In the 14 November NOW, there was a perfectly decent article about Lali Puna, who were playing a show in Toronto that week. There was also a pitiful and unneeded nod to Radiohead.
No wonder they don't like going out in public and talking to strangers. People must be coming up to them all the time and accusing/crediting them with being the first rock band in the history of the world ever to use electronics in their music, not to mention "making" bands through their mid-80's Morrissey-esque endorsements.
Now I can appreciate them turning a few more people onto Lali Puna, but I cannot accept that Lali Puna owe a good chunk of their present success to Radiohead. LP are on an incredibly hip label, Morr Music, and would have garnered most of their attention that way.
More gems from NOW: "Sigur Rós. The Icelandic space rock ensemble went from comfortable obscurity to object of global attention after playing a handful of shows with Radiohead". People forget that "Agetis Byrjun" was released in 1999. The people who forget that sort of thing didn't hear about Sigur Ros until 2001. It was a #1 album in Iceland soon after its release, but a distribution deal with famed UK music shop/label FatCat didn't come about until the end of the year. The initial FatCat pressings sold out in five seconds, and practically nobody in North America was able to get their hands on a copy for months afterward. During that waiting period, the hype surrounding Sigur Ros reached fever pitch among indie heads in the know. THEN, they supported Radiohead. By THEN, their record had become more easily available internationally, although Radiohead certainly had nothing to do with that. I'd be willing to bet that two-thirds of the people who heard of SR after they toured in support of Radiohead (whether they heard of them that way or not) don't know that they have a new record out now. Those aren't fans, those are curiousity seekers and bandwagon jumpers. Sigur Ros probably did more to make themselves by playing high-profile festivals such as All-Tommorow's parties, and the five dates they played in support of Godspeed You Black Emperor! that same spring likely earned them more long-term fans than the Radiohead tour in the fall.
"Warp Records. During his post-OK Computer meltdown, when the sound of guitars would send him bonkers, fragile frontman Thom Yorke plugged the "intelligent techno" catalogue of Warp Records to anyone who'd listen". I cringe whenever I read something like this. It's sickening that by 1991, Warp records had released as many legendary records as any record label in recent memory, and yet when their name is thrown around in rock circles, it's primarily as a "Kid A"-inspiration footnote. It's not Thom Yorke's fault that countless writers are too lazy to do a bit of homework, but he's most definitely guilty of discovering Warp for himself, acting as though he'd translated the Rosetta Stone and opened up new avenues for rock music by doing so.
Warp's catalogue was an electronic music template back when On A Friday were playing to six people in college beer halls. After dominating early UK techno with the infamous "bleep" sound, they overhauled it yet again -- only two years later -- with the "Artificial Intelligence" series, becoming the foremost flagbearers for giving techno as much credibility in a living room as it did on a dance floor. At this juncture in time, Radiohead's "Creep" single, a relatively bright spot on a blase debut album, had failed upon initial release and was being prepped for a second go around, at which point it was disturbingly hailed as a classic in the post-grunge slipstream even though it was nothing but a passable attempt to rip off Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine simultaneously. During the next few years, Warp expanded its repertoire, branching into sweet electronics melded with soul (Nightmares on Wax), pop (Broadcast), not to mention the usual bevvy of excellence from the usual suspects (Aphex, Autechre, Mike Ink, etc.). Thom Yorke was said to be still quite happy playing his guitar during this period, thank you very much. But he's never put up much of a fight when writers and fans put Radiohead into the vanguard of electronica. So, in this specific respect, there's loads of people who need to readjust their thinking and give Radiohead the credit they are due -- which is nothing, absolutely nothing at all.
It's been so long since I ripped on Radiohead, I'd forgotten how much fun it could be (just then, a solitary tear rolls down Barry's cheek, cutting a jagged path through the stubble to the bottom of his chin, and makes a faint splash on the space bar of his grey keyboard ... )
