on radio4. the way he talked about war had a profound effect on me…..i very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor. it would be very easy for our generation to forget the true horror of war, without the likes of harry to remind us. i hope we do not forget. as harry himself said: “irrespective of the uniforms we wore, we were all victims”.

“feeling pulled apart by horses”

“feeling pulled apart by horses” is actually and older radiohead song that used to get played live as “reckoner”. “reckoner” was turned into a completely different song on in rainbows. thom and jonny have reworked the song and released as a thom solo 12″. “pulled apart” has the feel of a kid a b-side.

“the hollow earth”

“the hollow earth” is the b-side to “feeling apart by horses”. it’s a track that came out the eraser sessions, thom felt it needed some more time to gestate. if has a heavy autechre and dubstep influence, which works well with thom’s vocals.

“all for the best”

“all for the best” is another thom solo track that appears on a tribute album to mark mulcahy, ciao my shining star. mark mulcahy was the lead singer of connecticut’s little band that could, miracle legion. i’m not in love with this track, i was never a miracle legion fan. thom’s version is good, but it doesn’t surprise me.

self defense against the present.

i’ve been busy lately so i’m a little behind on my posting.

last week thom yorke performed a rare solo show at the latitude festival in suffolk, england. he premiered a new song called “present tense”  since he played both radiohead songs and songs off the eraser, it is not clear where this song may go. my theory is that it will end up on the next radiohead album, which i hear they are working on now. it is hard to tell where this song will end up, or how it will sound when recorded. radiohead have been known to play songs for years, working on them till they are how they should be.

so here it is, thom yorke and “present tense”.

at the moment i think it’s ok, the sound quality is off so that might be part of it. the lyrics, from what i understand, are strong, continuing in the personal vein of in rainbows. i think it still needs some fleshing out.

buy me a plane ticket.

from pitchfork.

Thom Yorke– patron saint of the disaffected masses– is set to play a rare solo set at this year’s Latitude Festival in Southwold, England on Sunday, July 19. But attendees will have to get up pretty early to catch the star, since he’s due to take the fest’s Obelisk stage at noon. Noon! On the last day of a four-day festival! That’s just cruel, Latitude programmers. Then again, hangover cures don’t come more angel-voiced than this.

The Latitude Fest goes down July 16-19 and also features Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Spiritualized, Bat for Lashes, Passion Pit, Pet Shop Boys, and more. Meanwhile, Yorke will rejoin his band mates for five proper Radiohead gigs this August, including stops at Leeds, Reading, and Frequency. All current Radiohead dates are at their site.

grammy train wreck.

last night i went over to jamie’s place so we could watch the grammy’s. i twittered the night away, but twitter got them all messed up because i texted them in from my phone. so here are my tweets in the proper order, with some new comments added in.

Boo to u2. Al green and jt were alright. (i heard that jt and al green were called in to fill in for the missing rihanna and chris brown. it seems that chris brown may have assaulted rihanna and gotten arrested for it.)

jennifer hudson got the award for best r&b album, good for her, but she forgot to take off her apron.

omg myley cyrus and taylor swift together for the first time.  (i didn’t even realize i was waiting my whole life for that moment.)

Please give me the strength to make it through kid rock’s performance.

(guest tweet from janet by way of josh, used without their permission so i hope they don’t mind.) Janet says ” Kid Rock is what Applebee’s is to foood.”

Poor stevie wonder having to perform with the jonas brothers. (how did they get him to agree to that.)

Ugh. Coldplay again and katy perry next. Its gonna be hard. (i just can’t see how coldplay deserve any award, sorry that’s just my opinion.)

We had to mute katy perry. (she is beyond horrible, why why why why why?)

yay for adele! (i’m glad when someone worthwhile wins every now and then. and the face she made when she mentioned the jonas bros was awesome.)

Is it suppose to be black and white? I feel cheated of my mia. My goodness she is pregnant. (there was not enough mia in that performance, and all the rap superstars seemed a little lost.)

jennifer hudson tore it up live. i will have to go see her when she comes to town.

i freakin love radiohead. (they pulled off playing with the marching band. ‘15 steps’ was a good choice. i think they should have had the whole band there. they’re are such a killer live band.)

How could they not give it to radiohead? (i’m sure that robert plant & alison kruass album is good, but come on. why not give it to someone original.)

ripples on a blank shore.

this has been a good couple of weeks for videos. now we get the new radiohead video for “reckoner”. here’s thom’s post from dead air space.

hello
my mind is not functioning at the correct speed at the moment thanks to being in Tokyo
but however and here
is one of my favourite video things that has ever happened
for Reckoner it is, the result of somebody entering a competition to make an animation to one of the tunes on IN RAINbows.
on aniboom. you can scroll down dead air space and find all about it.. but anyway

so we asked them whether it was ok to make it the official one we use as it goes with the song so well. they said yes.

and if you’re like me and find it hard to find videos on televsion any more, or even turn on the television you can watch right here.

ok now im going to fold some clothes.

this video is pretty great, and it suits the song. clement picon did a fantastic job.

i am kind of partial to this version of the song though, it captures a bit of the live radiohead experience. it’s from radiohead’s thumbs down webcast they did last year.

this show is brought to you by the word ‘teabag’.

yesterday in seattle i met up with josh, his lovely wife janet, mr joe page, and the visiting from minneapolis ginger for the radiohead show at the white river amphitheater. we piled into janet and josh’s prius, thom would be proud of us, five people in a hybrid. as soon as we got on the highway we hit terrible traffic, and unfortunately the traffic tormented us the entire trip. we kept our spirits high by chatting and catching up with everyone. there was also a bit of unsavory joking going on, which we wouldn’t let get old. things brightened up a bit for us when we saw a rainbow, which was rather fitting to see before the show. a trip that should of taken us a little over an hour ended up taking just under three, thanks to the ineptness of the venue management for not fixing the traffic flow problem.

