Radiohead - shameless plagiarist whingers, or sparkling beacon of innovation?

Uh, Radiohead? Never heard of'em. Acoustic Disco band? Hip Hop ensemble covering Serge Gainsbourg songs? Belle And Sebastian spin off band? ;-)

How come Momus gets his own category and Radiohead don't, even though they've had about 20 times more threads?

Because Momus is 'special'.

Sparkling beacon of beauty. I don't know about innovation. I won't make that case. There are some original/innovative aspects, certainly. They are my favorite band and will be for a long time. Kid A and Amnesiac are wonderful. I love how they have integrated their influences into their music. In no way have they "gone up their own arses." I find myself very inarticulate on this topic because it's very close to me. They've had an immeasurable effect upon me.

I think they suck ass. And use other peoples' hoses to do so.

But so-called originality/innovation doesn't seem to be an issue for you since you admittedly like the Chrissie Hynde/Patti Smith hybrid that is Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, and you like The Strokes. So why not just say that you hate Radiohead for aesthetic reasons instead of trying to defend your position by calling them plagiarists?

Melissa, I had a dream about you last night! Or rather, I had a dream that you were in! I don't remember many of the details, I just remember that we desperately had to get either to or from a concert, and you offered to drive us, though protesting that you "couldn't drive very well." Not driving very well entailed driving incredibly fast around incredibly windy and twisty turny roads, swerving and veering around the corners. And you apologised for your driving, saying that the brakes didn't work very well. I remember closing my eyes because I was so scared we were going to crash, swerving around a corner, another car was coming the opposite direction, and it was so close that its slipstream just grazed my arm as it clung to the window to keep me from being slammed into the back of the drivers seat.

I'm not sure what that says, or, indeed, what you are doing turning up in my dreams. !!!

Wow, that is really weird. I thought I was the ILM/ILE poster most likely to fade into the wallpaper, or something.

Incidentally, I don't have my licence but I am a really atrocious driver.

license*

They're not exactly bad, but I miss when they just played rock. They're creative at the price of being much less enjoyable to hear.

"They sailed joyously up their own arses" is too wonderful a description to forsake in favor of my actual opinion, of course.

They were the shitty indie types. And now they are seen as innovative, when all they are doing is switching the computer on and making some nice, very safe, electronic music. At least they are copying some of the records i like.

What is a radiohead? A head made of a radio? A radio with a head on top? A head full of radio buttons? A head which can receive radio stations? An intelligent radio (station)? The upper part of a radio? Or is it just a further evolution of a talking head, something like a singing head?

What I would like to say: before asking subtle questions like Is Thom Yorke an insufferable cunt? we should define the object of the investigation well.

sparkling bacon?

anagrams: a road hide, i dada hero, dear idaho (a much better band).

Pick the best!

*zzzzz*

Wha'!? Oh, I'm sorry. I had fallen asleep because they're so boring.

i'm bored by this thread, but not because of radiohead.

I'm bored of this thread BECAUSE of Radiohead!!! Can't we talk about something else?? Please??

I Dada Head. Thats way better. Radio head is good but not great. I like about 45% of their works.

I used to think it was very cool to dislike Radiohead, and cultivated my aggressive stance against all things Yorke. Now -- and maybe it's simply that we're now two albums further along from the intensely annoying hype-steamroller of OK Computer -- the anti-Radiohead argument seems terribly dull, much more dull than the band itself. They're just not really worth hating. The passion/blood/sweat/tears/curses/etc devoted to screeds against them seems somehow... wasted.

Admittedly, it's unexciting to dislike something so many other people dislike. The only place to be in a polarized debate is in the middle so you can argue with everyone.

I read an awful review of Kid A months ago that declared "Radiohead is for guys who can't suck their own dicks." Head from the radio.

I'm with Lyra in the middle, but not for argumentative purposes. I mean, they're pretty good. In fact, they're pretty solidly good- verging-on great, and if I were handed Amnesiac without ever having heard of them, I imagine I'd say, "Well, here's a pretty nice new band."

