New York, NY
Here’s something for your boring Tuesday. We were feeling nostalgic and started playing with the Way Back Machine, looking at old Radiohead fan sites (Planet Telex, anyone?) and came across this hysterical online chat that the band did with fans in 1995.
We’ve pasted it after the jump…
Today all of Radiohead’s albums have been made available to purchase on iTunes. Not only that, but they are available as “iTunes Plus” (read: no DRM). We’re sure the addition of Radiohead’s album catalog has everything to do with EMI’s release of “The Best of Radiohead” compilation, which is also available through iTunes today.
But wait! It appears that all of Radiohead’s music videos are available too. Make sure to check out the “Anyone Can Play Guitar” video if you’ve never seen it. So cringe-worthy, it’s great. I mean, who doesn’t love Phil and Ed dressing like bank robbers and Colin holding iguanas? C’mon!
(thanks to Rex)
The legendary performance that Radiohead gave at 2006’s Bonnaroo Music Festival has since been regarded as one of the best shows the band has ever done. Even the band will agree that the 28 song set was epic. We’ve been hearing rumors ever since that a DVD of the performance would be released, and while that hasn’t happened yet, fans will be able to get a taste of that evening thanks to Fuse TV.
As a precursor to Fuse?’s live coverage of Bonnaroo ?2008, the channel will be airing footage from Radiohead?’s 2006 performance as part of it?s “Best of Bonnaroo: Volume I” special starting the weekend of Friday, June 13th.
Specific airtimes have yet to be announced, but more information will be posted soon at Fuse’s Bonnaroo page:
http://www.fuse.tv/tours/bonnaroo/index.html.
Get those DVRs ready!
From CNN.com:
WASHINGTON (AP) — After word spread that Prince covered Radiohead’s “Creep” at Coachella, the tens of thousands who couldn’t be there ran to YouTube for a peek. Everyone was quickly denied — even Radiohead.
All videos of Prince’s unique rendition of Radiohead’s early hit were quickly taken down, leaving only a message that his label, NPG Records, had removed the clips, claiming a copyright violation. But the posted videos were shot by fans and, obviously, the song isn’t Prince’s.
In a recent interview, Thom Yorke said he heard about Prince’s performance from a text message and thought it was “hilarious.” Yorke laughed when his bandmate, guitarist Ed O’Brien, said the blocking had prevented him from seeing Prince’s version of their song.
“Really? He’s blocked it?” asked Yorke, who figured it was their song to block or not. “Surely we should block it. Hang on a moment.”
Yorke added: “Well, tell him to unblock it. It’s our … song.”
YouTube prohibits the posting of copyrighted material. If the site receives a complaint from a copyright owner, it will in most cases remove the video(s). Whether the same could be done for a company not holding a copyright is less clear, but Yorke’s argument would seem to bear some credence according to YouTube’s policies. YouTube, which is owned by Google, declined to comment.
Minnesota-grown rock star Prince also did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The dispute was an interesting twist in debates over digital ownership, held between two major acts with differing views on music and the Internet. Radiohead famously released their most recent album, “In Rainbows,” as a digital download with optional pricing. They also have a channel on YouTube.
When Prince performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, on April 26, he prohibited the standard arrangement of allowing photographers to shoot near the stage during the first three songs of his set. Instead, he had a camera crew filming his performance.
Prince, who founded NPG Records in 1993, has been innovative when it comes to music distribution, too. He released his 1997 album, “Crystal Ball,” on the Internet and in 2006 was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the Webbys. In 2007, he gave away copies of his disc “Planet Earth” in a British Sunday newspaper.
But the Purple One has also shut down his official Web site and in September of last year said he would sue YouTube and eBay for not filtering unauthorized content.
Prince fans have organized to urge him to relent in his legal fights to control images and photographs of himself. As of Thursday, the most popular YouTube clip about Prince playing “Creep” is an expletive-laden rant from Sam Conti Jr., who describes himself as a “former Prince fan.”
(thanks to Justin)
There is a lengthy article/interview with the band on cnn.com for your reading pleasure.
Here’s a bit:
As unified as “In Rainbows” sounds, it took years to complete. The band began recording it with producer Mark Stent, the first time in years they didn’t work with Nigel Godrich.
The attempt was futile and Radiohead set out on tour to help bring the new songs into shape. When they returned to the studio, they went back to Godrich, considered the unofficial sixth member because of his importance in helping refine the group’s sound. (Colin calls his wealth of gear “like Aladdin’s cave.”)
“The key thing in actually propelling it forward was Nigel coming back into the process,” said Selway, 41. “The reality when we got in there was it still wasn’t good enough. We really had to raise our standards quite a lot.”
Typically, songs begin with Yorke writing something on piano or guitar with vocals and fleshing it out with the multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood. Then the band works together to find the right arrangement, a process that can be tortuous. “Videotape” underwent, Yorke jokes, hundreds of versions before finding the right minimalist sound.
“We still sometimes get overawed by the songs,” said Greenwood. “We’ll get very attached to a song as an idea in its very basic form, but we also know we can’t really leave it like that. So that’s what we spend our time talking about and planning and thinking about. Thom will sit and play ‘Pyramid Song’ on piano, for example, and it’s obviously not finished. It needs a rhythm to propel it along. But what do you do with it and yet not mess it up? So that’s the sort of enjoyable pressure we like to be under.”
Though the method of release overshadowed the music of “In Rainbows” somewhat, it’s been almost universally hailed as a masterpiece. Yorke has been quoted as calling it “our classic album, our ‘Transformer,’ our ‘Revolver,’ our ‘Hunky Dory’ ” — a statement he said is a misquote: “I do talk some … but I didn’t say that.”
His point, he said, is that they strove to make a similarly concise work as those albums.
Read the rest….
(thanks to Alex)
I know we owe you an update on the current tour. Things have been quite crazy here so in the meantime, I would recommend you hanging out at our message board, Mortigi Tempo, for all the latest tour happenings.
For now, we would like to show you these images that Thom posted up at waste-central.com today. Could they be from the new “House of Cards” video that was described as having 3D lasers?
(thanks to Rex)