"OK Computer": Classic Or Dud?

I had this to say about it last year, in part:

I hate OK Computer. Not the album. I love the album. I hate what it has become. I hate what it stands for. I hate everything that has been heaped on it. I hate it as much as I suspect the band hates it. Ten years on from creating ‘the greatest album ever‘ would get a little frustrating after a while, especially when you’re doing better work.

....

I want to just hear this album again without thinking about how it’s been nailed up there now, crucified, used by everyone, those anthropophagi blood-drunk on their own idiot communion. FOR FUCK’S SAKE. How many bands stopped here, cloned it and made it awful precisely because they made it so dully tasteful? How many fans? How many writers? How many polls? How many of them listened to this album, had their breakdowns, thought rock and roll had come to save them again, then decided that when the later albums came out that all that could be done was to play this album again instead?

I can’t even hear “Let Down” again and my god do I adore that song. But it’s swathed in part of the whole mystique, its crystalline tones and pitch-perfect slow slide wrapped up in the gossamer of the salvation of the Entertainment Weekly/Q/Mojo/NPR nation. It’s the most beautiful mummy around.

It’s drained drier than everything from the sixties I was trying to escape from being forced down my throat at a certain point in the late eighties.

“Why can’t they sound like their old stuff?” the cry has continually gone up since then.

Yes precisely, dip the band in aspic as well as your copy of the album. Well done. THANKS.

(Now I know how people think about me going on about Loveless forever.)

Reading that was like looking at an optical illusion.

Hmm, now I'm singing the Chameleons.

Stephen; my first instinct tells me I can't pick! Right now I might, if forced, choose ///Codename:Dustsucker but only because The Black Meat came on the Zeppelin earlier and I loved it.

good choice Nick. if i had to pick a Bark Psychosis though, i'd go with Game Over -- you get a bit of Hex, a bit of Independency, a few other nice tracks... seems like a good career summary up til that point.

i understand you have a special connection with that later album though. :)

Sick Mouthy has been loading his iPod with Zeppelin. This is a wonderful development, this is wonderful.

Allowing context to spoil great albums is a shame.

Indeed.

The 'context' is precisely what has made it a 'great album' in a lot of eyes, though -- or at least given it that role. It may be a shame but it kinda helps to step back and ask yourself why it is considered to be what it is, and whether or not you have contributed to it, unconsciously or not. I brought up that reference to Loveless for a very good reason.

Allowing context to spoil great albums is a shame.

but "great" albums can't exist without context!

Yeah, but the greatness of a particular set of sounds can't ever be reasonably reduced to extramusical baggage. I guess in music it's just not easy for a lot of people to separate process from product/result, given the varying connotations.

Yeah, but the greatness of a particular set of sounds can't ever be reasonably reduced to extramusical baggage.

When is there an intrinsic 'greatness of a particular set of sounds' separable from context and interpretation? If that's not what you mean, though, it's not clear.

I guess what I'm saying is, in the same way a lot of people tend to agree on the attractiveness of particular phenotypes on other people, I don't find it hard to believe that a great quantity of people find a particular album's SOUND genuinely awesome, independent of extramusical baggage.

Never said it was separable from context and interpretation. Just saying the interpretation of sounds isn't always based on how cool others think it is.

But yeah, I get that the extramusical baggage of RH can be really grating.

Let me rephrase that:

I guess what I'm saying is, in the same way a lot of people tend to agree on the attractiveness of particular phenotypes on other people, I don't find it hard to believe that a great quantity of people find a particular album's SOUND genuinely awesome, independent of how cool/great others think it is.

I got into OK Computer around October 1997. Within a few weeks, I was pretty happy that I had discovered my favorite album of that year. What I had not counted on was the hype that would follow. I considered it a great album without really knowing anything else about Radiohead besides "Creep" and that the Paranoid Android video was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. That was pretty much all the context I needed to consider it a great album.

^Same here, except that I had never even heard "Creep". I had an empty musical childhood.

independent of how cool/great others think it is.

Yes, but how independent is a listener from that now? It's damn near impossible, a new listener can't *but* encounter that for the most part. Billstevejim's post is good because it shows a dividing line you can't ignore now -- something that happened early on before the hype (though I actually have to disagree even there to an extent, I was already reading encomiums for it before its release) versus something now inseparable from it.