The polarized opinions have everything to do with the fact that the band's music is so self-important, which I don't necessarily mean in the bad way: it's just that it asks to be taken frightfully seriously. If you happen to like what they're doing, that ambition will probably elicit your blind devotion; if you're not particularly interested in what they're doing, that ambition will seem utterly insufferable. The question is whether they back it up or not, and the answer is: well, sometimes. They do a pretty good job. But they, much like Oasis, have gotten people to take them seriously largely by taking themselves serious -- the only difference is that while Oasis went around saying they were grand and important, Radiohead make music that casts itself as grand and important. It isn't, necessarily, but it sure acts like it -- and it's played the role well enough to actually become it.

I think they got so caught up in an attempt to capture the sound of other artists that they forgot to capture the really important thing - the spirit. 'Creep' takes the grunge template and exploits it, 'Street Spirit' always sounded to me like it half-inched the melody from 'Blue Jay Way', OK Computer nicks riffs and hooks from Te Beatles willy nilly and ties them to DJ Shadow-esque percussion and Pink Floyd aesthetics, and the last two albums shamelessly ape Aphex Twin etcetera, in terms of the pure sound, but fail so miserably because they don't appear to realise that the best thing about Aphex (for me) is his way with a melody (see 'Flim' and 'IZ-US' as well as all of Richard D James Album) and a barrage of crazy percussion over the top to corrupt it. Other artists get crucified for not stealing things half as blatently as Radiohead

I also have a personal problem with Thom Yorke's attitude and deportment, his whole existential angst schtick, which could be construed by a cynical git to be just another marketting tool. Or, failing that, the whinings of a millionaire acclaimed musician with a wife and baby who still is so fucking greedy and self-interested that he cannot be happy with his lot.

As far as plagiarism goes, I have no problem with bands or artists who sound like other bands or artists, as long as they do it well. I don't think Radiohead do do it particularly well, especially not in light of the last two LPs, and yet their fanbase is still one of the most rabid and pious there is.

Plus I don't like the fact that they stopped writing tunes.

Oh, and my brother used to know Thom Thumb and says he was a snivelling wanker years ago too. Which is ironic 'cos my brother now loves Radiohead.

as if we're expected to listen to a guy who thinks a beat is 'dj shadow percussion' and only has two aphex twin albums. eh.

Actually, I have about five Aphex Twin albums. And I know full-well that DJ Shadow's stuff is almost exclusively sample-based, I was referring to the style of beat he uses, which is something Radiohead explicitly cited as an influence around the time of Ok Computer; ie "we wanted to make a record that sounded like DJ Shadow producing The Beatles." I'm paraphrasing, but that's pretty much what they said.

So before you rubbish my opinion, don't jump to assumptions about what records I may or may not own and what you infer from what I may or may not have said.

wait a minute, dj shadow makes records from samples? whoa! anyway what i was saying is that it seems your entire hiphop 'percussion' context is dj shadow. that, my friend, is called short-sightedness. and next time you're giving aphex examples don't just name his famous album and the two softest songs on the come to daddy ep, it doesn't count. it sounds like you just read a radiohead press release that cited their influences and pitifully tried to use it against them.

My record collection is upstairs, I just typed in the first few things that came off the top of my head. Hang me for it.

Twat.

I think you're both being a bit rude to each other for no good reason. I think also that the new Radiohead albums are about as tuneful as the old ones. But also that the hip-hop drum analogy isn't completely off-base.

apparently when things come off the top of your head they make a pit stop to load up on lame nme review opinions before they make it to the forum.

oh, hi josh.

Jeez, Ethan, are you gonna start jumping in everybody's face if their references aren't cool enough for you now ?

The other day I dropped a reference to Outkast and he made fun of me. We didn't speak for MINUTES.

christ, josh, could you make us sound like MORE of married couple please?

re: whatever, i just thought the irony of the whole thing warranted my intervention. i mean, he's derivatively complaining about radiohead being derivative. that's just too good not to comment on. 'oh, kid a wasn't as good as the rdj album!'. well, duh.

