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Message 102: Television Commercials

The title of Radiohead’s compilation of music videos is Seven Television Commercials. The experimental video artist Nam June Paik wrote the following about television commericals generally:

“Plato through the word, or the conceptual, expresses the deepest thing.
St. Augustine thought the sound, or the audible, expresses the deepest thing.
Spinoza through the vision, or visible, expresses the deepest thing.
This argument is settled for good.
TV commercials have all three.”

This is quoted on page 223 of The Worlds of Nam June Paik (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2000).

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Message 101: Knives out

“Knives out” is a phrase commonly used to describe the hostile stance of a critic or critics. For example, note the title of these news articles in The Guardian, The Observer, and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Message 100: Protected?

The following is excerpted from an email Koyder sent to me in May 2003:

“Today Greenplastic posted a picture of the album’s promo copy http://www.greenplastic.com/news/archives/00000460.html> and one thing about it attracted my attention in particular. Notice the logo on the back side of the album cover, which is also printed in 1:1 scale on the CD’s front – a white circle with a black triangle inscribed in it, in which another circle with a triangle is inscribed. It’s the logo that you can see on all digitally protected CDs http://news.com.com/2100-1023-958353.html>. At first I thought ‘HTTT’ would be yet another record tainted by this brilliant user-friendly technology, but then it occurred to me that, since the logo constitutes the CD’s front, it may be the actual logo of ‘HTTT’. Minding the album’s title, it seems fairly reasonable.”

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Message 99: Radiohead.tv

Radiohead.tv, an official band site, is up for viewing. Once registered, you are sent a link to clips of the video for “There There.” An excerpt:

close-up of Thom's face

From early viewing, it appears the video will narrate the song to a certain extent. As the opening lyrics read:

in pitch dark i go walking in your landscape
broken branches trip me as i speak

Throughout the video, Thom Yorke is walking in a dark, treed landscape:

Thom walking in dark landscape

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Message 98: Hail to the Thieves

In these excerpts from a biography on Radiohead’s Capitol Records site, the band discusses the new album’s title.

Jonny Greenwood: “We’d never name a record after one political event like Bush’s election. The record’s bigger than that. Hopefully it will last longer than Bush unless he’s getting a whole dynasty together, which is always possible. One of the things Thom’s singing about is whether or not you choose to deal with what’s happening. There are a lot of lines about escaping and avoiding issues, about keeping your head down and waiting. Everybody feels like that from time to time as much as they feel frustration about things they can’t change. It’s a confusing time right now but that doesn’t mean that we’re issuing any kind of manifesto. It’s more like we’re summing up what it’s like to be around in 2003.”

Thom Yorke: “We don’t have to stand on a soap-box and preach because hopefully we’re channelling it through the new record. We didn’t start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what’s going on around us. The title of the record goes so much deeper than just being some anti-Bush propaganda. If we got into a situation where people start burning our records, then bring it on. That’s the whole point. The gloaming has begun. We’re in the darkness. This has happened before. Go read some history.”

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Message 97: Listening, Download

Author: Radiohead
Title: There There
Copyright: 2003 All Rights Reserved

[56k]: URL:
http://boss.streamos.com/download/capi001/radiohead/therethere/audio/therethere_da56.asf

[100k]: URL:
http://boss.streamos.com/download/capi001/radiohead/therethere/audio/therethere_da100.asf

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Message 96: Listening, Stream

Author: Radiohead
Title: There There
Copyright: 2003 All Rights Reserved

[56k]: URL: http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/capi001/radiohead/therethere/audio/therethere_da56.asx

[100k]: URL:
http://boss.streamos.com/wmedia/capi001/radiohead/therethere/audio/therethere_da100.asx

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Message 95: Quote

These words held up by Stanley Donwood during the Dec 18 2002 webcast (see “paper signs”) give a pointedly political cast to the album’s title. These words, among many others (for example, “I am in hiding / I’m not coming out / until I’m ready / turn off the light / before you go” and “Hello my name is / worm buffet”) were held up to the camera.

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Message 94: Hail To The Thief

Radiohead has announced that Hail to the Thief, their sixth album, will be released on June 9 in the UK and June 10 in the US. The title overtly alludes to (and overtly subverts) “Hail to the Chief,” a song traditionally played by the United States Marine Band as the Presidential march. The following is excerpted from the U.S. Marine Band web site:

“Created for a stage adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s romantic poem, The Lady of the Lake, “Hail to the Chief” was written by English composer James Sanderson. The melody may have been borrowed from an old Scottish air, and the song was first performed in the United States in 1812.

“The first time “Hail to the Chief” was used to honor a President of the United States occured on February 22, 1815, in Boston. With new lyrics and a revised title, “Wreaths for the Chieftain,” it was sung at a service to celebrate the birthday of George Washington, who had died 16 years earlier.

“On July 4, 1828, the Marine Band performed the song at the ground-breaking ceremony for the excavation of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal attended by President John Quincy Adams. This was the first time the piece was used in association with a living President.”

You can listen to “Hail to the Chief” here.

AT EASE has one of the more complete explanations of the album’s title. It reads, in part:

“The title of Radiohead’s sixth album ‘Hail To The Thief’ is also an anti-George W. Bush slogan used by protesters at the end of the controversial election campaign that put him into the White House. The phrase ‘Hail To The Thief’ was coined by protesters at the end of the 2000 US Presidential election, when controversy famously surrounded Bush’s rise to office. The battle between Bush and Democrat candidate Al Gore came to a bitter end, with the result in the key state of Florida dogged by recounts, amid allegations of unfairness in the voting process.

“On the day of his inauguration Bush was greeted in Washington by thousands of protesters with banners, some of who shouted, ‘Hail to the thief, our commander in chief’. The phrase has now become well used in anti-Bush circles. A website, www.hail-to-the-thief.org, that casts a cynical eye over US policy is active and goes under the banner ‘Hail to the Thief! Love your country. Never trust its government.’ A number of books and articles have also been written, perhaps most famously ‘Mediaocracy 2000 -Hail to the Thief’ by Danny Schechter, which looks at the role of the media in the election.”

Hail To The Thief is also a repeated line of the song “2+2=5.”

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Message 93: Response

The editors of Postmodern Culture have published a letter commenting on my antivideo essay. The letter from Jeremy Arnold is followed by my response to it.