Again, I invoke Loveless for a damn good reason. I was in the same boat. Now the thing is equally praised and pasted into the canon. Do you think it can be approached in quite the same way I did? Irrevocably, absolutely not.

Right. It's too absolutist to think that all, or even most, of the love comes exclusively from the hype that followed: trite dystopian interpretations associated to a "rock opus," etc. I can understand the aversion to THAT, though.

(oops, xpost)

It's too absolutist to think that all, or even most, of the love comes exclusively from the hype that followed

Folks, what magical wonderland are you all living in that somehow OKC -- or ANYTHING 'classic' -- didn't derive from some sort of 'hype' that created the context for you to receive it in the first place, whether it was the academic standard for 'great books' or because Mojo keeps running the picture of a band on nearly every cover of theirs? I can't believe I'm still arguing this point with people in 2008!

What if you're exposed to a lot of negative press and you STILL like something? Why do I like Germaine Tailleferre if all I read from her in the musical history books? is she's sub-Debussy drivel? You're assuming it's a one-way love-fest. In a lot of more pretentiously self-serious circles of academic music, I've read nothing but negative things about this album. Also based on an aversion to people's love for this, by the way.

You're turning this into semantic quibbling when I guess I interpreted billstevejim's post to mean that it would be a shame that a lot of people dismissed this album purely borne out of an aversion to the hype it's gotten.

When, you know:

the hype it's gotten =/= the music

what magical wonderland are you all living in that somehow OKC -- or ANYTHING 'classic' -- didn't derive from some sort of 'hype'

The magical wonderland in which we don't automagically & certainly assume people's intentions for being drawn to something. Somewhere where we don't feel particularly compelled to define soundwaves and musical structures out of existence & strictly through their interpretations in rock magazines.

Have you ever heard a sound and thought to yourself "fuck, that's BEAUTIFUL" without following it with the question of what, say, MOJO thought of it? Does MOJO exist in everyone's life in this magical wonderland?

Bimble; I'm not loading an iPod WITH Zeppelin; I'm loading one FOR A Zeppelin - the weird squashed oval speaker dock on the left here - http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v208/135/62/223304663/n223304663_4438074_7453.jpg

Em hates Zeppelin and the Zeppelin is hers, so... no Zeppelin. There is some Hendrix, though.

What if you're exposed to a lot of negative press and you STILL like something?

Then it means you and I are agreeing on something more than maybe we both realize. Namely, that standards are artificial, and that presumptions of what is 'great' and what isn't comes down to individual decisions within larger contexts, and that those larger contexts are ultimately unavoidable because however much the music (or piece of art or whatever) is not the hype/discussion/debate about it, there is no other way to situate it -- to call something a 'classic' or not -- without it, even to yourself.

Can we agree on that at least? You want to call this quibbling, fine, but I prefer to think of it as a necessarily distanced view on one's own judgment, and I don't see how it contradicts billstevejim's post.

Somewhere where we don't feel particularly compelled to define soundwaves and musical structures out of existence & strictly through their interpretations in rock magazines.

At no point did I define anything out of existence, thanks very much. I apologize if you feel that is the case.

As for your last Mojo question, could you please stop missing the forest for the trees? My complaint is about the ease in which objets d'art can become fetishized and sterile as a result of their elevation in collective judgment. *That*, I think, we can agree on.

I think my problem with Radiohead in general, and particularly OK Computer, is that emotional they;ve never hit me all that hard, and aesthetically I think people have done similar things with more... oomph, in almost every area that R'head have moved in. Thus the general reception (a literate proclamation of "OMG!" by people who, often, don't listen to that much music besides) leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. In 1997 it was a pitched fight, for me, between OKC, Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, and Urban Hymns. Jason wins by several lengths.

I was being a jerk with that last MOJO question, obv. Ok, we can agree on those points, Ned.

Scik Mouthy, love your Erte poster.

Ok, we can agree on those points, Ned.

It's all good, thanks.

i saw them last night at the all points west festival in jersey. best show i've ever been to.

In 1997 it was a pitched fight, for me, between OKC, Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, and Urban Hymns. Jason wins by several lengths.

Obviously to me though, Radiohead and Spiritualized are going for very different moods on those two albums. In no way does OK Computer approach the hazy, narcotic splendor of Ladies & Gentlemen, nor does it try to do so. In the same way, Ladies & Gentlemen is not going for a creatively leftfield take on Britpop and stadium rock. There's no way I could compare these albums and choose a favorite.

