Radiohead has been added to the list of performers at this year’s Grammy Awards, scheduled for February 8th in Los Angeles. This is the band’s first ever performance at the Grammys, as well as their first live televised performance in the US since 2000.
The band is nominated for 5 Grammys this year, including best album for In Rainbows.
Radiohead joins a list of other artists slated to perform, including Paul McCartney, Justin Timberlake, T.I., Kanye West, Jay Z, Coldplay, and many more.
Thom and Jonny covered Neil Young’s “Tell Me Why” last night at the Hollywood Bowl. Here’s the video:
Radiohead :: “Tell Me Why” (neil young cover) from gorilla vs. bear on Vimeo.
MP3: Radiohead – “Tell Me Why”
More information about this show, including the setlist and reviews, can be found at our gigography.
(via Gorilla Vs Bear via At Ease)
The brothers Greenwood are in the news today. First up, it was announced on music composer James Lavino’s MySpace blog that Colin Greenwood is contributing to the soundtrack of the Alex Karposvksy’s film Woodpecker. The soundtrack is apparently out now digitally and the film has been making the festival rounds since March.
In other news, Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver is making its West Coast debut on August 21 at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre. As you may know, Greenwood won the 2006 BBC British Composer Awards for this piece. As Pitchfork reports, Popcorn is billed as having “surprise guests” so it could be that Jonny may actually be part of the performance since the band will be in San Francisco the day after for the Outside Lands Festival. This is just a guess and not by any means official.
More about the performance:
JONNY GREENWOOD: POPCORN SUPERHET RECEIVER
THE MAGIK*MAGIK ORCHESTRA
BENJAMIN SHWARTZ, CONDUCTOR
JOAN JEANRENAUD, CELLO
WILLIAM WINANT, PERCUSSIONOur San Francisco debut and the surprise finale of the 2007-08 season. The night before Radiohead takes the stage at the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, Wordless Music will present the West Coast premiere of Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver for string orchestra. Conductor Benjamin Shwartz will lead the Magik*Magik Orchestra in a program of music by Arvo Part, a major influence on the music of Jonny Greenwood and Radiohead, along with Bay Area composers Fred Frith, Mason Bates, and John Adams. Tickets on sale via cityboxoffice.com.
Thom and Jonny cover Portishead’s “The Rip” and it is simply amazing.
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)
If you get a chance, check out this great interview The Word did with the band. Here’s a snippet:
What do people most often get wrong about Radiohead?
Thom Yorke: We play up to the tortuous thing a bit too much. It’s not quite like that in the band. But also, this idea that there’s some sort of masterplan, that we’ve got some sort of clue what we’re doing… We haven’t.
Ed O’Brien: I used to think that maybe people didn’t know that there’s actually a great sense of humour in the band. But maybe the webcasts and a few of the things we did last year show that we’re not entirely super-serious all the time. You can’t do what we do without humour. It’s a lot easier to be melancholic in music. We struggle with songs of joy. That’s the tough part.
Phil Selway: People have got a pretty accurate take on us, I think. It can be uncomfortable because some of those takes are less than flattering, but they’re probably valid. You know, po-faced and over-serious… fair point, really. People are starting to pick up on the more playful side of Radiohead, which we hope has come to the fore in the past few years but, you know, no smoke without fire.
Jonny Greenwood: That we’re grumpy. People confuse the work with the people who make it. We’re not necessarily like our songs. Also I think they misunderstand Thom, and how really tiresomely energetic and enthusiastic he can be. Even when the rest of us are flagging, he’s the one with the energy and the excitement who’s saying, “Come on, this sounds amazing, what you’re doing is great.” That’s really good for us and I don’t think anyone knows it.
Read the rest…