Radiohead - An Ongoing Experiment

[musicforwolves]

     I'm a big fan of musical conspiracy theories. I like listening to songs backward, sometimes just for the hell of it. I leaped at the 'Dark Side of the Rainbow' bandwagon like it was made of tiramisu (that bandwagon refers to the conspiracy theory that Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon makes an astounding soundtrack to The Wizard of

Comments

[anord]

FASCINATING! I too, am obsessed with musical conspiracy theories (the amount of time I spent trying to construct some sort of chronology out of The Mountain Goat's Alpha series was probably beyond reasonable); I am definitely going to check this out. Something to discuss on Sunday?

[musicforwolves]

Indeed! I'm not sure whether this one has much strength as a concept: there doesn't seem to be much reason to the ordering of the tracks, an issue which I will be dealing with in part two. I'll be returning to the holes in the 'Dark Side of the Rainbow' theory, and detailing a different kind of Radiohead connection: this one to the Beatles.

Also, I just discovered the blank key on this keyboard makes this symbol: §§§§

[anord]

I don't have a blank key! I suddenly feel cheated by being a Mac user.

[little_tristan]

Have you ever looked into Chuck Klosterman's idea, I believe it's laid out in Killing Yourself to Live, that OK Computer, despite being released in 1997, is actually the soundtrack to 9/11? I can't explain it as well as he does, but it kind of works for me.

[musicforwolves]

Yeah, I ran into it briefly. The album is Kid A (which was released in 2000, so still a prediction). Kid A is one of the few albums I don't own, so I'm not familiar enough with it to pass judgment on Klosterman's idea, but the concept is intriguing.

I think it's tied into what I've always thought about music: that one can apply all sorts of personal attachments to particular music, and with enough connections you can make this kind of theory coherent enough to be picked up by others. I've described albums as 'concept albums' when they probably aren't, but I've been able to argue my own theory of connection between songs to make it sound plausible.
The downside is when it collects enough followers, something like the 'Dark Side of the Rainbow' becomes true only by its repetition. People no longer bother to test these things themselves because the repetition proves it must be true. That's why I'm undertaking a few projects like this.

[20thcenturyvole]

Ooooh. I'd kind of like to know how that goes.