And that Verve album really really blows, in retrospect.

How many of them listened to this album, had their breakdowns, thought rock and roll had come to save them again, then decided that when the later albums came out that all that could be done was to play this album again instead?

I strongly agree with this, though.

A corollary to this is how I felt about most reviews of Jonny Greenwood's soundtrack to Bodysong when it came out: they seemed to be stuck in this sort of dull, rock crit ontology, never getting over the idea that Jonny --- an integral part of the RH monster --- wrote the music; never really reviewing the music qua music. Just describing ways in which the music didn't really fit into their rock crit schemes. In fact, many of them complained about the "lack of guitars". Heh. And yes, this was post-Kid A.

i saw them last night at the all points west festival in jersey. best show i've ever been to.

My friends who attended felt the same way. I was a little jealous. But $100 buys me a lot of beer.

In fact, many of them complained about the "lack of guitars". Heh. And yes, this was post-Kid A.

Great grief.

You know, from the perspective of a girl and someone who bought OK Computer when she was 13 years old after hearing a thirty second sample of Paranoid Android on the radio that just said "Radiohead - OK Computer: buy it this Tuesday", I'm finding this thread kind of hilarious. I know all y'all old male music geek types read a lot of rock crit, but newsflash: you aren't the world. This idea that everyone is steeped in rock crit (particularly of the MOJO variety) is pretty ridic. I can't remember the last time I actually read an album review for anything more than a brief skim of a description of what the music sounded like so I could potentially add it to a list of things to check out, nor was reading reviews *ever* really part of my routine.

Melissa OTFM

you aren't the world

I'm not the children?

More seriously -- not questioning your experience at all, Melissa, it matches with billstevejim's. But compare it to, say, a 13-year-old now 'getting into music' in the broadest sense of the term. (Personal experience being its own bias but that was around the age that I first gave in.) OKC isn't some new thing for that person, it's essentially classic rock, for better and worse (I'd argue for worse).

It is and it isn't. The thirteen-year-old also understands, through interviews and press clippings, that Radiohead is also "iconoclastic," despite the Number One albums.

Clearly we need a thirteen year old. Someone risk arrest and get one here.

Once again, this is from my perspective as a girl who's never been into that side of music geekery, but the classic rock canon means very little aside from the fact that that album will be easier to find in a record store or more likely to go on a list of things to check out. Doesn't sound any different, doesn't change my reaction. I have the same ears whether I'm listening to The Beatles or something that came out of a record label run out of someone's living room.

I enjoy the same chord progressions, the same textures, the same harmonies.

Which is great, Melissa, but then let me ask you this -- how do you seek out new stuff to listen to? What are the channels, the tools, again, the context? There's *something* -- so what is it?

It is and it isn't. The thirteen-year-old also understands, through interviews and press clippings, that Radiohead is also "iconoclastic," despite the Number One albums.

This assumes that the 13 year old gives a shit about interviews and press clippings again, though.

And again, how do you think said putative *current* thirteen year old is hearing this stuff, and what perspective are they bringing to bear? They do not exist in a vacuum!

Yes, but the opposite of a vacuum isn't necessarily ONLY rock crit.

There is no magical process in which those chord progressions, textures & harmonies acquire strictly sociopolitical/cultural/canonical connotations---with the same intensity.

Not even colors or more imaginative evocations as a response to something as abstract and wide as sound? Just weird rankings? How fucking boring. Almost autistic, really. Strikes me as very far from reality.

I just check out stuff! Scroll through new release schedules on record labels and sites, skim a review here and there looking for key words that catch my interest, look out for recommendations from like-minded musicians and people, and check out soundclips on places like Amazon and Aquarius Music. Just a hodgepodge of sources. Sometimes people just emailing me albums out of the blue. I don't really know what the hype is the same way I don't know what the sports scores are.

Yes, but the opposite of a vacuum isn't necessarily ONLY rock crit

Quite right of course. I was actually thinking about how many bands -- most of whom are unsurprisingly dullards but hey -- have sent me random Myspace invites over the years, and how many of them put Radiohead in their influences list, more often than not rubbing up against other even more well-established names like U2, REM, etc., and tracking back to the Beatles and the like. An anecdotal story, obv,. but I'd say suggestive of the way orthodoxy rapidly becomes a closed loop.