This picture has been in the can for some time, but just today we realized that it’s in fact Hallowe’en, so we thought it would be appropriate. It was either this or Skully:
And since he shares a nickname and a not-so-passing resemblance to half the guys I went to college with, the choice was obvious.
Alek and I are spending this sunny Sunday seeing what we think of the new Radiohead album. The operative word there is ‘album’, as Radiohead have made this latest offering of theirs available only in its entirety.
The speed of change disorients me sometimes. Today is one of those times. Our musical switchover to CD-free went unremarked here, though it made a big impression on me, me who resisted the CD revolution to begin with. I clung to vinyl and magnetic tape well into the 90’s, not out of some acoustic snobbery or effete conservatism — I was just poor. It was two years ago this month that I wrote about a project involving organization of the disc library, and in the intervening seasons we struck the CDs down into the hold after moving their cubic half-meter’s worth of music into a glossy little player the size of a deck of cards. That system gave way during the summer to an AppleTV, which combines our music, video, and photo libraries for maximum convenience and easy access from the couch.
Like making the move to CD, it took me a while to warm up to Radiohead. I didn’t really become a fan until just before the turn of the milennium. At one point I was something of a completist, and I remember the deep anticipation of the summer of 2000, counting down the release of the concept album that was “Kid A”. Boy, did I feel burned by that. I like “The Bends”. “OK Computer”, sure. “Kid A” did not make it across the ocean with me.
Reviewers have noted that many fans of the band aren’t as willing to experiment as the musicians themselves are. I certainly fall into that camp musically, but Radiohead’s latest experiment, the means of distributing the music, intrigues me deeply. The album, in its entirety, is available exclusively through their website. The music comes in a box set + download, or download only. If you choose the download only, you also choose how much you are willing to pay them for their music. I find this highly exciting, and not just because I am a well-known tightwad.
There are a few problems with this, though. Let’s assume that it’s a stunt, if an interesting one, but let’s also pretend that it might, just might, be a viable way for musicians to sell music. Radiohead is indeed a band whose songs I will listen to in album form, start to finish, in their order, as Thom intended. Much of the music is practically ambient, and I can see why they want it to hang together or not at all. But most music does not fit into this category. It’s been some years now since the album was declared dead, and it was shuffle that killed it more than the greed of the music industry creating a drive to pad hits with filler. It’s highly likely that the reason it took me so long to warm up to Radiohead was exactly because I was already a random/shuffler by default. And that’s a way of listening that is not kind to much of their music. So okay, Radiohead, I’ll buy your album for some arbitrary but fair amount. But for the bands whose albums don’t naturally hang together, how much time am I supposed to devote to pricing out each song individually, based on my own subjective opinion and/or mood, bank balance, job prospects, state of inebriation, etc? I’ve got other ways to be overwhelmed, thanks.
Another problem I see with this “pay what you want” model is that I don’t know what music is worth until after I’ve bought it — in some cases, until after I’ve owned it for quite some time. This has resulted in my owning some albums I’ll charitably call ‘mistakes’ (”Kid A, as we’ve seen, is an excellent but not unique example of this), as well as some I initially didn’t get, but that eventually grew into favorites. Obviously, the technology that Radiohead is now using to distribute their music has also brought us ways to ‘sample’ it for free without involving that other dead medium, radio. But that doesn’t solve the problem, which is that there is some justification for ‘sampling’ without buying, despite the moral, ethical, economic, and artistic ramifications that at times seem to threaten the ability of musicians to musiciate.
Radiohead is unlikely to be in any danger of foundering economically if this experiment goes awry, and I imagine that this approach will work for them because they have a rabid fanbase, as well as due to the novelty and feel-good aspects. But I wonder if this can this work in the long run, for everybody.
The music industry may be dead, but music and musicians are not. It’s axiomatic that a fundamental change is at hand in the way we purchase and consume music. Apple’s success with the iTunes store has had some interesting effects on the industry as a whole and served as a lightning-rod in a variety of ways. I think this latest experiment from Radiohead is not so much a reaction against Apple’s insistence on dismantling the album as it is a major step in the remaking of the industry.
Whatever you think of the band or of their latest record, I believe that the release of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” is a watershed moment.
It’s the quality of the light, mostly
Surprisingly cold nights? Check.
Bathroom skylight dark by boys’ bath time? Check.
Free-floating wistfulness/melancholia? Well, that one’s always there.
Let the record show that Sunday, 7 October, was the day that finally caused us to say to each other, wow, it’s really autumn.
September skies — Dalmatian edition
The internet is back! The internet is back!
September’s sky photos were all taken from the balcony of our holiday apartma on the island of Korčula in Croatia. They are brought to you by Traminac and various rosés.
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