we got to the venue parking lot and we could hear that liars had already started. they started early, have you ever been to a show where that happened? after parking ginger and i ran into the venue to catch as much of  liars as we could. josh and janet stayed at the car to eat some sandwiches and joe had to go find a ticket. ginger and i made it to our seats, which had a great view, when the liars where halfway through their third song. liars are not really what i would call a large venue band, that combined with it still being daylight so they had no light show they didn’t really make big of an impact. it’s hard to be an opening act in a huge venue, but they did the best they could. they are a great live band. you just need to see them in a smaller venue.

after they finished josh called me and we found where he and janet were sitting they had better seats, further to the front and more centered. we also found out that joe scored a great seat in the 100 section right in the middle. all we could do is wait for the crew to set up the stage.

after about twenty minutes the lights went out and radiohead came out, instantly the crowd was on their feet. thom and company were amazing, they get better every time i see them. the live versions of the in rainbows tracks were great, although i have to say the the versions we heard at the berkely shows two years ago were a bit more rocking and alive. as if they heard my wishes they played “talk show host”, they updated it with synths replacing some of the guitars giving it an almost disco feel that the kids are digging nowadays. the noisy new version of “the gloaming”, complete with a white noise interruption, was suprising and awesome. thom and jonny tried to do a intimate acoustic “faust arp”, but thom fumbled a bit, then broke into an impromptu neil young cover before going back to “faust arp”. other highlights were “jigsaw falling into place”, “arpeggi/weird fishes”, and “you and whose army”. thom dedicated “you and whose army” to the people who were part of the wto protests. that song is always great live, largely in part to the way thom plays to the piano mounted camera. and they ended the show with the same song they have ended with the last eight to ten times i’ve seen them, “everything in its right place”, i have no problem with them ending on that song, it is a great high energy song that leaves the crowds screaming. overall the show was completely awesome, although much more mellow than the last few tours have been.

the complete setlist.

01. 15 Step
02. Reckoner
03. Optimistic
04. There There
05. All I Need
06. Pyramid Song
07. Talk Show Host
08. The National Anthem
09. The Gloaming
10. Videotape
11. Lucky
12. Faust Arp
13. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
14. Climbing Up The Walls
15. Dollars and Cents
16. Nude
17. Bodysnatchers

Encore 1
18. How to Disappear Completely
19. Arpeggi/Weird Fishes
20. Idioteque
21. In Limbo
22. Street Spirit

Encore 2
23. You And Whose Army?
24. No Surprises
25. Everything In Its Right Place

The infrastructure will collapse.

throw away your cameras, radiohead has shown us the future of image capturing with their video for “house of cards”.

this atease explains.

The Geometric Informatics scanning system employs structured light to capture detailed 3D images at close proximity, and was used to render the performances of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, the female lead and several partygoers.

The Velodyne Lidar system uses multiple lasers to capture large environments in 3D, in this case 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute, capturing all of the exterior scenes and wide party shots. Geometric processed their own data while 510 Systems processed the Velodyne Lidar data. The data was then manipulated by Union Editorial and the Syndicate to create the final result.

thom’s thoughts on the process.

“I always like the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used, the struggle to get your head round what you can do with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just mathematical points–and how strangely emotional it ended up being.”

i must admit that “house of cards” is not my favorite radiohead song, but that still means that it is better than ninety percent of what’s on my ipod.

here is a making of video, if your into that kind of thing.

i’m overwhelmed with possible live music goodness.

it started last week when erykah badu annouced her tour, playing both seattle and vancouver bc (on june 5th and 6th). rachelle wants to go to both shows and i am always up for a roadtrip.

today radiohead announced the rest of their tour dates including vancouver bc (august 19) and auburn wa (august 20). of course, i must go to both those shows. as a bonus liars are opening the shows. this will be the first time i see radiohead and actually care about the opener.

add those to the shows i already plan on going to; colin meloy, clinic, m.i.a., cut copy (for morgan) and several yellow swans shows, and 2008 is already turning out to be a banner year for live music.

now i just need antony and the johnsons to tour.

all i need?

radiohead is coming to america yet again. as usual i plan on seeing them as many times as i possibly can. over the last couple tours i have driven up to vancouver b.c., and flown to nyc and northern california. this tour shouldn’t be much different. i am planning on going to vancouver b.c. and seattle, and have already mobilized my east coast team to be ready for when the nyc shows were announced. planning my trip “home” to be around the shows. they announced the cities awhile ago, and they have been slowly announcing the dates, painfully slowly.

last week it was announced that they were going to headline two days of the all points west festival, in new jersey on august 8th and 9th. i got excited figuring that the nyc dates would be announced soon. then it was announced that those festival dates were the only nyc appearance this summer. i’m not really a big fan of festivals, so i am a little saddened. i was looking forward to seeing them at madison square garden again.

festivals to me are more like and endurance tests, how many people can you handle? how many other bands can you sit through? how much are you willing to pay for food and water? are you willing to use that port-a-potty?

i will admit that there are several other bands playing both days that i wouldn’t mind seeing; animal collective (huge plus), girl talk, underworld and a couple others. i don’t think that would make up for the torture of the rest of it though.

should i suck it up and go to a festival?

where are the west coast dates?

“jigsaw falling into place”

“unravel” bjork cover

“15 step”