“I can’t think of any people outside of Weird Al Yankovic who have both embraced and pissed on rock more than I have. Obviously there’s a level of reverence, but there’s also a level of intelligence to even know what to piss on.


Because I’m not pissing on Rainbow. I’m not pissing on Deep Purple. But I’ll piss on fucking Radiohead, because of all this pomposity. This value system that says Jonny Greenwood is more valuable than Ritchie Blackmore. Not in the world I grew up in.


So I find myself defending things. Is Ritchie Blackmore a better guitar player than me and Jonny Greenwood? Yes. Have we all made contributions? Yes. I’m not attacking that. I’m attacking the pomposity that says this is more valuable than that. I’m sick of that. I’m so fucking sick of it, and nobody seems to tire of it.”


(Billy Corgan in einem Interview mit Antiquiet

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In seinem jüngsten Interview mit dem NME begräbt Ex-Oasis-Mastermind Noel Gallagher nicht nur das Kriegsbeil mit dem alten Britpop-Rivalen Damon Albarn (für die Hintergründe der alten Britpop-Schlacht siehe auch hier), sondern ist gar voll des Lobes. Nicht so gut kommen dagegen Radiohead weg, auch wenn sich Noel noch zu einer Relativierung durchringt:





NME: Damon Albarn or Thom Yorke: which of the two would you rather collaborate with?

Noel Gallagher: Oh, Damon. We’d never been in the same room for maybe 10 or 15 years. And I always said to myself that if I ever was, I’d go and say “Fucking hell, alright man?” and shake his hand and let bygones be bygones. So, anyway, we were out at some nightclub a couple of months ago, and I was going to the bar. Turned the corner and bumped… weiter lesen

Zwar hat das Popblog bereits vor vier Jahren eine Abhandlung über Radiohead’sche Verlogenheit geschrieben, aber wir freuen uns ja immer wenn die britischen Kollegen vom NME zustimmen. Ein kleiner Ausschnitt aus einem zweiseitigen Artikel des NME über Radioheads “King Of Limbs” – und seine Marketingmasche:

“Radiohead’s views on the music biz are more than simplistic and insulting. (…) Their whole “Us Versus The Music Business Capitalists” schtick is paper-thin rhetoric with zero basis in reality and boils down to nothing more than a marketing gimmick to help them sell more copies of Radiohead albums.
Another fact: everything Radiohead do is a marketing gimmick.
(…) What they are certainly not doing is providing any answers – or going by the new album, any music – with any substance. The truth is they have made a crap album no-one wants to say is crap. (…) Ever

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“I heard that fucking Radiohead record and I just go, ‘What?!’… Them writing a song about a fucking tree? Give me a fucking break! A thousand year old tree? Go fuck yourself! You’d have thought he’d have written a song about a modern tree or one that was planted last week. You know what I mean?”

(Liam Gallagher im Interview mit The Quietus über Radiohead)

Mit Dank an Daniel Erk!

Der britische Journalist Mark Beaumont (einer der wenigen guten NME-Schreiber in den dunklen Jahren unter Conor McNicholas) hatte Radioheads gefeiertem “Kid A”-Album bei Veröffentlichung ein “1,5 von 5 Punkten”-Review gegeben und sich nun entschieden, der Platte nach 10 Jahren eine neue Chance zu geben und es von neuem zu besprechen:

“The trouble is, my opinion of Kid A – 1.5 out of 5, because I only liked three of the 10 tracks – has barely changed in the last decade. Having been struck off the Radiohead mailing list for my review (and obviously not inclined to part with good money for it), I’ve not returned to the record since 2000. (…) Older, wiser and a little less sweary, I returned to Kid A this week to re-assess it in the light of a decade’s veneration. And found it largely as dull, frustrating and sporadically brilliant as I did back in 2000.

For me, the “growers” have failed to grow. Everything in Its Right Place still sounds like a haphazard and pointless synth’n'laptop experiment. How to Disappear Completely mumbles and drags too drearily even for this die-hard Tindersticks fan. I found myself warming to the cutesy micro-melodies of Morning Bell, but still can’t find anything in Treefingers or the title track that you, me or any trained monkey couldn’t make with access to a keyboard, a vocoder and a box of squeaky animal toys. Yes, I felt a rush when the free-form jazz horns of The National Anthem reached their unified crescendo, but it was a rush of relief that the Mingus-in-a-tumble-dryer racket was finally over.

There’s little real Millennial state-of-the-globe commentary here either, besides abstruse visions of climate change and oil wars on Idioteque. Even the demonic Tony Blair was hidden deep within the packaging. Otherwise there’s nothing but Thom Yorke’s personal alienation or the abstract images and hat-drawn slogans that would become their trademark over the next two albums. Wilfully impenetrable, emotionally inaccessible, encased in opaque aspic, saying nothing to me about my life.”

(Mark Beaumont in der britischen Tageszeitung The Guardian)

Als Bonustrack hier Beaumonts Original-Review aus dem – Gott hab ihn selig! – Melody Maker vom September 2000 als Schmähkritik classic (und was für eine Schmähkritik!): … weiter lesen

Der Manic Street Preachers-Bassist und -Songwriter Nicky Wire schaltet sich in die Debatte ein, ob illegales Filesharing gut ist oder nicht. Erstere Position vertritt unter anderem Ed O’Brien von Radiohead, letztere Lily Allen:

“To be honest, I’m just against everything Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien stands for. I don’t even care what’s the cause! I’m so intrinsically opposed to that man, so I’ll go with (…) Lily on that one! (Anm.: hinsichtlich der Filesharing-Debatte)
(…)
When “OK Computer” was selling all the records, they didn’t moan then about selling records. They only took risks afterwards. … weiter lesen

“I think Radiohead are the world’s most overrated band. I especially hate their fans. Self-satisfied pricks who will try and explain to you that you don’t like Radiohead because you don’t understand what they’re doing. I understand what Radiohead are doing, I just think its boring and would rather listen to something else.”
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“I’ve got to say, Radiohead, I’m totally having it, until the little fella starts singing. And then it’s like this big anvil drops on your head and you’re just like “Fucking hell, sorry for enjoying that, you’re right, there are people dying in the world. I’m sorry about that.”
Here’s one thing about Radiohead I’d like to know: what does the tall fella do? What does he do? I know what little Thom is doing, I know what Jonny does, I know what Colin does, I know what the Samaritan does on drums. What do you do?”
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“They’re [Radiohead] middle-class boys worrying about pushing an envelope somewhere, and all that carbon footprint and all that bollocks. Every time there’s a polar bear on his tiptoes on an ice cube in the middle of the Antarctic, you know whose fault that is? Rock stars’. That’s their fault. Any time there’s food running out somewhere– ‘Let’s do a gig. That’ll sort it out. Let’s do a big fucking gig. Let’s fly everybody in from all over the world and pontificate to poor people about how they should be saving the planet.’ Go fucking kiss my ass. It’s very easy to just say, ‘We’re going to become difficult now and challenge our audience.’ I like my audience. They paid for my swimming pool. I’m not fucking challenging anybody.”
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Anmerkung: „Enttäuschung entsteht durch die Nichterfüllung von Hoffnungen, durch den Konflikt zwischen einer Erwartung und dem tatsächlichen Ergebnis.“ Wir reden also nicht von den fünf schlechtesten Alben des Jahres, sondern von fünf, die die – zum Teil hohen – Erwartungen nicht erfüllen konnten.
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