Radiohead Radiohead Radiohead

Parlophone Unveil Radiohead 'Best Of' Track-Listing

2008-04-14T13:12:00.001+07:00

The first ever Radiohead ‘best of’, which spans their 12-year career at Parlophone records, is to be released in June.

Entitled, ‘Radiohead: The Best Of’, the double album includes singles, album tracks, a b-side and live favourites.

‘Paranoid Android’, ‘Creep’, 'Idioteque' and ‘The Bends’ are just three of the songs that will feature on the retrospective.

The album will be available on double CD and 4x 12” vinyl from June 2nd.

The band left Parlophone Records - a subdivision of EMI – last year following the record labels takeover by private equity company Terra Firma.

The band’s latest album, ‘In Rainbows’, was initially released as a pay-what-you-want download for fans.

It has since been released on traditional formats in UK via XL Recordings.
http://www.gigwise.com/news/42006/parlophone-unveil-radiohead-best-of-tracklisting

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2008-03-31T10:17:00.000+07:00

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Radiohead to headline Lollapalooza!

2008-03-11T15:50:00.000+07:00

Radiohead, NIN to headline Lollapalooza?
The stars are rumoured to perform at the Chicago Festival
Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are rumoured to be headlining this year's Lollapalooza Festival.

Promoters of the festival, which is set to take place at Chicago's Grant Park August 1-3, have not yet confirmed the lineup. But "industry sources" told the Chicago Tribune that Radiohead have been booked as the "centrepiece of the festival".

They also said that Nine Inch Nails will give their first Chicago performance in several years at the event, which was founded by Perry Farrell.

Last year's headliners included Muse, Pearl Jam and Daft Punk.

More than 100 artists are expected to perform at this year's Lollapalooza, with the lineup to be confirmed in the coming weeks.

Radiohead Rocks!

2008-02-20T11:17:00.001+07:00

The fact: Radiohead's latest album, "In Rainbows," certainly cleared up any doubt that the band can still produce tasteful, energetic, and invigorating songs after being on hiatus for so long. Not to say that people weren't anticipating more ingenious chaos. But how could Radiohead possibly deflate an ever-growing critique that they were constantly trying to out due themselves?

While not exactly on the "Ok Computer" or "Kid A" creative pedestal, "In Rainbows" solidifies what the band does best: continuing to push the envelope on modern rock songwriting and giving birth to interesting and clever repertoires. With "In Rainbows," we aren't given the obscure kind of musical passion found in any latter albums but a more unambitious simple album that, still holding true to their nature, sends off a more uncomplicated splendor and a much more chilled vibe. The expectation was met with an album that gave life to the 90's Radiohead that the masses had grown so strongly in love with. Thom Yorke leaves behind his experimental influence, letting Phil Selway's and Colin Greenwood's rhythms and Ed O'Bryan's guitar work stick out. It's nice to hear that "band" sound again. Songs such as "All I Need" and "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" offer such generosity.

Breaking off from their major label contract this past year, they released "In Rainbows" exclusively online for which customers could pay what they feel. For a band to be at the zenith of their career, yet control the strings of the mainstream marionette, sends out a bold message that they aren't out to change the world commercially but to write amazing songs that manage to impact the modern rock audiences…and somehow the world.

In short, "In Rainbows" is one of the best albums of the year and shouldn't go unheard. Even if you are not the biggest Radiohead fan around this is definitely a move in the right step for today's market.

KID A

2008-02-20T11:10:00.003+07:00

Everything in its Right Place
Kid A
The National Anthem
How to Disappear Completely
Treefingers
Optimistic
In Limbo
Idioteque
Morning Bell
Motion Picture Soundtrack

Released 10/02/2000 UK, 10/03/2000 US & Canada
Produced by Radiohead and Nigel Godrich.

The band started work on the follow-up to 1997's critically acclaimed OK Computer in late 1998 and recently finished up recording this Spring. They started work at Medly Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, and have since spent time in Studio Guillaume Tell, near Pairs, and then to Gloucestershire, England.
Notes:
Kid A entered the US album charts at #1.
CDNow review
With Kid A, Radiohead has made the ultimate 3 a.m. stoner-headphone album, one that marks an entirely logical progression from -- if not necessarily an improvement upon -- the techno-but-not-really O.K. Computer.

Kid A is an airy, concept-heavy work that is at times breathtakingly lovely, and at times maddeningly obtuse. Occasionally, it feels less like a rock record and more like a museum piece, and as a work of art, it's laudable. As an actual, listener-friendly offering, it leaves something to be desired: It's precisely the sort of record a band makes when it has endless amounts of time and money, and has spent long periods of time being told what geniuses its members are.

That Radiohead is the best band of its generation is hardly worth questioning, and even considering the frequent grandiloquence of Kid A, the band's reach never exceeds its grasp. But despite the longing made real by Thom Yorke's aching vocals, there's a coldness at the record's bleak, brittle heart. Kid A is sweeping and gorgeous, and ultimately more admirable than likeable. Much more dependent on organs and keyboards than its predecessors, it's filled with long, bleep-and-loop-heavy instrumental suites, tracks that build to horn- or string-filled crescendos, atmospheric songs that go nowhere, and others (such as "Ideoteque") that border on straight electronica, with the occasional rocker (the chugging, marvelous "Optimistic") mixed in.

In many ways, the masterful Kid A is one of the year's finest records, but anyone who misses the "Fake Plastic Trees"-era Radiohead -- back when the band was just an inspired alternative rock band and not a breathing homage to artistic abstraction -- won't find much comfort here.

In Rainbows Remixes

2008-02-13T17:00:00.001+07:00

Amplive's Rainydayz Remixes, an 8-track collection featuring remixes of Radiohead's historic seventh album, In Rainbows.

The songs are available in a zip file below and feature verses courtesy of Too $hort, MC Zumbi of Zion I, Chali2na of Jurassic 5, and Del the Funky Homosapien. download Amplive's Rainydayz Remixes

2008-02-02T16:12:00.000+07:00

Leave it to British powerhouse Radiohead to spice things up in a dismal music industry that has become blander than an Amish wedding.

Since their legendary breakthrough album in 1997, "OK Computer," Radiohead has not only revamped music, but it has recently begun to revolutionize the business itself by making it obsolete.

