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Ed O'Brien Radiohead tour

Here’s what’s been happening in Radioheadland

Ed O'Brien at the University of GlamorganUpdates around here have been sparse lately so here’s what has been going on that you may have missed:

Radiohead – Codex (deadmau5 cover) by fuckmylife

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Ed O'Brien Radiohead

Buy Ed O’Brien’s guitar, help out a good cause

Ed O'BrienWe recently received an email from Luke Bainbridge, one of the founding editors of Observer Music Monthly, letting us know about a special cause that may interest you hardcore Radiohead fans. Luke writes:

“My four year old niece was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour earlier this year, and a charity trust fund has been launched to help raise money to help pay for treatment in Texas. Ed heard about the campaign and extremely generously gave us the guitar he used on Kid A and Amnesiac, and toured with up to In Rainbows to auction for the charity.

The charity website is www.billiebutterflyfund.org

Click here for the auction.

The guitar is a white Fender Telecaster, as seen in the picture to the right. Even more cool is that all five members of Radiohead signed it.

A note by Ed accompanies the guitar and it reads:

To whoever ends up with this Tele…

It was bought in the summer of ’98, just prior to us going into record the albums which came out as Kid A and Amnesiac. It was pretty much the only guitar I used at that time. It’s also been gigged a lot, up until and including the In Rainbows tour.

Hope you enjoy it – all the best

Ed O’Brien

If you’d like to own it, check out the auction and get to bidding! It’s a great cause and we’re happy that Ed and the rest of the band were able to donate the guitar.

Photos:

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Ed O'Brien Radiohead The King of Limbs Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke: The way TKOL was recorded was a gamble

Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien recently gave an interview with NPR’s Guy Raz and talked about the recording process for The King of Limbs:

Speaking recently with NPR’s Guy Raz about recording The King of Limbs, singer Thom Yorke and guitarist Ed O’Brien agree that, after coming off the long tour cycle for In Rainbows, the band was feeling exhausted and uninspired. To make the new album work, everyone had to slow down and step back.

“We had an initial session of about five weeks, and it was really like kids in kindergarten,” O’Brien says. “You had to simplify what you were doing — you couldn’t do loads of ideas. You had to listen to one another. Believe it or not, in a band you can lose that.

“Part of what you do is rejection,” O’Brien adds. “I think everybody finds it hard, but I think part of creativity is bouncing back from that. What’s great about the environment that we have is that no one ever says, ‘You can’t do that.’ You try it, and then it’s judged on whether it’s right for the track.”

Radiohead tried a new approach for The King of Limbs: Each member worked, piecemeal, on his own contributions before sharing them with the group. Yorke says working that way was a big gamble.

“Almost every tune is like a collage: things we’d pre-recorded, each of us, and then were flying at each other,” Yorke says. “You get to a point where you think, ‘OK, this bit needs a big black line through it.’ It’s like editing a film or something.

“I don’t think we really genuinely thought anything would come out of it,” he adds, “certainly not an entire record.”

Playing live presents its own set of challenges. O’Brien says that, as happy as he was with The King of Limbs upon its completion, the prospect of turning an intricate studio creation into a concert experience was panic-inducing.

“That’s the scary part — you realize that you have created in this vacuum, in this bubble,” O’Brien says. “It plays tricks on the brain.”

But Yorke says adapting the new material was liberating, as well.

“That’s one of the ways we move on musically, is having to force ourselves to learn this thing,” he says. “It’s a backward process, but it really exists in another way once you can actually play it.”

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Ed O’Brien interview reveals 2012 tour, possible solo album

Ed O'Brien's nippleLast week, Ed O’Brien gave an interview to Argentinian website, Al Tuntún, as well as lost-pixel.net and revealed that Radiohead were booking tour dates at the moment for 2012. He was also asked about a solo album. “I’m writing songs,” he remarked. If true, this leaves Colin Greenwood as the only Radiohead member who hasn’t released a solo album.

Sorry, this is all the information we have. The full interview should be up soon at Al Tuntún.

(Many thanks to Samuel Dietz. Irrelevant zany gif of Ed’s nipple from Gif Soup)

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Ed O'Brien Radiohead

Ed O’Brien: The Dignity Revolution

Ed O'Brien
Ed O'Brien

Ed posted a rare entry on Dead Air Space today talking about how important Twitter and Facebook have been in public dialogue and protest in the recent events in Tunisia and Egypt:

The Dignity Revolution

What have twitter and facebook ever done for us?

Obviously, keeping in touch with everyone but I have to say I have become increasingly excited over the last 3 months about the possibilities of this form of communication.Yes I am very slow out of the blocks. It’s in the arena of public protest that it seems twitter and facebook are increasingly the means by which popular movements throughout the world are able to come together and mobilise.

I have been so moved by the peaceful Jasmine revolution in Tunisia; The anti-Government demonstrations centred on Tahrir Square in Cairo.. Social networking has helped facilitate the freedom to assemble peacefully and express oneself. Equally in Britain it seems to be having a similar effect in helping essential protests being organised by students and groups such as UK Uncut against the Government’s ill thought out cuts … Well done those people!

Ed

http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/110211/the-jasmine-revolution

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Colin Greenwood Ed O'Brien Radiohead

New Documentary about Radiohead/Oxford Music Scene

Anyone Can Play GuitarJon Spira writes in to tell us about a new documentary he made called Anyone Can Play Guitar:

My documentary about the music scene that inspired, nurtured and launched Radiohead is now finished. Ed, Colin and their manager Chris Hufford all took part in the interviews and there is a bunch of hugely significant never-before-seen archival material including early live footage and what we believe to be the earliest ever band photos (taken during the recording of their first demo). We need to raise a few thousand pounds to fund the sound mix and picture grade, so we’ve signed up with indiegogo.com.

Anyone who donates to the project via the link below will get perks packages which include tickets to the premiere, credits on the film and free very limited edition pre-release DVDs of the film with extras that will never be available elsewhere. This is really your only guaranteed chance to see the film as early as possible.

The link to see the trailer and donate is:

http://www.indiegogo.com/Anyone-Can-Play-Guitar