Author: joseph

I am posting the PowerPoint file for the lecture I gave on May 6, 2005 at the University of Warwick on Radiohead’s America. The lecture was part of the America in the British Imagination Conference.

The book’s introduction is now available online. Also, I have been informed the publication date is May 28.

For the lecture on “Radiohead’s America,” I’m doing research on the following image that appeared on Radiohead.com in Dec, 2004:

If any readers know the source of the image’s top clipping, I’d appreciate hearing what it is. In the course of research, I found an interesting exchange from a April 2001 White House Press Briefing. This helps explain, in part, why Condoleezza Rice’s image appears under the sub-heading “oil industry”:

Q Can I ask about Condoleezza Rice? Before she became National Security Advisor, she was on the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation. And Chevron, before she left, named an oil tanker after her. There’s an oil tanker named the Condoleezza Rice. And I’m wondering if — it’s 136-ton oil tanker that carries oil around the world. And given that Chevron has been accused of human rights abuses with the Nigerian Mobile Police against civilians in Nigeria, I’m wondering whether the President thinks it’s wise to have this close a relationship with Chevron.

MR. MCCLELLAN: I think that issue has already been addressed by Dr. Rice, and she will uphold the highest ethical standards in office and that issue —

Q Should the President call the President of Chevron and say, take the name off the tanker?

MR. MCCLELLAN: That issue has been addressed. I think the issue has been addressed.

As many may know, Rice worked as a Chevron director for ten years. Human Rights Watch wrote a letter in 2003 to Chevron Nigeria.

In May 2001, the SF Gate reported the ship was renamed.

Or in the flood
You’ll build an Ark
And sail us to the moon

Dundes, Alan, ed. The Flood Myth. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

“In 1872, a young Assyriologist, George Smith, working in the British Museum, came upon a cuneiform tablet which had been found earlier by archaeologists excavating at Nineveh, and on this table was an account of the flood ‘earlier’ than the biblical account. Before 1872, it had been possible to assume that all the other, various, flood myths reported from different areas of the globe were simply derivative from the biblical narrative” (3-4).

Following is a link to the slides and notes (without music examples) from the April 6 lecture at OSU on Radiohead: osulectradiohead.pdf>. The notes have not been proofread and are disjointed and rambling, like the lecture itself was. Also missing are image credits and a bibliography.

My preparation for the lecture was not as complete as it should have been: part of the weekend immediately prior had been spent in the hospital with my daughter.

I welcome any comments and/or criticisms. One major weakness that will be obvious to readers of this site will be the lecture’s superficiality–many stones are left unturned and even more left untouched. One question not asked and still unanswered: what is Thom Yorke saying at the end of “In Limbo”? My first guess: “Call me.” Online lyric archives so far haven’t given an answer.

Also, another major weakness is the failure to mention and explore the obvious thematic connections between “In Limbo” and “Arpeggi”: lost at sea, bottom of the sea. We fishies. Plus the thematic connections with “The Bends” (a disease associated with the sea) and “Pyramid Song” (jumped in the river) and “Big Boots” (drift all you like / from ocean to ocean).

We fishies. Hitting the bottom to escape is the wrong action to take, it would seem (to “hit the bottom” is an idiomatic phrase for loss or losing. The burden of the sea’s weight above, pressing down. The bottom of the sea would offer escape into a different, heavy, dark world. But out of what? The place where eyes turn “me.” From the edge of the earth.

UPDATE: Some text is cut off when the PowerPoint file is rendered as a PDF file. Here’s a link to the PowerPoint file itself.

“Arpeggi,”is a new Radiohead song, premiered on March 27, as reported by at ease.

“Arpeggi” is the Italian plural for the term “arpeggio.” “Arpeggio” is defined by the OED as the “employment of the notes of a chord in rapid succession instead of simultaneously; a chord thus played or sung.” “Arpeggi” is not listed in the OED as an English plural.

The term “arpeggio” derives from “arpeggiare” meaning to play upon the harp, a term deriving from “arpa” meaning harp. The first appearance of “arpeggio” in English dates to 1742 with Nathan Bailey’s An universal etymological English dictionary.

At Ease reports Jonny Greenwood will debut “Superhet Popcorn Receiver” this April with the BBC Concert Orchestra. There is a schematic here for a 40 Meter Popcorn Superhet Receiver. “Superhet” is short for “superheterodyne.” Superheterodyne receivers are described more generally here.

As reported before by at ease, vapourbrothers.com has two TMGLMOAT blps. Today there appears to be three new (previously unreleased?) Kid A/Amnesiac era blips. They are madness, ghost bear, and condiment.

The book’s cover:

I will be lecturing on Radiohead at Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR on April 6 as part of the Craft of Writing Series. The lecture will be held in the Memorial Union’s Joyce Powell Leadership Center from 5-6:30PM. An abstract:

“Into Radiohead, or How to Disappear Completely in Music, Art and Politics”

This multimedia lecture is part of an on-going investigation of the music and art of Radiohead, a five-member English music group. The presentation outlines the project’s beginning and explores how one thread was followed through the labyrinth of influences and allusions in the band’s songs, cover art, videos and web sites. Together, these influences and allusions are read as an elaborate response to and critique of the twenty-first century’s commercial and political pressures. During the lecture, we will lose ourselves several places in the maze Radiohead has constructed—high places, low places including but not limited to: New Orleans funeral-march jazz, Cy Twombly’s art, Shakespeare’s Pericles, Jenny Holzer’s sloganeering, early and late twentieth-century electronic music (from the ondes martenot to Brian Eno), Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dante’s hell, urban myths, Greek mythology, George Orwell’s 1984, current American politics, The Smiths, Anselm Kiefer’s charred landscapes, Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etchings, and the BBC Shipping Forecast.