In October 2007 Radiohead surprised fans on its Web site by suddenly announcing that its long-awaited new album, titled "In Rainbows," was complete.

And as if that weren't enough to get people roused, Radiohead also revealed that fans could pay whatever amount they wanted for the new album.

They probably should've warned fans to sit down before writing that message, don't you think? Pay-what-you-want - it sounds like a plot left out of "Forrest Gump."

Well, stupid is as stupid does, and if that's the case, Radiohead's stupidity certainly paid off.

Living up to its name as the most experimental and innovative band in rock, Radiohead has created a masterpiece that is (dare I say it?) better than "OK Computer."

"In Rainbows" is Radiohead at its rockin' finest, filled with all the moody atmospheres of "Kid A" and "Amnesiac," as well as the lyrical embodiment and melodic diction of "OK Computer." From the frantic "Bodysnatchers" to the serene atmosphere of "House of Cards," "In Rainbows" surpasses all expectations after the lackluster "Hail to the Theif" in 2003.

Even though most of these songs already made their debut on previous tours, Radiohead worked its magic in the studio by tweaking some things and adding bits, and it has now produced some of its best work in a decade. "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi," in particular, is a song that Thom Yorke and company have been messing around with for years, originally titled "Weird Fishes," but the final product is one of beauty as the song builds up to the climax that is "Arpeggi."

This is just one of the many highlights that makes "In Rainbows" so memorable. So, what was the motive behind Radiohead's bold decision to give fans the freedom to pay what they want?
http://media.www.villanovan.com/media/storage/paper581/news/2008/01/31/Entertainment/Radiohead.Experiment.Continues-3177617.shtml

In Rainbows Albums of 2007

2008-02-02T16:07:00.000+07:00

If you want to know the best bands, albums and songs of 2007, you don't need to ask a journalist any more. They'll just say Arcade Fire or Radiohead, in any case. No, what you want to do is ask more than 600 MP3 bloggers, since they're the new online tastemakers deciding what's hot and what's not in the music world.

Which is exactly what MP3 blog aggregator Hype Machine has done. It's been rooting through the archives of more than 600 blogs to produce definitive lists of the top 50 bands, albums and songs of 2007. The top band is, er, Arcade Fire, and the top album is, ahem, Radiohead's 'In Rainbows'. Okay, so maybe the bloggers aren't so different from the journalists.

Welling Up - A film score and an orchestral work by Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead

2008-01-29T12:32:00.000+07:00

Until now, Greenwood, a thirty-six-year-old native of Oxford, England, has been known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Radiohead. But he shouldn’t be mistaken for one of those rock stars, like Paul McCartney, who get by in the classical realm with a little help from their musically literate friends. Greenwood is better understood as a composer who has crossed over into rock. Trained as a violist, he worked seriously at writing music in his youth, and had just embarked on studies at Oxford Brookes University when, in 1991, Radiohead was signed by the EMI record label.

He dropped out of college to join the band on tour. Within a few years, Radiohead had become a creative colossus, and Greenwood’s skill at orchestration and his mastery of unusual instruments—he is one of the few living adepts of the ondes Martenot, an early electronic-music device—have augmented the band’s maguslike aura.

Greenwood has resumed composing in the past few years, although his output is so far small: a score for the documentary “Bodysong,” with expert and soulful writing for string quartet; “smear,” an edgy, eerie piece for instruments and electronics; and “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” whose title alludes to a type of shortwave radio and, by extension, to the white noise one hears as one twists the dial. Greenwood’s sources of inspiration are easily identified. He has worshipped Olivier Messiaen since his teens, and during his university stint he encountered the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, whose assaultive avant-garde creations of the nineteen-sixties—notably the “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima”—inspired the glissandos of “There Will Be Blood.” If Greenwood had stayed on the academic route, he would eventually have discovered that Penderecki’s early works were considered dated. Penderecki himself later turned away from them and adopted a neo-Romantic style. In the separate universe of Radiohead, Greenwood has pursued his enthusiasms without becoming distracted by musical politics, and has emerged with a fascinating synthesis of twentieth-century sounds—avant-garde Romanticism, you could call it.

“Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” an eighteen-minute work for thirty-four strings, is Greenwood’s most ambitious score to date. Although the composer has made self-effacing comments in interviews about his reluctance to tackle longer forms, he hardly comes off as a neophyte; the piece possesses a solid architectural shape, with slow-moving, darkly meditative passages framing a kinetic, rock-tinged midsection. The writing for strings is idiomatic and inventive; at one point, Greenwood devises a buzzing barrage of “Bartók pizzicato”—sharply plucked sounds from violins cradled like ukuleles. The one structurally shaky moment comes in the transition back to the opening material; the switch feels abrupt, as if a tempo-changing gesture has gone missing.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2008/02/04/080204crmu_music_ross

Radiohead Biography 2004 - Present

2008-01-28T20:42:00.000+07:00

After the lengthy tour, the rest of 2004 passed with band members devoting themselves to solo projects and recordings with other artists. Chief artists Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke were mostly at the fore. Drummer Phil Selway, unlike previous years, also started doing collaborative work. He was working with the longtime collaborators Samaritans Health Organizations. Other bandmembers Ed O'Brien and Colin Greenwood weren't making solo projects, partly because both were becoming fathers: a son Salvador was born to the former in early 2004 and at the time the latter also was expecting a child. The band only gave note of themselves as a whole, releasing the DVD The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time. Greenwood, along with Phil, will have a cameo role in the next Harry Potter movie - HP and the Goblet of Fire. Jonny became a composer for the BBC, charged with creating classical pieces. He and Thom participated in the Band Aid 20 project, playing respectively guitar and piano, collaborating with batch of famous artists. In 2004 was the UK Premiere of the highly anticipated dance piece Split Sides. Radiohead’s and Sigur Ros's collaboration with dance legend Merce Cunningham at the Barbican Theatre from 5-9 of October. The piece featured Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do as well as a 20-minute new work by Radiohead. A roll of dice at the beginning of each performance dictated which combination of choreography, music, costume, design and lighting was actually seen. There were 32 potential combinations, making each night a completely different experience. The production also featured Décor by photographer Robert Heishman and Turner Prize Nominee Catherine Yass. The show was also seen in Norway on 21 May.

