Close but No Cigar

Well, if anyone actually reads this thing regularly, they'd know that I just finished listing my favourite ten records of all time. For those of them who really give a shit, here's the list again:

1. OK Computer - Radiohead
2. ( ) - Sigur Ros
3. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco
4. Bitches Brew - Miles Davis
5. Abbey Road - The Beatles
6. Blood on the Tracks - Bob Dylan
7. Kid A - Radiohead
8. Strange Bird - Augie March
9. Mothership Connection - Parliament
10. Pink Moon - Nick Drake

Having put all that out on paper, so to speak, I thought I'd list a few of the records that I shortlisted, primarily as I felt guilty for not mentioning some of my favourite albums on a post listing my favourite albums. So it is with a mixture of congratulatory and apologetic glee I offer (In no real order - possibly alphabetic if I get anal retentive):

Air - Moon Safari: No one does ambient like this.
At The Drive-In - Relationship of Command: The best hard rock album of all time, hands down.
Beck - Odelay: A new kind of genius emerged when this appeared in 1996.
Belle and Sebastian - Tigermilk: 'She's Losing It' is the template for all pop music.
Bjork - Debut: Ditto Beck.
Blur - Think Tank: Everyone talks about Parklife and Gorillaz, but this is Blur's, and Damon Albarn's, watershed moment.
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde: Just because of the front sleeve haircut.
Can - Tago Mago: Multinational, multicultural, totally mental, all awesome.
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band - Safe as Milk: Everyone talks about Trount Mask Replica, but this is the classic.
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: The first and only glam rock record to stand the test of time.
David Bowie - Aladdin Sane: The perfect way to follow up Ziggy.
Doves - Lost Souls: Former dance trio create moody, Mancunian magic.
Elbow - Cast of Thousands: Mellow Radiohead. More sad, less angry, just as beautiful.
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats: Would be in just for the Beefheart vocal cut, but the other 59 minutes are equally awesome.
Happy Mondays - Pills'n'Thrills and Bellyaches: The 'Madchester' scene redefined rock'n'roll, and this defined Madchester.
Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced: The biggest and best hands of all time.
Led Zeppelin - III: Only in ahead of I and IV because of 'Bron-Y-Aur Stomp'.
Massive Attack - Blue Lines: Revolutionary in every conceivable way; still being copied 15 years later.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus: He rhymed 'Orpheus' with 'orifice'. Enough said.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - And No More Shall We Part: Sadness was never this stunning.
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left: What 60s folk music was all about.
Peter Gabriel - So: The only person ever to make Worldbeat sound cool.
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here: Just overblown and pretentious enough.
Portishead - Dummy: Built on Massive Attack's foundations, and pumped it full of acid.
Pulp - Different Class: 'Common People' is the best angry bloke song ever.
Queens of the Stone Age - Rated (R): 'Feelgood Hit of the Summer' might just be the best SONG ever.
Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine: I stole their name, so I owe them. And it's amazing too.
Rufus Wainwright - Want Two: High camp and high drama will never dance this closely again.
Sigur Ros - Aegaetis Byrjun: Sheer. Icelandic. Maginificence.
Sly and The Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On: Funk and angry militant activism. One potent mix.
Sufjan Stevens - Come On! Feel the Illinoise!: It's totally unreal, it shouldn't work, but it SO does.
Super Furry Animals - Rings around the World: The best album by the band with the best name.
Television - Marquee Moon: All guitarists - actually, all humans - ahould hear this record.
The Arcade Fire - Funeral: Probably the best debut album since Bjork.
The Avalanches - Since I left You: Another Aussie entry, and redefined what Aussie music could mean to the world at large.
The Beatles - Revolver: The pefect balance between pop melodies and avant-garde. Brilliant.
The Beatles - Rubber Soul: The turning point for this most incredible band. A lot of people till haven't figured out what 'Norwegian Wood' is all about.
The Cure - Disintegration: Another fine entry into the pantheon of glum rock. However, it's the flashes of happy that make this a classic.
The Frames - For the Birds: Ireland's best ever (and I'm aware of where U2 come from), make their best ever.
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow: For unashamedly poppy pop music, this is incredibly important and foot-tappy.
The Smiths - The Queen is Dead: I love Morrissey.
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground and Nico: This must have pissed off a lot of people who though Sgt Peppers was controversial.
Tom Waits - Sworfishtrombones: Waits' Revolver. The midpoint and highpoint of an incredible career.
Tricky - Maxinquaye: Music at its most technicolour.
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain: Probably too soon, but in time, this will be on every all-time list.
Wilco - A Ghost is Born: Hard to pay attention to after YHF, but nearly as good, and the good bits are probably better.

All time top ten - #1 - OK Computer

Yes, it's a cliche. We've finally reached the point where it's now totally uncool to say that OK Computer is your favourite record ever. Uber-hipsters are disowning this record faster than Germans dispensed with Nazism in 1945, labelling it 'boring', 'overrated' and 'pretentious' to name but three of the less vitriolic adjectives that have been hurled its way in the music press and amonsgt the public musical intelligentsia of late.

Now I understand the desire to recant a love of a record that received phenomenal hype upon its release, the very essence of being musically literate, conscious and current is obscurity. And hype (and it's evil twin, popularity) is the natural enemy of obscurity. Your favourite Led Zeppelin song can't be Stairway to Heaven, it has to be The Lemon Song or (my favourite) What is And What Should Never Be. Owning up to loving something that is loved not only by millions of people, but millions of people who are unaware of who Nick Drake and Husker Du are, is the very essence of not being cool.

