My second favorite music critic, Sasha Frere-Jones, weighs in on Radiohead in this week’s New Yorker. SFJ, never a Radiohead fan, tries to understand their place in the music scene. The article is interesting, if jealousy-enducing—SFJ saw Radiohead three times on the their last tour, and he doesn’t even really like them. I couldn’t get tickets at all. SFJ’s case against Radiohead is not as persuasive as Jon Pareles’s case against Coldplay, nor is it meant to be. I still get what he means: their lyrics are a bit ridiculous and their music has gotten more obtuse over time. But as someone who did all her Pre-Cal homework listening to OK Computer, I’ll always like Radiohead, whether or not ambition makes you look pretty ugly or their new stuff is any good.
Anyway, the most interesting part of SFJ’s article comes at the end, here:
Radiohead has much in common with the Grateful Dead, including passionate fans who follow the band from city to city, trade bootleg recordings of shows, puzzle out the meanings of the band’s cryptic lyrics, and (in Boston, at least) dance badly while smoking expensive-smelling weed.
Ipso facto, I’m a deadhead and someone at the New Yorker smokes the ill chronic. The New Yorker is mad edgy, yo.