Category: Uncategorized

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.

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.