Thom and Jonny presented some new work with the London Sinfonietta Orchestra on 27 March 2005 and 28 March 2005 at the Ether Festival in London. Thom sang from some lyrics sheets the ocean themed debut song "Arpeggi", including the lines "in the deepest ocean", "the bottom of the sea" and "sunk without a trace", which can also be found at the official site. "Where Bluebirds Fly", a b-side of the "There There" single, was also debuted as an orchestral piece. Thom was joined by female vocalist, Lubna Salame. Until that point, "Where Bluebirds Fly" had never played live before, only being used as the band's intro music at their live shows from 2002 onwards. Jonny presented his new work "Piano For Children", performed by the Sinfonietta, also. The performances were attended by Nigel Godrich, Ed, Colin, and Beck.

After a year out of the spotlight Radiohead returned again to recording sessions. In early March, Thom Yorke, on the band's official messageboard, mentioned that the band had started work. In late March Jonny Greenwood confirmed that the band are rehearsing and are working on new material in their Oxford studio, where they recorded their first album. "We're rehearsing at the moment, and again it's fun. We all want to push forward, and when you have five people who are all like that, you couldn't ask for a better thing." According to Jonny the recording process of LP 7 will be interrupted by his engagement with BBC in late 23 April 2005 with the BBC Concert Orchestra in London. Following Jonny and Thom's performance at the Ether Festival, Ed O'Brien revealed that Radiohead have already spent about four weeks in the studio recording a new album. According to Ed, another small tour, like the band did in Portugal and Spain in middle 2002, to try out Hail to the Thief material, could be possible if the recording process takes a long time. Jonny has hinted that he would like to do a fanclub tour.
http://www.greenplastic.com/band/

Radiohead Biography 2002 - 2004

2008-01-28T20:39:00.000+07:00

The recording process for their next record, Hail to the Thief, was remarkably different from those for the previous three studio albums. They were comparable more to the pace of the Bends sessions, rather than the usual holing up in a studio for months. The band elected to take their new material on the road in Portugal and Spain during July and August of 2002 prior to recording it. With the songs fleshed out and finalised during the tour, the band completed the album in a Los Angeles studio in a fortnight. In 2003 the band released their sixth album, which was rooted in less overt experimentation than its two immediate predecessors but was still a long way from their earlier guitar-driven material.

The album's title raised controversy in the U.S., being interpreted as a reference to the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. The members of the band deny this claim. In the June 2003 issue of Spin Magazine, Thom Yorke was quoted as saying "If the motivation for naming our album had been based solely on the U.S. election, I'd find that to be pretty shallow." Instead, Yorke claimed that he had gotten the phrase from a radio program about the also controversial 1888 U.S. presidential election. That being said, he couldn't deny that the phrase "Hail to the thief" was additionally used as an anti-Bush slogan by protestors at the end of the controversial 2000 election campaign that put him into the White House. On the day of his inauguration, Bush was greeted in Washington by thousands of protestors with banners, who shouted "Hail to the thief, our commander in chief!".

Two months before the album release, an unfinished version of the album was stolen, apparently from the recording studio where they were working, and uploaded to the internet. Unfortunately for them, the original album recordings also met the same fate, but the band remained adamant, didn't pull the album for an earlier date, and released it on the announced day: June 9, 2003. Even though the album was leaked, its sales overgrew those of their last two records both in its first week of release and overall. Hail to the Thief displayed influences from Radiohead's last three records, containing some electronic and ambient pieces and some new experimental sounds. It is generally considered to be a more guitar-based record than Kid A and Amnesiac. It was greeted warmly by both fans and the press. In contrast to the band's mood following the release of OK Computer, subsequent interviews and performances showed a band contented with themselves and their record: they were responding kindly to any interviews, while Yorke and his bandmembers were grinning and dancing on stages.

Thereafter, Radiohead embarked on a vast international tour, lasting about a year. It saw the band visiting Australia and Japan for the first time since their OK Computer tour in 1997–1998, more than 6 years previous. Many Australian fans were deeply upset by the cancellation of the last show merely hours before its scheduled start due to problems with Yorke's throat. Many fans had come to Melbourne all the way from Brisbane to attend the show. Radiohead headlined the main (Pyramid) stage on the Saturday of the Glastonbury 2003, to huge crowd acclaim and positive press reviews. The same year, Jonny Greenwood, with the help of his brother and Colin Greenwood, recorded and produced the soundtrack to the avant-garde documentary movie Bodysong. About one year after the release of Hail to the Thief, Radiohead released a new EP entitled COM LAG (2plus2isfive), while on their 2004 tour in Australia and Japan. With 10 tracks, COM LAG is longer than the average Radiohead EP. It features live takes, remixes, and different versions of Hail to the Thief-era songs, as well as a handful of acoustic and electronic numbers. The band finished touring and promoting Hail to the Thief in mid-2004 with an acclaimed performance at the Coachella Festival.
http://www.greenplastic.com/band/

Radiohead Biography 1999 - 2001

2008-01-28T20:35:00.000+07:00

Exhausted by their fame and on the verge of burnout following the end of OK Computer tour in middle 1998, the band spent the next year in relative quiet. Thom Yorke admitted that after the tour the band was really on the verge of splitting up. He also added that he fell into depression, but managed to recover. He especially stressed on his friendship with Michael Stipe (R.E.M.'s singer), whose persona turned to be inspiration on Yorke in both spiritual and songwriting ways. Some of the strongest Radiohead tracks on post-OK Computer albums were noted by Thom as inspiration by Michael's words or by latter's tireless support to his younger colleague.

The band only appeared at the Amnesty International Concert in Paris (10 December 1998), and Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood performed at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Amsterdam, where a new song, "Pyramid Song", made its live debut. After O'Brien's collaboration for the BBC drama series "Eureka Street" in middle 1999, the band finally returned to the studio to record Kid A. Radiohead refused to make a follow-up of OK Computer in the same musical vein and choose to be even more ambitious than before, creating a defiantly experimental electronic album with minimal guitar work, that complemented the lyrical and musical hooks of their earlier work with a more minimalist style.

