 In Rainbows. Two words that have potentially altered the way that we listen to music. Perhaps not right away, but insofar as a template for the future of music distribution from big-ticket, recognized bands, it seems to have been remarkably prophetic. There were a number of enormous divergences from the traditional ways of conducting business in the music industry, but first and foremost among these was the absence of a label. No one to do the dirty job of distribution for them, but no one to impinge on their well known creative impulses, and take an 80% cut.
Having left Parlophone/EMI after the release of 2003’s Hail to the Thief, Radiohead entered a realm that most aspiring (and, let’s face it, established) bands only dream of – independent and independently wealthy. Of course, the flip side of this is that everything Radiohead have ever done fall into the possession of the evil label – those who would defend the labels and their interests are advised to watch Josie and the Pussycats: the movie, not the animated series of the same name – who will undoubtedly repackage it, pretty it up, and sell it to the masses, without any input from the band.
Which brings us to the recently released best-of CD and DVD. Parlophone have taken all Radiohead’s intellectual property, repackaged it, prettied it up and are ready to sell it to the masses, complete with artwork that is worryingly akin to that of Stanley Donwood and Dr Tchock (aka Thom Yorke), even in the absence of such esteemed artists. And what is there to say that hasn’t already been said? The best band in the world’s best songs. Problem being, there are very few communally agreed ‘best’ songs across Radiohead’s peerless back catalogue. For every electro whiz who swears by ‘Idioteque’, there’s the bloke at the Radiohead gig standing with a forlorn expression crying plaintively for ‘Street Spirit’.
The irony of the entire situation is immediately apparent. Radiohead, a band that, for its entire 15 years, have actively eschewed the very notion of their ‘best’ music, having a collection released against their will is tantamount to a betrayal of their very legacy. Radiohead, the group who when releasing a live album opted to put out one B-side and a number of songs that were never released as singles, lifted from their two most difficult recordings, on 2002’s I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings. The effectiveness of such a release is questionable anyway. Radiohead fans are roundly rabid enough that the bulk of them almost certainly own everything the band ever put out before the release of this collection.
As such, the CD release of Radiohead’s best-of is, at best, redundant. The complete absence of B-sides or rare material is an inexplicable oversight; every single track exists on a major release, from Pablo Honey to 2003’s Hail to the Thief. There is nothing for the true believers, but certainly a good starting point for any novitiate unwilling to invest in the aural challenge of Kid A or Amnesiac.
However, there is one offering from the good folk at EMI that many long time fans ought to be salivating over: a DVD release of every video clip recorded during its time at EMI, from the breakthrough ‘Creep’ to a live performance of the insane flamenco of ‘2+2=5’ from the 2003 Belfort Festival. And from a band that has redefined what is possible in a film clip, it is quite a collection. While the clip to ‘Creep’ is comparatively banal, with its bog-standard band-in-a-small-gig aesthetic (on an aside, for some inexplicable reason the powers that be decided to include the watered down, censored, MTV version), and ‘Stop Whispering’, with its deeply misguided attempt to make the band appear glamorous, the band rapidly progressed to more fertile filmmaking territory.
Namely, this came in the form of two clips from their stunning 1995 opus, The Bends. While the big hits were ‘High and Dry’ and ‘Fake Plastic Trees’, it was the clips to ‘Street Spirit’ and ‘Just’ that announced to the world that, as well as being sonically innovative, the band could be equally visually arresting. ‘Just’ remains, to this day, a favourite among many, and can incite vigorous debate about just why that man is lying in the street. ‘Street Spirit’, on the other hand, has no such pretension to notoriety, but with its stark black and white footage, dreamlike atmosphere and stunning visuals, is quite likely their true crowning moment.
From their magnum opus, OK Computer, only three clips exist. The proposed lead single, ‘Let Down’, never made it to production after disputes with the label about how it would look, so the band had to content themselves with ‘No Surprises’, ‘Paranoid Android’ and ‘Karma Police’, the former and latter of which managed to establish themselves in the same canon of classic film clips as ‘Street Spirit’ – ‘No Surprises’ for Thom Yorke’s famously masochistic head-in-a-bubble torture test, and ‘Karma Police’ for its horror movie ethos and satanic car.
After the near-implosion that followed OK Computer, the chronic insecurities that plagued Radiohead resulted in the follow-up, Kid A having no promotion, and as such, no clips, which is a shame. For a retrospective of a great band to omit any reference to what is possibly their most important, if not their best, recording, is a sorry omission. Particularly considering the final clip is a live performance of ‘2+2=5’, the inability to source concert footage of, say, ‘Everything in its Right Place’ is sad indeed.
By the time the DVD reaches the Amnesiac/Hail to the Thief era, the strains between artist and label are beginning to show themselves in ever less subtle ways. While ‘Pyramid Song’, ‘Knives Out’ and ‘There There’ received the full video treatment, the decision to release the insanely confronting and difficult to listen to ‘Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors’ and ‘Like Spinning Plates’ combined, with an abstract computer-generated clip, was clearly intended to infuriate recalcitrant A&R suits who, in all likelihood, were consciously interfering in the band’s creative output. By the time the label insisted on a fourth clip from Amnesiac, the frankly lazy offering representing ‘I Might Be Wrong’ was the result. Much the same can be said for ‘Sit Down. Stand Up’, with its blurry cityscapes, any undergraduate film school student could stake a valid claim for greater work in their meagre portfolio.
But, for a band that can claim credit for the likes of ‘Street Spirit’, ‘Just’, ‘No Surprises’, and the elegantly insane clip to ‘Knives Out’, the occasional lapse into lazy obligation is easily excusable. The legacy is well established, the place in history assured. Like their ability to blaze a trail in the creation of video additives to music, it now seems that Radiohead are likely to spurn similar endeavours in future, adopting a more freestyle approach to putting their music to the visual medium, as their recent streamed basement performances, and the ‘clip’ for ‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place’, with its helmet-cam perspective attest. For the YouTube generation, the band that re-pioneered the film clip as a creative pursuit in and of itself, may now decide that it is passé, and that a new form of communication is relevant.
And, frankly, who’d have the guts to argue?
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