Author: joseph

I posted this on the atease msg board this evening:

a challenge: in 150 words or less, how would you describe the song “2+2=5”? I’m writing an essay on the song for a book. if your description wins, what do you get? nothing, really, other than a citation in the essay (your name immortalized in an academic article that a handful of people will access once every fourteen to sixteen years using the modern language association’s international bibliographic database—that’s about 7 seconds of your fifteen minutes of fame).

BUT seriously. I’m no musician: how would you describe the song? how it moves from the opening chit-chat (from “we’re on” to “that’s a nice way to start jonny”) to the drum machine (i’m guessing that’s what that is) then to a Smiths-like guitar? then to another section? And then? Et cetera. The song isn’t my favorite, but the more I listen to it the more it baffles me sonically, aurally. Soundwise.

And did I mention I hear f-fifteens overhead once a week or so?

This is a double dare, a double dog dare. I dare you. I can’t get these headphones loud enouff.

Readers of this site (both of you, plus the random visitor) can post a description in comments. Thank you.

You can keep what you want
I want none of this
They’re just bad memories
I don’t want

Am I sunshine
You can pack it all up
And be gone
And be gone

If it matters to you
You can sell it all out
If the price feels right
I won’t judge

If you get off your knees
You’ll be out on a breeze
Take a lesson from me
Don’t get stuck on a dream

Lyrics via atease.

The book’s introduction has been translated into Spanish by Javier Morales. Thanks to http://www.revolvingdoors.cl/ for arranging the translation.

The video for “Go to Sleep” is now online here. An article about the video’s making is available at the Massive Software web site.

I have placed a copy of the video for “There, there” and “Pyramid Song” online here.

Radiohead.com now has a blog titled Dead Air Space. This entry mentions a song titled “piggsee” or “pigs ear.” The phrase “to make a pig’s ear” means to do something poorly. The song’s lyrics read, in part:

you got away [here the papyrus is tattered]
but we lie in wait

there are black birds flying in the lobby
theres a black sea of sticky saudi oil
and the governors/commaner in chief are/is [sic]
planning their/his escape
by private jet (courtesay of the commander in [sic, …]

you made a pigs ear
you made a mistake
paid off security
and got through the gate

A reviewer on Amazon.com wrote (in part) about the book:

Perhaps the most disappointing feature of the book is that, in its densely worded 200 pages, it doesn’t even begin to touch on a lot of questions I’ve thought about on my own and discussed over the years with other Radiohead fans in the less wordy context of message boards: the cyclical nature of OK Computer (car crash in tracks 1 and 12); whether the chorus of “Optimistic” (or “Creep” for that matter) is intended as ironic, which is a much harder question than it at first seems; possible Yeats allusions in Go to Sleep; different narrators on OK Computer and the frequent switch of narrator within a single song, and what meaning if any is to be drawn from it; disparate uses of child imagery throughout the album Kid A (title track versus coda to “Idioteque”) and in b-sides like “Fog.” These are not meant to be representative of all the territory this book doesn’t cover, they are just a few of countless small but meaningful areas left unexplored.

The critique, overall, is useful. The car crashes bookending OK Computer, the irony of “Optimistic,” Yeats allusions in “Go To Sleep” (I’d love to know which Yeats poems), and narrator switches (something that’s always interested me as well and that I addressed in the lecture “Radiohead’s America” concerning “2+2=5”). I did want to point out that “child imagery” is discussed in the book’s introduction, pages 2-3 including an endnote. It’s odd the reader mentions “Fog” as that’s a song I quote and discuss. Admittedly, it’s hardly an extensive or intensive discussion.

The book does leave countless small but meaningful areas unexplored, as the reader says—every book does, and any book on Radiohead cannot help but leave stones unturned; the stones are too numerous.

A brief personal update is overdue. This site has been neglected over the past several months (if not past two years). The reason: completion of a dissertation. In late August, I will receive my Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Washington. My dissertation is on Shakespeare, Prose and Verse: Unreadable Forms (the introduction is online). With this degree finished, I am now beginning a job search, hoping to join the faculty at a university here in the U.S., in the U.K. or elsewhere. Next year, I will continue teaching as an instructor at Oregon State University. Importantly, the degree’s completion means, I will be able to return to researching and writing about Radiohead with more frequency than usual. Thanks for continuing to visit the site.

The book has been out for nearly a month now. This microscopic update is to let readers know the book is now available at Powells.com.

I have set Man Ray’s 1923 silent film Le Retour à la raison [UPDATE: UbuWeb is temporarily offline] to “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors”: here.

Man Ray’s film is available at UbuWeb. Some commentary: “The early segments of the film illustrate a technique which Man Ray pioneered in static photography, the rayograph (or photogramme). Here, an object is placed between a light source and photo-sensitive film, in contrast to traditional photography where photographic film captures light reflected off an object. For Le Retour à la raison, Man Ray sought to extend the rayograph technique to a moving image. He sprinkled salt and pepper on one piece of film, pins on another, illuminated the film for a few seconds, then developed the film.”

There is a Wikipedia entry on Man Ray as well as information on a past exhibit at the International Center for Photography.