The record was finished in April 2000 and with no singles, yet with promos, the album was promoted mainly on the Internet. This is where Radiohead's infamous relationship with Napster came into play. Three months prior to the release of Kid A MP3 tracks of the entire album made their way onto the file sharing service. As Richard Menta of MP3 Newswire detailed in his essay "Did Napster Take Radiohead's New Album to Number 1?" [1], millions of fans had possession of this music by the time the CD hit stores. The record industry assumed the album was now doomed to failure since fans already had the music for free. Instead the opposite happened and the band, which had never hit the US top 20 before, captured the number one spot in Kid A's debut week. With the record's absence of radio airplay, big time marketing, and any other factor that may have explained this stunning success, Menta declared this was proof of the promotional powers of file trading and of word-of-mouth generated by the Net.

Even Oasis' chief Noel Gallagher admitted that Kid A's great marketing scheme was its lack of any promotion: "If you refuse to talk about your own album, that just stirs the pot and makes everyone else start talking about it." While others agreed with Gallagher's assessment, it ignored any potential effect of Napster despite the fact it distributed Kid A to a huge number of music fans. Whatever the reason for the record's success on the charts, Kid A took the band from indie faves to burgeoning supergroup. The album's arrangements have been likened to a meeting of Pink Floyd and Aphex Twin. Kid A was released in October 2000. The band cited Alice Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Paul Lansky as influences, as well as the entire back catalogue of Warp Records. Kid A received Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album as its predecessor, which fired them to superstardom. The band were accused by some critics for creating a radio-unfriendly record, however most of the band's fans nailed it as a masterprise. And despite, that it's far from their earlier and one of the most acclaimed material, now Kid A is considered as one of the greatest electronic albums made by a rock band and one of Radiohead's finest records.

The follow-up Amnesiac, which was released in June of the following year, comprised further tracks from the same recording sessions as Kid A. Conceived as two separate sequences of songs, the two albums are similar in style and are linked by two different versions of the same song: "Morning Bell." While explaining the decision to release two albums rather than one, Thom illuminated his artistic and musical intentions and further clarifies the relationship between the two records: "They are separate because they cannot run in a straight line with each other. They cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places, I think ... In some weird way, I think Amnesiac gives another take on Kid A, a form of explanation." He continues: "Something traumatic is happening in Kid A, and this is looking back at it, trying to piece together what has happened. Go back and listen to Kid A after listening to Amnesiac, and I think you'll hear it."

About the differences with the previous record he says: "Kid A was kind of like an electric shock. Amnesiac is more about being in the woods, in the countryside. I think the artwork is the best way of explaining it. The artwork to Kid A was all in the distance. The fires were all going on the other side of the hill. With Amnesiac, you're actually in the forest while the fire's happening. With Kid A, when you sequenced certain tracks together, this play started appearing." Indeed, while Kid A is a more soulful, melodic, and inviting record, albeit slightly dark, Amnesiac is instantly unsettling and more uncomfortable to the listener. Nevertheless the album was received very well and nearly reached Kid A's sales. While most fans tend to like Kid A more than Amnesiac, the latter should be considered as the next successful and experimental chapter of Radiohead expedition in the musical world.

After the release of the album, the band staged their own mini-festival in Oxford's South Park, featuring Sigur Rós, Supergrass, Humphrey Lyttelton (who played trumpet on "Life in a Glass House", the closing track on Amnesiac), and themselves. It was at this concert that the band finally played "Creep," after having refused to perform the song for many years. Initially the band wanted to release "I Might Be Wrong" as their new single after "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out", but soon the idea expanded into a full-fledged live record. In the fall of 2001, they released their first live album: I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, featuring performances from Berlin, Paris, London and a couple of other concerts and also including one unreleased track, "True Love Waits".
http://www.greenplastic.com/band/

Radiohead Biography 1996 - 1998

2008-01-28T20:33:00.000+07:00

Radiohead began writing OK Computer in early 1996 at their rehearsal studio, Canned Applause a converted fruit shed with the latest recording equipment. By July they had recorded four songs with producer Nigel Godrich. Having learned from The Bends, they decided to break the songs in live before completing the record.

By July 1996, Canned Applause was set up for recording. It was the first time the band had attempted to cut album tracks outside of a conventional studio environment. Despite the experimental and unconventional setting, four songs from Canned Applause found their way onto the album. The songs were "Subterranean Homesick Alien", "Electioneering", "The Tourist" and "No Surprises".

At late July and August, they returned briefly for touring to present and try the new songs. In September they moved to St. Catherine's Court – a mansion owned by actress Jane Seymour—where they recorded the rest of OK Computer, without pressure. They made much use of the various different rooms and atmospheres throughout the house, and the isolation from the outside world encouraged time to run at a different pace, making working hours more flexible and spontaneous. A couple of songs—"Exit Music (For a Film)" and "Let Down"—were recorded live. By Christmas 1996, the album was finished, and in February and March was mixed. "The biggest pressure was actually completing it," remembers Ed O'Brien. "We weren't given any deadlines and we had complete freedom to do what we wanted. We were delaying it because we were a bit frightened of actually finishing stuff."

In 16 June 1997 OK Computer was released and received even greater acclaim than The Bends, featuring prominently in many "best album" polls, then and now. It found Radiohead introducing uncommon musical elements, experimenting with ambience and noise to create a set of songs that many consider to be a high point of late-twentieth century rock music. It received a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was followed by their big "Against Demons World Tour". Grant Gee, the director of the "No Surprises" video, accompanied the band on their tour and filmed it, which resulted in the "on the fly" documentary Meeting People Is Easy, which showed the band starting from their first and foremost glorious tours and finishing in their late burn-out dates in middle 1998.

Colin Greenwood said about the album: "I think the overall mood on the record is starker than The Bends. I think that there is a consistent sound to 80 percent of the new album. I think we made things a little bit more extreme on this record. The important thing for us on this record was that we produce it ourselves. We had to learn how to make decisions amongst the six of us. There was the five people in the band and the engineer /mixer Nigel Godrich. We learned a lot from doing it on our own and in retrospect, we are very proud of this record." The band released two EPs No Surprises/Running From Demons (1997) and Airbag/How Am I Driving?(1998), which differ only by a couple of songs. The more notable is the second, which has few songs that could best be described as a bridge between the progressive alternative rock of OK Computer and their subsequent experimental work.

