Talk:Radiohead

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[edit] Misconceptions

Radiohead is not a band "from Abingdon". The members met at Abingdon School in Abingdon (which is near Oxford. both are a part of the region of OXFORDSHIRE) and some lived there for a while afterwards. The band was definitely founded in Abingdon in the mid 80s when they all attended the school, and it must be listed as the founding location. However, there is no evidence to suggest that any band members currently live in Abingdon. Thom Yorke at least is known to live in Oxford itself, while some other band members live in other parts of England. Ed O'Brien lives in London. No one lives or works in Abingdon or it's not public knowledge. The band's personal studio and management headquarters are not located in either Abingdon OR in Oxford, but in Didcot[1] another separate town. The unifying fact about all these places (besides London)? They are all in OXFORDSHIRE.

[edit] On Can

"Can? What is that? I've never heard of that!! Radiohead was never influenced by that!"

ahem...

"perhaps nowadays we look more to Can and electronica etc to work out how to stucture stuff." - yorke, on the Kid A sessions, 2000 [2]

"The reason why Radiohead had recorded in Paris, Copenhagen and Gloucestershire was because their own studio, which they had expected to be ready by the start of 1999, was still being fitted out and would not be fully operational until September. Yorke imagined Radiohead using their studio much as Can had used their Cologne fortress in the '70s: to record every minute of music played, editing the best stuff down to album length." - 2000 [3]

"I couldn't make any sense of Dollars & Cents, for example... Thom: Well, that started out as a IO-minute piece of us mucking around, trying to do the Can thing. It just came out spontaneously. Lyrically, I like doing things like that - where whatever happens in the first take is what stays." - on Amnesiac, 2001 [4]

"I’d say it’s so obviously taken… it’s a homage to something like Tago Mago or something by Can. It’s always been in that area for me, that song.” " - On "There There" from Hail to the Thief, 2003 [5]



Please stop censoring the article of anything you haven't heard of. Yes it's true an intro must be very generalized. In it we cannot even mention 5% of the influences Radiohead has admitted to liking or the press has cited for them, nor should we. We are supposed to give an accurate representation of things however. There is no point citing multiple similar examples of a single genre, and ignoring others when we could use the same number of pixels and present a broader image of the facts.

We don't namedrop in wikipedia in favor of fame vs accuracy. This is like the Pink Floyd re:OKC, and the Nirvana re:Pablo Honey issue. Just because a large amount of the press hadn't heard any angsty rock not made by Nirvana, any slow art rock not made by Floyd, or any experimental electronic music not made by Aphex Twin, or whatever, doesn't mean it didn't exist.

Yes, Thom Yorke was/is a huge fan of Aphex, as with the whole Warp Records style as of 2000. However there is already one representative of that movement of electronica mentioned in the intro, Autechre. If you insist it to be Aphex rather than Autechre fine. But Can represents a different strain of avant garde rock/electronica that influenced them.

and they covered a Can song for god's sake (out of about three covers of anyone they've done this decade). Like Spinning Plates itself is practically a cover version of a song from Tago Mago. Just move on to some articles you have a background in and stop proving your ignorance please.

[edit] Citations

If you quoted page numbers from books it would help a lot with the GA review. andreasegde 05:41, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, not only that, but there are a lot of great quotations in this article, particularly in the Bends/OK Computer sections, which don't have any source cited. It seems they did come from a book, but all the current books on Radiohead summarize interview material that appeared in magazines originally. A lot of these magazine interviews are available transcribed online (if you check out the links, "Follow Me Around Press Cuttings" and "Radiohead Articles Archive" listed near the end of the article). It would be nice if anyone can find where those quotes originally appeared, or better yet if whoever wrote that part of the article remembers where they got them. The problem is now if we search for this text, the main thing that comes up now is Wikipedia mirrors. 172.145.14.88 06:11, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

and they even covered a Can song, three times, for god's sake (out of about three total covers they've otherwise done once each this decade). Like Spinning Plates itself is practically a cover version of a song from Tago Mago. Just move on to some articles you have a background in and stop proving your ignorance please.

[edit] Formation date / Years active

There's no dispute on the facts of this, it's just how to present them.

  • The five members of Radiohead formed a band in the mid 80s. 1985 to be precise, or 1986 if you start it with their first gig. Sometimes other members were also in this band, but from 1985/6 it always consisted of at least the current five members. This band was known mostly as On a Friday, though it had other names at times (i.e. Shindig). The members went to college and had other bands in some cases (Flickernoise, Headless Chickens for Thom) but they continued to play together every few months/years during holiday breaks and had ambitions to return to their original band.
  • In the early '90s On a Friday formally got back together, began playing live a lot and releasing demos which they sold in local record shops, trying to get signed. During this time they hooked up with their current managers at Courtyard Studios.
  • In late 1991 they were signed by Parlophone/EMI/Capitol and changed their name. They released their first recordings as "Radiohead" in early 1992, their first single (that would be Creep) in late 1992, and their first album in early 1993.