But revisionist history is a very evil thing indeed. Just as I imagine the music world probably turned on Sgt Peppers in 1977, and definitely turned on Off the Wall in 1988, ten years after the release of OK Computer, people decided to get it in their heads that they, and the rest of the world, were wrong after all, and it wasn't that great a record, we simply got carried away because it was WAY different from BritPop and we all loved The Bends so much.

Well, I feel compelled to disagree. Vehemently. It is not boring. In fact OK Computer is so exciting that even today, nearly 520 weeks after its release, it still sounds current, fresh, imaginative, as I imagine it will continue to do well into the distant future, much as the sprawling reverse flute breakdown at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever will always sound abstract and cool, no matter how many bands copy it and attempt to rob it of its lustre. Some music defies time.

Radiohead had already formed a habit (which continues today) of announcing their intentions with not only the opening track, but the opening bars of the opening track. Witness the empty cold wind of Planet Xerox, the descending keyboard refrain of Everything in its Right Place I or the sound of a guitar plugging into an amplifier on the latest return to guitar rock, Hail to the Thief. On OK Computer, Airbag announced the epic scope to come with a triumphal, soaring guitar riff, leaving no doubt in the listener's mind as to what kind of aural assault they wer in for. Drums loop, guitars squeal, mystery guitar and vocal sounds are cut up and scratched on a turntable, while melopies blend into each other and guitars morph into choirs singing a counterpoint to Thom Yorke's vocals in the final, mindblowing chorus and outro. Anyone who doubts the impact of this record should be challenged to sit in a dark room with headphones on and listen to that song, and not find themselves short of breath by the end. And that's just the opening song. The opening line, 'In the next world war/In a jack-knifed juggernaut/I am born again' recalls a time when lyrics were not only left open to interpretation, but were actively encouraged to be interpreted as the listener saw fit.

An ongoing theme across the record fear of the new, impersonal world being created by the increasing intrusion of computers into our lives, and the social disconnection they create. That the bulk of the album was recorded with the overt asssistance of newly available computer technology, lent the entire work a sense of irony that, in lesser hands, would have seemed churlish. 'Such a pretty house/Such a pretty garden' on No Surprises, or 'The dust/The screaming/The yuppies networking/.../God loves his children, Yeah!' from the schitzophrenic masterpiece, Paranoid Android positively yell this from the rooftops, alternating between sorrowful longing on the former and outright rage on the latter.

Radiohead manage to namedrop Bob Dylan's famous moment when he 'plugged in' on Subterranean Homesick Alien, clearly an indication that the band knew full well how this record was likely to be received. But here's the thing. When the chorus kicks in, with its gradually swelling and ebbing guitar and gorgeously escalating keyboard coda, with Yorke wailing 'Uptight/We're all uptight', none of it really matters. You can't help but be swept along with it all, as with the vitriolic, vituperative and viscious interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, Exit Music (For a Film), where sheer fury and indignation have never sounded so gorgeous.

Clearly there are 11 songs (and a computer-generated poem) on OK Computer, but it doesn't quite seem necessary to discuss them all. They're best left a mystery, on the off chance that someone who is yet to hear them can experience the sheer emotional tsunami that the first (and indeed, tenth and hundredth) listen of OK Computer can create. Right now, the final verse of Let Down is echoing in my headphones, and for the millionth time, I feel moved to tears.

Pretentious? Yes. But who cares, when it's so beautiful. Overrated? Probably. It's widely regarded as the greatest thing ever by alot of people, and clearly there is no one greatest record EVER, but it's my favourite. And don't you ever call it boring.

All time top ten - #7 - Kid A

The opening bars of 'Everything in its Right Place' are a defining moment in modern music. The descending keyboard riff, interspersed with cut-and paste, nonsensical vocal mutterings from Thom Yorke was automatically dismissed as 'too hard' by many. But with this glaring statement of intent, Radiohead dispensed with conventional song-writing rules and notions of structure. Gone were the Johnny Greenwood screaming, tortured guitars, gone were much of the drums, replaced by skittering beats and drum machines. There was very little recognisable guitar at all. There were no choruses! Released in early 2000, if ever an album could have ushered in the 21st century, it was this.
Taking its cues from everywhere, and possibly nowhere at all, Kid A redefined what it meant to make a rock record. Vocals are twisted, sliced and distorted within an inch of their lives, such as on the title track, with Yorke's voice squeezed until it actually sounds like a child singing; on the driving, hypnotic 'The National Anthem' an insane, climactic, horn driven crescendo would not be out of place during the more psychadelic moments on 'Bitches Brew'; the instrumental 'Treefingers' is made entirely out of guitar samples, yet sounds nothing like any guitar anyone had ever heard and the thumping, tribal 'Optimistic' breaks down via a jazz wig-out interlude into the seasickness-inducing clamour of 'In Limbo'.
'Idioteque', a disco number for those coming down after the night out, is the most radical departure from 'Old Radiohead', while 'How to Disappear Completely' is the one track that might possibly feel at home on 1997s 'OK Computer'.
Harps merge with angelic choirs, saxophones conduct squealing, wailing duels with french horns, Yorke's tortured angel voice proclaims 'I'm not here/This isn't happening'.
Difficult it may be, but a more rewarding listen may not possibly exist for those with the patience (and the stomach). Radiohead plotted a course for the new generation of musician. Ignoring genre, convention and style, Kid A brought together every conceivable influence and made something that sounded like nothing else.
And the world is still listening.