OK Computer and The Verve's sublime final effort — Urban Hymns — were regarded as a boost to the already dying Britpop movement, despite the fact that both records departed from the style. Nevertheless OK Computer is regarded by some as one of the greatest rock albums and still tops various charts. It defined Radiohead as top superstars and elevated them to the pantheon of the greatest bands of 90s, among such seminal acts as R.E.M. and U2.
http://www.greenplastic.com/band/

Radiohead Biography 1991 - 1995

2008-01-28T20:18:00.000+07:00

Radiohead formed during the late 1980s, originally under the name On A Friday (referring to the only time all band members were able to practice). After forming in 1988, the band disbanded for a couple of years so that bandmembers can devote on college and other work, before resurfacing in 1991 with their first demoes. Their first one—the Manic Hedgehog Demo (named after an Oxford record shop) —brought the band to another gig in the Jericho Tavern. In the meantime they had already been on the cover of Curfew, a magazine based in Oxford. Things moved fast. On A Friday were booked for gigs frequently. Various record labels showed interest and finally EMI signed the band. Now they had to concede that the critic in Curfew had a point: their name was at best mundane. They decided to swap it for the title of a cod-reggea tune Radio Head on Talking Heads' True Stories album and the record is a band favorite. It would later be a major influence on their own Kid A.

The debut release was a self-produced EP. "Not a clever move" admits Chris Hufford. "A huge conflict of interests. I think Thom was very insecure of my involvement. I'd had that happen to me as an artist when one of our managers acted as producer. There was definately some friction on that front. Otherwise it was a treat, we fired out the songs." The 4-track Drill EP came out in March 1992 with Prove Yourself as the lead track. It reached 101 in the UK singles chart. It was time to find new producers. Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade, who produced Buffalo Tom's "Let me come over" and later helmed Morphine, came on board.

Then the band came up with their "Scott Walker song"—"Creep". Striking a highly popular and sympathetic note of similar self-loathing among fans, "Creep" was released around the same time as other so-called "slacker" anthems such as Beck's "Loser". The band weren't unanimously pleased with "Creep" and, until recently, refused to play it, believing that its meaning had been misinterpreted and given too much weight by fans. Legend says that Jonny's famous guitar crunches were supposedly an attempt to ruin a song he didn't like. "Jonny played the piano at the end of the song and it was gorgeous" notes Kolderie. "Everyone who heard 'Creep' just started going insane. So that's what got us the job doing the album." The album was finished in three weeks in an Oxford studio.

The single "Creep" was released in September 1992, while the album was scheduled for February next year. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the band, a San Francisco radio station called "Live 105" had just named Pablo Honey its favourite record of the year and quickly crossed over onto L.A.'s KROQ and other West Coast stations. The single eventually peaked at a modest #34 in the US, but Pablo Honey went gold. A year after its original release, a reissued "Creep" finally hit the UK charts, peaking at #7. Pablo Honey was a solid, if unremarkable recording, that lacks both the force and experimentation of their later work. Regardless, their potential was evident with songs like the aforementioned "Creep", "Anyone Can Play Guitar", "Thinking About You" and "You". Because the album kept on breaking around the world, the Pablo Honey supporting tour lumbered into its second year.

The band tried new songs on the road, which helped in making their second album in 1995—the more significant The Bends. It was unexpectedly and suprisingly more mature than their previous, considering the fact they had been marked as one-hit-wonders. However the edifice marked "follow-up to Creep" cast a long shadow over the sessions. "It was either going to be Sulk, The Bends, Nice Dream or Just," remembers producer John Leckie. "We had to give those absolute attention, make the amazing, instant smash hits number 1 in America. Everyone was pulling their hair and saying, 'It's not good enough! We were trying too hard.'"

The solution was a change of scene: they quit the studio and toured Australia and the Far East. "It made them re-evaluate what they were good at and enjoyed doing," claimed their manager Chris Hufford. "Playing live again put the perspective back on what they'd lost in the studio." The EP My Iron Lung (1994) was released between the two albums while the band were touring and saw them in a transitional stage between the poppy simplicity of Pablo Honey and the musical depth of their next album. Having worked the songs in on the road, they returned to Britain and completed the album in a fortnight. Drawing heavily on 1960s influences as well as the then popular music exemplified by groups such as the Pixies and R.E.M., the album was a significant step forward for the group with Yorke's vocal style to the fore. Tracks such as "Planet Telex", "Street Spirit (fade out)" and "Fake Plastic Trees" were striking, original and indicators of the group's subsequent developments.

Despite that it was not a Britpop album, it was associated with the movement and in early 1996 — widely praised a year after the album's release — Radiohead took part in Cool Britannia, battling famous acts like Oasis, Blur, Pulp and Suede. Now, The Bends is considered by many critics and fans as one of the best albums of the mid-1990s.
http://www.greenplastic.com/band/

In Rainbows

2008-01-28T20:10:00.000+07:00

15 Step
Bodysnatchers
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
All I Need
Faust ARP
Reckoner
House of Cards
Jigsaw Falling into Place
Videotape

Release Date: January 1, 2008
Produced by Radiohead and Nigel Godrich.

Amazon.com review
On the deliriously satisfying In Rainbows, Radiohead returns to a more straight-ahead (though subdued) rock sound. Much hubbub has been made about this record's innovative release. Radiohead allowed fans to pay what they wished to download fairly low-resolution tracks from the band's own website. Like so many innovations, it already seems funny both that it was such big news and that someone else of similar stature hadn't done it sooner. Some pundits were appalled that it took awhile to download the tracks if you tried to do it at the same time as thousands of other people, while others decried that the group was trying to kill the music industry (or save it). Little of the press seemed to focus on the record itself, which actually made sense because it was so entertaining and inviting, the most low-key album Radiohead has made to date. There's even a very straight-forward, simple, silly little love song, "House of Cards." It might be a bit lethargic, but the simple instrumentation of electric guitars, bass, and drums is lovely as heck. A handful of these tunes enchanted fans for years before finally being committed to computer "tape." This is particularly fitting as In Rainbows is the group's most "band"-sounding album since OK Computer. This is not a record that hits you over the head with how far this group is pushing the envelope; it's simply a phenomenal, well-crafted, and exciting album. As soon as it's done, you're playing it again. --Mike McGonigal

Hail To The Thief

2008-01-28T20:06:00.001+07:00

2+2=5
sit down, stand up
sail to the moon
backdrifts
go to sleep
where i end and you begin
we suck young blood
the gloaming
there there
i will
a punch-up at the wedding
myxomatosis
scatterbrain
a wolf at the door

Released 06/09/2003 UK, 06/10/2003 US & Canada
Produced by Radiohead and Nigel Godrich.

