"OK Computer": Classic Or Dud?

good point, Ned.

I like the Lamb lies down on Broadway a damn sight more.

then why listen to an album with "Paranoid Android" as a single?

Ned, what do you mean by this? I haven't heard Lamb, not sober and paying attention at least, so maybe it would make more sense if I had. I know you don't really like The Wall and do like some Genesis (and like this album) so I don't think this is supposed to be a dis.

There's lots of great stuff on this album. I really like the sprawling riff in "Airbag", and the delayed guitar sounds and electronic bits all over the record. The first six songs are flawless, the next three are junk, and by then I'm not usually in a mood for the remainder. Albums are too long anyway.

It isn't. If I had to break it down to individual elements I suspect that my head would hurt but if I had to try and spell it out a bit more off the top of my head, The Wall is strictly internalized angst that begs for a conflation of narrator/creator (ie Mr. Waters) whereas Lamb, while pushing for some sort of narrative connection, feels more fragmented and more self-consciously divided, separating Gabriel from the chosen role of his Nuyorican lead figure. Inasmuch as I've never identified Yorke directly with his subject matter -- I've NEVER thought he was specifically the figure 'telling' the songs, when I've cared to focus in on that aspect -- I think it bears comparing there, say. Similarly I also get much more of a sense of a band creating Lamb in the way that a band created OKC where The Wall is One Guy and his obsessions translated for the reduced-to-session-musicians folks to record -- with the exceptions notably being Gilmour's efforts (and unsurprisingly "Comfortably Numb" is my favorite song from the album for that reason).

The marketing degree bit is mostly acknowledging that if there is a thematic obsession on OKC and Radiohead at that time in particular, it was the whole busines of buying/selling/commodification, not that that's alien to a lot of what else they've done. But the whole two figures shaking hands and the trashed/altered celebrations of airports and travel and 'business' and everything else in the artwork, etc. It was all VERY carefully conceived and then sold, and all the reflexiveness in the world on the band's part (or Yorke's in particular if one likes) -- thus Meeting People is Easy as well -- doesn't change or hide that. Which is obvious, granted.

Still, I'd have to relisten to Lamb again to see if they tried to do something as ridiculously and yet wondrously obvious in terms of Waters Floyd cramming a DISCO number into their two disc slab o' pain (and scoring a massive hit as a result!).

Radiohead have turned into one of those bands where I actually think each new album of theirs is better than the last one.

I agree with this completely, though, with each new album, a better Radiohead is further from what I need

I find seeing them live I'm utterly impatient with most of the OKC and earlier songs -- one or two exceptions aside, like "Fake Plastic Trees," they could just play stuff from Kid A onward and I'd have a great time.

This was me. But now I've come to realize that OKC is a great pop record just to listen to, not as some Panacea For Post-Modern Blues.

i've barely touched any rock music in a year now, and still i spin "ok computer" when needed.

No Surprises is quite beautiful, though.

There's not a track on it I'd skip, there's not a moment where I think 'eh, get on with it'; it feels utterly natural in a way that few records do, the way parts move around one another, little hints of melody sneak out from behind the vocals and the bulk of backing. I don't think that's just because it's familiar: it's not comforting&well-remembered, I can't predict it, but it fits together. There is no way it could be any better, and in that sense it's polished; yet it isn't bland or immaculate, the anger to it isn't po-faced but caustic, the resignation isn't ironic but almost glorifies in itself. There's that guitar noise in it, soaring, which has always made me think of hope and the spiralling flight of birds or flames into the sky.

And 'exit music' still makes me cry.

(plus it's a fucking huge leap from the Bends, which is just an indie rock record.)

(hahahaha purple prose attack! for my next trick I will explain how Richey James Feels My Pain--
& thus here is the true glory of OKC: it makes me fourteen again.)

see, some of us hate feeling that way

One key reason why they're so dull.

oops, xpost.

The statement "you are insane" can only hint at my frustratingly intense disagreement.

Why the FUCK wasn't "Let Down" ever released as a single??
-- Unknown User (unknownuse...), June 5th, 2004.

it was pushed on radio a bit but the band was supposedly horrified with the video that was created for it.
-- Anthony Miccio (anthonymicci...), June 5th, 2004.

Makes sense. I remember hearing Pinfield on 120 Minutes saying that they originally intended to make a video for every song. Also I remember around the time "Karma Police" was released as a video, most of the rock stations were playing "Let Down" instead. I don't think it was until much later in the year that there was any demand to add "Karma Police" to radio playlists.

I remember returning to the States from a year abroad (i.e., Germany by way of Glastonbury, etc.; circa 1997) and weathering a small, but insistent, chorus of naysayers characterizing Radiohead in general, and OK Computer in particular, as nothing more than Pink Floyd II.

I found and find (see above) this critique/characterization puzzling because, as a fan of Floyd in general, and WYWH, Meddle, Animals, The Final Cut, The Wall, and DSOTM, in particular -- I don't hear the sonic parallel(s). Sure, OK Computer is a 'concept' album and some Floyd albums are, too -- but sonically?

As I own the above (and then some) Floyd LPs, might one of the choir step forward and do some one-to-one matching for me? I'd love to make a back-to-back playlist of the allegedly infringing Radiohead tracks and their Floyd origins.