I am listening to Kid A by Radiohead as I write this.
How good did we have it musically at the end of the 90's?!
As the Britney- Christina pop scene was at its peak, Radiohead and The Verve were at their creative peak and peak of public success?! Really?!
How F'n GREAT did we have it musically at the end of the 90's?!
No matter what your mood or viewpoint, there was something legendary to represent you, and even the stuff meant for a very different core audience would hit you so, so great!
The Radiohead art rock scene was meant more for people who identified emotionally with Grunge, I was pretty much coming from the last open-minded viewpoint to appreciate Radiohead, But still, so deep, so universal and sophistocated was Radiohead that when I got OK Computer it still spoke to me deeply on an emotional level, and even more on an intellectual level, and as me following emotionally what the band was going through on the album like the lead character in a story- a lead character that I knew was what many people of my generation were actually going through out there in the late 90's as I was listening to it.
I can't believe that it has taken me this long to come back to exploring the rest of Radiohead's catalogue!
There is just so much great stuff out there!
I started with Kid A because i have already heard OK Computer, though I lost that CD many moves ago and have not heard the album in years. I will come back to OK Computer. I love that album. But I have never heard Kid A or any of the albums to come after it.
I am embarking on a magnificent odyssey, through a repertoire comparable with that of The Beatles or The Beach Boys (the Pet Sounds-SMiLE side of the band), Pink Floyd or whoever your art-rock gods are! (Early-70's Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis also comes to mind, at least with Kid A! Explore the one if you love the other!)
I will come back to Kid A anytime I need meditative healing of a certain kind! I call OK Computer and Kid A 'post-Apocalyptic intellectual numbness healing music' (but the intellectual part is not numbness (I think! Maybe perhaps in a good way!)) Like a Pink Floyd for a civilization coming down from a bad drug trip that followed a beautiful experience distant in the recent past, needing healing and starting to move on, which is where the Grunge audience was when these albums came out! (Not necessarily from actual drugs!)
OK Computer the semi-acoustic-feeling compositional-oriented version (vaguely more in the territory of The Beatles in Revolver or the White Album, or Simon and Garfunkel), Kid A its trance-electronica-groove-oriented counterpart! (like an electronica jam band, perhaps, only carefully planned)
What a great band, and what a great time in music! I feel privileged to have been there to witness it, and to explore it farther right now as we speak!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. Just came back a few minutes after finishing Kid A, from the first 2 tracks of Urban Hymns- I will be exploring The Verve in full too! What an era in music!
(from the first 3 tracks, I would call Urban Hymns so far a semi-psychedelic 90's White Album of reflection and asking questions to explore and expand your mind, with the narrative coherence and colorfulness of a Revolver, the orchestral sweep of a Highway 61 Revisited, and the grandeur of a Jimi Hendrix)