From Rolling Stone:
"We wanted to relearn the art of putting out shorter songs," says Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien. "Keeping it succinct instead of taking the listener on a journey."

On their sixth album, Hail to the Thief (due June 10th), Radiohead return to the masterful songwriting of their early work but flavor it with the experimentation of their last two CDs, 2000's Kid A and 2001's Amnesiac . Songs pulsate, skitter electronically and turn into distorted gospel numbers -- but they also rock.
"On tour in 2001 in America, I think we learned to swagger as a band," O'Brien explains. "We wanted to capture that on record. We also didn't want to spend too long in the studio."

The group recorded Thief primarily over a marathon two-week session in Los Angeles with their customary producer, Nigel Godrich. The results are stunning, such as on the opener, "2 + 2 = 5," which builds from droning blips into passionate rock. Its lyrics include the title phrase "Hail to the thief," which O'Brien says is not intended simply as a reference to George W. Bush.

Other highlights include the fuzzed-out "Myxomatosis," which takes its name from a disease that killed British rabbits, and the yearning ballad "I Will," on which singer Thom Yorke is accompanied by just a keyboard.

While Thief is gloomy, the recording had one bright spot, according to O'Brien: "This is the first album where, at the end of making it, we haven't wanted to kill each other."
http://www.greenplastic.com/discography/albums/httt.php

Amnesiac

2008-01-28T20:01:00.000+07:00

Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box
Pyramid Song
Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors
You and Whose Army?
I Might Be Wrong
Knives Out
Amnesiac/Morning Bell
Dollars and Cents
Hunting Bears
Like Spinning Plates
Life in a Glass House

Released 06/04/2001 UK, 06/05/2001 US & Canada
Produced by Radiohead and Nigel Godrich.

Most of the tracks on Amnesiac were written and recorded during the Kid A sessions. The band has always viewed their work from these sessions as two separate albums, but steered away from releasing a double album. Colin Greenwood said in a recent interview, "We had that group of songs to make one record, and the other ones are left over. It's that we had, say, 23 songs and we wanted to have around 47 minutes of music, so we chose the best combination out of that number (for 'Kid A'), and the rest are waiting on the bench, waiting to be picked for the next team line-up. It is a combination of like, more conventional, perhaps, but also more dissonant stuff. But it continues on from 'Kid A'. It was all done in the same recording period. It is all a whole."
Notes:
When asked what Amnesiac will sound like in an interview before the album's release, Thom replied, "If you look at the artwork for Kid A...well, that's like looking at the fire from afar. Amnesiac is the sound of what it feels like to be standing IN the fire."
Amazon review
More song-driven and acoustic than Kid A, Radiohead's Amnesiac isn't quite "Kid B," but it is unquestionably cut from the same far-out cloth, as the band revels in fascinating quirks and abject nihilism. It's also the first time in Radiohead's career that a new record hasn't meant a complete shift in artistic priorities. Surely, however, regardless of which was released first, they both deserve recognition; after all, Amnesiac, like Kid A, is an amazing piece of work.

Only lightly augmented with electronics, songs like "You and Whose Army?" and "I Might Be Wrong" almost sound like they came from a typical five-piece rock band. You may even believe the band still employs a guitarist after hearing Jonny Greenwood's wistful surf-guitar lead on "Knives Out" or his subtle but noticeable contributions to the anticapitalist rant "Dollars and Cents." But inevitably, the band continually shifts gears, moving into Boards of Canada territory on "Like Spinning Plates" and delivering dark, bass-laden oddities like "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," a fuzzed-out piece of avant-garde techno that could just as easily be on an Autechre or Aphex Twin record. The song's half-sung, half-spoken vocal was laid down by either a heavily distorted Thom Yorke or, just perhaps, a loquacious microwave oven. Either way, the music always has momentum, regardless of whether propelled by man or appliance. Radiohead as a band understand how to make rock interesting again, and in the end, that's all they set out to do when they recorded Amnesiac, as well as Kid A. It's more than can be said for the bad frat-punk, teen-pop and soulless techno that currently rules the charts, and for that alone, Radiohead's astonishing exploration of 21st-century anguish deserves credit.
http://www.greenplastic.com/discography/albums/amnesiac.php

OK Computer

2008-01-28T19:59:00.001+07:00

Airbag
Paranoid Android
Subterranean Homesick Alien
Exit Music ( for a film)
Let Down
Karma Police
Fitter Happier
Electioneering
Climbing Up the Walls
No Surprises
Lucky
The Tourist

Released 06/16/97 UK, 06/17/97 Canada, 07/01/97 US
Produced by Radiohead and Nigel Godrich.

OK COMPUTER was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for Album Of The Year and won the 1998 Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance. OK COMPUTER, Radiohead's third album, is the bombastic follow-up to 1995's sleeper hit THE BENDS, which left critics and listeners as impressed with the band's ability as they were curious about their potential. In spite of its technological-sounding title and apocalyptic sci-fi themes, OK COMPUTER is firmly grounded in the rock verities. Waves of guitars rage beneath the haunting melodies and near-hysterical fits of singer Thom Yorke. This complex, intense swarm of guitars is held aloft by a solid, inventive rhythm section and an impressive array of piano and keyboard textures.

"Paranoid Android" is a six-minute-plus epic with alternating time signatures, wild dynamic shifts, drama and adrenaline to spare. "Let Down," with its double-tracked vocals and rhythmic throb, may give a brief glimpse back at Radiohead's past, but at no point is OK COMPUTER anything but a hurtle forward.
Notes:
Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone 5/13/99, p.65

Ranked #2 on Spin's list of the "Top 20 Albums Of The Year." Spin 1/98, p.86

Ranked #2 in the Village Voice's 1997 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll. Village Voice 2/24/98

Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 1997." Q Magazine 1/98, p.114 Ranked #2 in NME's 1997 Critics' Poll. New Musical Express 12/20-27/97, pp.78-79

Ranked #2 on Melody Maker's list of 1997's "Albums Of The Year." Melody Maker 12/20-27/97, pp.66-67

4 Stars (out of 5) - "...OK COMPUTER - a stunning art-rock tour de force - will have you reeling back to their debut, PABLO HONEY, for insight into the group's dramatic evolution..." Rolling Stone 7/10-24/97, pp. 117-118

