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.