Given all that, which is already adequately covered in the appropriate history sections, what do we say about when they were formed in the sidebar and more importantly in the intro?

I think we can say first, "Radiohead are an English rock band from Oxfordshire, originally/initially formed by school friends in [pick your preferance: 1985/6/the (mid-?)1980s]." [Then we go on to say the stuff about their first single/album in 1992/3, so it becomes obvious they were not publicly releasing music in the 1980s. The "school friends" thing also lets you know how old they were at the time they formed the band.]

The sidebar can stick to "years active 1991-present" and be fully accurate. it's just that for the first sentence of the intro, the band was not "formed in 1991", but long before, even though they have only been active outside their local boys high school or under their current name since after '91. 172.144.0.252 23:02, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Position on fan taping

Does anyone know if Radiohead has made any official statements on fan taping at concerts? I've always assumed they 'look the other way', but I've yet to hear an official statement from them. Whoblah 22:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

They never made an official statement, but if you go back to 2000-2001, the band made positive comments about their live songs being shared on Napster. They've also said other enthusiastic things in interviews and concerts about how fans will get used to the songs before they're out, and it may have been a factor in their touring mostly to introduce new songs that weren't out yet in 2002 and 2006. Even though in 2002 they were just touring Spain and Portugal, the fans in other areas could find the tracks via Internet.

So anyway I'm quite sure the band doesn't have an official taping-friendly policy where certain areas are reserved for tapers or anything, it's always up to fans who want to do it to get past venue security however strong or lax that may be, but the band themselves certainly doesn't oppose taping and sharing of live shows for nonprofit use. 172.149.220.25 07:57, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Crossover influence of Radiohead

This may seem minor to rock fans, but Radiohead's compositions are quite popular/influential outside of rock. I like the mention of their compositions for Merce Cunningham's dance company (which I've seen). In addition, the prominent jazz pianist Brad Mehldau (I'm a fan) regularly adapts Radiohead tunes, on record and in concert. The classical pianist Christopher O'Reilly has also done at least two albums of Radiohead transcriptions: "True Love Waits" and "Hold Me To This". This is serious stuff, not the typical rip-off artists you get with lots of cross-over stuff - - like transciptions of classic rock for string quartet, or symphony.

I am but a fan of Radiohead and Mehldau [and wikipedia], not a writer myself. But I recommend anyone to look into the wider influence of Radiohead in the realm of "serious" music. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 199.36.20.5 (talk) 16:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC).

There used to be a separate article about Radiohead's influence on other musicians, for some reason- it was probably spun off from a section of this article at some point, but then that article grew a lot of extraneous information, original research and fannish writing and was deleted. That article had a comprehensive list of musical artists in different genres who covered Radiohead songs, including the classical and jazz things.

It's too bad this list is now gone along with the old article- you have to look in articles on each specific Radiohead album or song to find who did the cover versions- but maybe it's for the best, this article could become too cluttered every time a new person did a cover. I did add a citation to the intro statement of this article about their influence on musicians in many genres, with a representative list in the footnote of some of the artists that have covered Radiohead- the genres aren't listed, but they range from jazz to reggae to hip-hop to indie rock to pop to alt-country to singer songwriters to new/bluegrass to heavy metal, and not including any of those "the [x genre] tribute to..." by unknown musicians, either. I didn't put Christopher O'Riley, because his name isn't widely known aside from his Radiohead albums, however I know he is a respected classical pianist, it's true they've gotten a different sort of covers from most bands. I listed Mehldau, definitely. :)

Oh and something quite cool in terms of "high" art, which there isn't really any place to mention in the article: Michael Cunningham said OK Computer was a large influence on The Hours.

172.161.190.202 16:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Radiohead single or plural

The article mostly treats Radiohead as a plural noun but sometimes as a singular one. Make consistent? (But which way: singular makes sense to me)

Moxbib 14:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

You have to be flexible with collective nouns (see this AskOxford FAQ for example). Phil Smith 12:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Passed GA

Excellent article. Everything made perfect sense to me, as someone who has never heard of Radiohead. I could only recommend adding some inlines in paragraphs that don't have any. I'd also recommend a Peer Review to flesh out more problems. I really enjoyed reading it though. Nice work. DoomsDay349 21:17, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Radiohead interview

I did an interview with Ed of Radiohead 10 years ago. (God, time flies.) I don't want to post the piece myself, but if any of you deem it worthy to quote, extract information from or otherwise use, feel free. :-)

http://sheknows.com/about/look/4364.htm

- Nancy

Andwhatsnext 22:40, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Band members" is TWO WORDS

Please stop using the word "Bandmembers." It does not exist.

Also, if you take the time to add new text mentioning an album, album titles should always be italicized, i.e. Kid A or Amnesiac. Song titles should have quotes around them, i.e. "Paranoid Android." (or "Paranoid Android", with the period/comma afterwards, depending on your country or style preference. I'm not sure the article is consistent). To get the italic effect just put ''around'' the word you want to italicize. If it's also a link, put the apostrophes just outside the "[[ ]]" 172.145.206.220 17:59, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

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