8 (out of 10) - "...Unlike their majestic models U2, Radiohead take on techno without switching instruments or employing trendy producers....As with post-rockers Tortoise, Laika, and Seefeel, Radiohead have a fuzzbox or two and obviously know how to use 'em..." Spin 8/97, pp.112-113

"...unlike anything I've ever heard....I definitley know it isn't good for me, and I'm certain it says more about my life than I'd like....in terms of composition and performance, it's very impressive. Radiohead have excelled themselves. They've seen the future." Melody Maker 6/14/97, p.49

"...Shrouded in wafting guitars, swoony rhythms, and moody-blue strings, it shrugs off mosh-pit conventions for a poignant delicacy and breadth, with Yorke's cracked-throat voice the album's melancholy center....For all of Radiohead's growing pains...their aim--to take British pop to a heavenly new level--is true..." - Rating: B+ Entertainment Weekly 7/11/97, pp.65-66
Rolling Stone review
Radiohead's third album is one of the best rock records of the year in large part because it is the most inscrutable. "OK Computer" vigorously defies fast analysis, flip judgment and easy interpretation. Singer Thom Yorke doesn't pretend to be likable about it, either. "Ambition makes you look very ugly," he sneers amid the "Bohemian Rhapsody"-style seizures of "Paranoid Android," a slur that works both ways if you have major objections to arty sonic clutter and prog-rock pretensions. But there is nothing linear about cracking up. "OK Computer," ostensibly a concept LP about a zombie world of hard law and infernal software, is a song cycle about serial fear and suffocating routine, laid out in mad leaps of melody, tempo and pathos that slowly accrue their queer beauty: the bleak, R.E.M.-ish clatter of "Electioneering," the languid dive of Yorke's croon in the melted-Beatles carol "Lucky." Radiohead try too hard to be nonconformist -- as if they're embarrassed to just be *pop* -- but ambition hardly makes them ogres. It makes them special. (RS 776/777)
http://www.greenplastic.com/discography/albums/ok.php

The Bends

2008-01-28T19:52:00.000+07:00

Planet Telex
The Bends
High and Dry
Fake Plastic Trees
Bones
Nice Dream
Just
My Iron Lung
Bulletproof... I Wish I Was
Black Star
Sulk
Street Spirit (fade out)

Produced by John Leckie, Radiohead, Jim Warren, Nigel Godrich.
Recorded at Rak, The Manor and Abbey Road, London, England.
Notes:
Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's." Rolling Stone 5/13/99, pp.58-59

Included in Q's 50 Best Albums of 1995 - "...THE BENDS' lasting mightiness is confirmed--as is the scary impression that they'll only get better..." Q Magazine 2/96, p.63

Ranked #6 on Melody Maker's list of 1995's `Albums Of The Year' - "Rock as self-evisceration....consistently, savagely brilliant..." Melody Maker 12/23-30/95, pp.66-67

Ranked #4 in NME's `Top 50 Albums Of The Year' for 1995. New Musical Express 12/23-30/95, pp.22-23

3.5 Stars - Very Good - "...THE BENDS [is] a sonically ambitious album that offers no easy hits. It's a guitar field day, blending acoustic strumming with twitches of fuzzy tremolo and eruptions of amplified paranoia..." Rolling Stone 5/18/95, p.88

"...Sometimes folky, sometimes rocky, the sophomore album from this English band offers a smorgasbord of guitar flavors, most of them tasty, The stylistic leaps make for schizoid listening....but give these boys credit for not standing still..." - Rating: B+ Entertainment Weekly 4/7/95, p.92

"...THE BENDS' greatest asset is its approximation of London Suede, all the parody and none of the pomp....THE BENDS proves that Radiohead didn't shoot their bolt with `Creep.' That there's a lot more stirring down there than their recent past might admit..." Alternative Press 4/95, p.71
CMJ review
Three guitars, a driving rhythm section and keyboards, all fronted by a whiny English bloke on vocals. That's the Radiohead setup, and believe it or not, it works spectacularly well. Following up on its hit "Creep" from a few years ago, Radiohead's sophomore effort ups the ante, delivering renewed vigor in the form of a happiersounding guitar assault. Shimmering piano notes and echoing drums immediately pull you into the lead-off track "Planet Telex," as the guitars unleash a wall of fuzzenhanced bliss. Vocalist Thom Yorke's delivery is less deadpan and more passionate than before, giving the tracks a sense of smoldering urgency. The title track is a brilliant piece of raging guitar-driven pop, while "Fake Plastic Trees" opts for a subdued acoustic entrance, beginning with subtle nods to John Denver before cascading into an intense swirl of guitar, keyboards and drums. The band specializes in sonic juxtaposition, creating safe, lilting melodies awash in warmness, before drowining them in a wall of blistercrunch guitar and chaotic rhythmic interplay right before your ears. "You Do It To Me" is the group's guitar-infested magnum opus, releasing a barrage of wail, grind and blitz. The Bends, with its intoxicating metallic edginess, bits of slashing psychedelia and calming interludes of acoustic ambience, unveils the perfect power-pop aesthetic.
http://www.greenplastic.com/discography/albums/bends.php

Pablo Honey

2008-01-28T19:44:00.001+07:00

You
Creep
How Do You?
Stop Whispering
Thinking About You
Anyone Can Play Guitar
Ripcord
Vegetable
Prove Yourself
I Can't
Lurgee
Blow Out

Produced by Paul Q. Kolderie, Chris Hufford, Sean Slade. Recorded at Chipping Norton Studio and Courtyard Studio, Oxon, England.
Notes:
Ranked #35 in New Musical Express' list of `The Top 50 LPs Of 1993' - "...is a throwback to a homegrown tradition of great guitar-band albums...." New Musical Express 12/25/93, p.67

3 Stars - Good - "...British teenagerhood has never been grumpier....the best bits rival Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr. and even the mighty Sugar..." Q Magazine 4/93, p.86

"...one of those flawed but satisfying debuts that suggests Radiohead's talents will really blossom later on..." New Musical Express 3/13/93, p.33