Sorry, dear. You want I should pick up some milk on the way home?

i hope you like vitasoy.

fuckin vegans

I hate to admit that I'm with Nick on this one. When I first picked up Kid A and dropped it into the changer, "Everything In Its Right Place" felt pretty much like an Aphex Twin track that Yorke just happened to contribute vocals to. Which would be very much like him, no? Started with "El Presidente" and continued to appear on more records annually than Jim O'Rourke and John McEntire combined.

But: is the IDM-ish thing necessarily bad? I don't think so. And certainly they weren't simply aping that material, just drawing a really strong and sort of unexpected influence from it. But I do think that a lot of people's amazement over that record was based on their not necessarily knowing that those influences existed -- i.e., thinking that Radiohead invented that.

Then again, I only actually own one record each from DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin. :)

the thing with radiohead that gets people i guess is the self- promoted sense of self-importance which doesn't gel with rather average records. in this sense, this is why oasis have always been their contemporaries and not their opposite

If they'd written some tunes for the last two LPs that moved me in anyway whatsoever, I might relent. But they haven't. Therefore I claim my £5 - Thom Thumb is an insufferable cunt.

Thom is neurotic, not insufferable. And the songs on Kid A and Amnesiac move me more than any other songs ever have.

How many people were amazed by Kid A except Brent DiCrescenzo? He and the handful of others I've encountered all knew of Warp/Mille Plateux/whatever. I've certainly not come across a single review or breathless recommendation claiming that "Everything..." or "Kid A" or "Like Spinning Plates" are on the forefront of experimental music period.

I still think that the "Radiohead are only swiping their ideas from IDM" argument is a red herring, as they were hardly coming up with thoroughly innovative work prior to that. Regardless of its quality, their incorporation of these sorts of ideas into their traditional guitar rock template is as brave as anything they've done in the past, whatever that means.

I was shocked last week when my sister said that Radiohead hadn't produced an album with "proper songs" since The Bends. Surely OK Computer isn't very radical?

I agree with Tim that I didn't find Kid A all that groundbreaking (though I like certain songs), especially in light of all the press surrounding the album -- "Like nothing you've heard before!". My theory is that people wouldn't have taken Kid A to be such a dramatic departure from form if their pr hadn't played it up as such; certainly it's a lot more experimental than OK Computer, but I think the basic song structures are still there.

Yeah, wot she sez.

It bothers some people deeply to not have the same arrangements, I think, Nicole. I.e. guitar-bass-drums-singer on top. So even if the songs ARE structured enough like they used to be, these people might not care or notice.

Actually Nicole my point sort of was that I didn't really see much of that press that you're referring to. The "like nothing you've ever heard before" comments seemed to usually refer to the emotional resonance of the album or somesuch thing. Or maybe I only read relatively enlightened critics - were people really rhapsodising over the beats?

As it stands I actually think RH do deserve props for incorporating ideas from IDM and doing it interestingly (there's just so much margin for error there). No, the result isn't lifechanging but I do think it's a promising and relatively novel approach, and I don't think their outside inspirations are more done-to-death or obvious or cynical than those that go into the creation of any stylistic hybrid.

wot gareth said. i guess the reason that people into electronica (i refuse to use the term 'IDM'!) got annoyed about kid a and amnesiac (listened to em both last night for the first time) is that the radiohead/indie kids had been laughing at them for years and calling their music "weird", "shit", "not music" etc etc cos it doeasnt have any angst ridden lyrics or whatever, then after thom decided to get with the afx thing, it suddenyl validated it......or maybe its just a question of cynicism: is thom really into this new sound or is it just band wagon jumping? i must say its hard to tell, but that thing with dj shadow djing before their gig at wembley arena was a bit......whats the word...er you see what i mean. but is jumping on band wagons bad?

What's better, 'Passion Play' or 'Thick as a Brick'? In ten years, Bill Bailey will be talking about Radiohead on 'Those Kerr-azy Noughties'.

'Passion Play' ? Radiohead haven't written any hourlong single-track epics with fairytale interludes just yet, I think the 'Floyd prog' derivation argument gets a bit too much play ...

well, I could see "Paranoid Android" = "Aqualung" ... ;]