"...mates Smiths-type self-consciousness with dramatic U2-like vocals and guitar, with Cure-style heavy but crunchy pop..." - Rating: B Entertainment Weekly 5/28/93, p.56
Rolling Stone review
Flashing a song called "Creep" as a musical ID takes cheek, but then, everything about these Brits is unabashed. On their debut, the swagger affected by every arch-Anglo since the Kinks is already in full effect. Three guitars (and bass) and a singer whose narcissistic angst rivals Morrissey's ("I will not control myself!" Thom e. Yorke screams on "Vegetable," and on "Prove Yourself" he mourns, "I'm better off dead"), these five Oxford lads come on extreme. What elevates them to fab charm is not only the feedback and strumming fury of their guitarwork Ð and the dynamism of their whisper-to-a-scream song structures Ð which recall the Who by way of the early Jam, but the way their solid melodies and sing-along choruses resonate pop appeal. On "Blow Out" they savage a bossa-nova intro with sheer noise; "Thinking About You" is bitter folk with acoustic guitars soundly pummeled; and the rest of "Pablo Honey" is equally surprising. If they don't implode from attitude overload, Radiohead warrant watching.(RS 672/73)
http://www.greenplastic.com/discography/albums/pablo.php

Radiohead Planning Special Events

2008-01-28T09:48:00.000+07:00

Just a week after their intimate East London triumph,

Radiohead are already planning some more special events.
Speaking with the BBC, Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood stated that a series of special live events were being lined up in conjunction with the corporation. He said:
“We only started talking about it [the BBC event] yesterday in the meeting, so we are getting some plans together to play a show and play some songs from the record for the BBC.”
Of last week's cosy gig at 93 Feet East - which was moved from original venue Rough Trade East thanks to the crowds that turned up - Greenwood expressed his enthusiasm:
“It was a surprise all round. It got moved but it was one of those things where everything went right for the wrong reasons.
"It was like playing a little club, standing next to each other; we played 'The Bends' and seeing my brother Jonny slashing the chords through that song was just brilliant.”

http://www.xfm.co.uk/Article.asp?id=558341

RADIOHEAD’S JONNY GREENWOOD RULED OUT OF OSCARS

2008-01-25T13:19:00.000+07:00

Jonny Greenwood’s score for the Oscar-nominated film “There Will Be Blood” has missed out on its own nomination after being deemed ineligible.

Only a minority of the score was written specifically for the film, leading to its automatic disqualification from nomination.

The original score lasts for around 35 minutes, but another 46 minutes of Greenwood's music is also used in the film, including excerpts from his BBC-commissioned 2006 piece “Popcorn Superhet Receiver”.

The film scores that received Oscar nomination are as follows:

“Atonement”
“The Kite Runner”
“Michael Clayton”
“Ratatouille”
“3:10 To Yuma”

Two music worlds collide in Radiohead tribute

2008-01-25T11:47:00.000+07:00

Classical pianist Christopher O'Riley has toured with renowned orchestras, collaborated with popular conductors Leonard Slatkin and John Williams and recorded French repertoire with James Galway.
He's also a huge fan of Radiohead.
Some of the English alt-rock band's songs will be part of the program during the Riverside County Philharmonic and O'Riley concert, "Radiohead, Ravel and Beethoven."
O'Riley, a Chicago native, first learned of Radiohead in 1997 after all the praise heaped upon the album "OK Computer."
Since then, he has purchased all the band's CDs, attended concerts and regularly comments on authoritative Radiohead Internet site, ateaseweb.com.

More importantly, the pianist has put out two popular classical CDs of Radiohead interpretations, "True Love Waits" (2003) and "Hold Me to This" (2005).
The former is reportedly the only classical recording to garner a four-star review in Rolling Stone magazine.
Those CDs were followed by tributes to Elliott Smith, "Home to Oblivion" (2006) and Nick Drake, "Second Grace" (2007).
We caught up with O'Riley, 51, via phone from his home in Ohio to discuss the music as well as hosting duties for NPR's classical radio show (and PBS-TV counterpart) "From the Top."

Q: Can you tell me about the pieces you'll be performing at Riverside Municipal Auditorium?

A: With the orchestra, I'll be performing Maurice Ravel's "Concerto for the Left
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Hand in D," one of few pieces for left hand alone and orchestra, dating from the early 20th century ... Ravel's music has a lot of color and harmony. It's very palpable. That sort of sensual aspect appeals to me when I'm looking at piano music. I find all of his music very compelling.

Q: Doesn't it have a jazzy feel too?

A: It has jazz elements with darker undercurrents. It's not happy-go-lucky. I think it's sort of chaotic or verging on it and has many shades; some of which have to do with gamelan music - an exotic quality ... It's a piece I always look forward to because it's beautiful in terms of melody and harmony and a great interactive piece between piano and orchestra. I'm not just out there on my own. It's a showpiece (about) what you can do with one hand. It's really kind of amazing.

Q: Then there's your Radiohead transcriptions.

A: Riverside is the first orchestra that's been kind enough to say, "Look, we're going to carve out a little piece of the program so you can do this." I think it's very courteous and courageous of them.

Q: I was surprised that you'll be performing "Videotape" from the new Radiohead album "In Rainbows" besides older faves "Paranoid Android" and "Let Down."

A: They toured a version of "Videotape" on tour, and it was rather grand. As the last song on the album, it became vestigial and disembodied ... the version I play is based solely on the first performance they did on tour. That's sort of an interesting take on Radiohead's music: It cannot only accommodate them rethinking it constantly, but somebody else's take. There's a lot of life in that song.

Q: You used to do short Radiohead numbers during station breaks on "From the Top," the National Public Radio program you host. What led to your doing entire CDs?

A: I was listening to a lot of Radiohead. I had done other arrangements ... tangos or Stravinsky ballets. I had that bug in me where if it doesn't exist for piano, and I really love the piece, I want to find a way to make it work. Here was this opportunity to play these pieces unannounced on national radio. After the host would say, "That's Christopher O'Riley playing Radiohead," we'd get mail into the program saying, "Who is this Mr. Head and where can we find more of his beautiful music?" That seemed to be a (sign) to do something.

Q: Have young people told you they got into classical music after hearing your Radiohead, Smith and Drake interpretations?

A: They're no dummies. They're not going to just fall over. They'll write in and say, "I really love your Radiohead CDs, and I see you're playing a Mozart concerto (locally). I've always wanted to check (his music) out." If they associate me with a sound they like, maybe it'll be the way for them into Mozart. That's pretty gratifying.