Green Plastic Radiohead

John Sutherland wrote an article in Monday’s G2 (media) section of The Guardian, regarding Thom Yorke’s appearance as Today (BBC4) editor.
“The greater part of the last hour of the show (as one must now call it) was devoted to “the world’s best hangover cure” – the “corpse reviver”. Yorke was announced as about to contribute to this piffle. There was a row off-mike and a mid-programme apology was issued. Yorke, the mystified audience was informed, dissociated himself from excessive drinking.
The item that the puritanical singer-editor had proposed for the programme came later. In it, the environmentalist George Monbiot was put up against a smooth-talking propagandist from the oil industry. Was the world, they debated, “running out of gas”?
The argument revolves around the “Hubbert” thesis. Marion King Hubbert, a mathematician employed by big oil, prophesied in 1956 that American dominance of his industry would soon end. Not because the stuff would run out, but because the rate of discovery of new sources was declining as demand rose.
Bankruptcy typically happens not when you lose all your money, but when you drop, marginally, below the threshold that enables you to service your debt. Hubbert forecast the “peak” in US domestic supplies of oil would occur in 1971. Which it did. The problem is now worldwide. There have been no new huge discoveries of easily accessible oil for decades. We are, globally, on the other side of Hubbert’s peak. Thoughts of this kind, Yorke said (when James Naughtie let him get a word in) had been “rattling about in my head for a year”. The impending oil crunch motivated the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Hence Radiohead’s 2003 album, Hail to the Thief. The thief of Baghdad, that is, and the president who stole the 2000 election. The ruthless rush for the world’s diminishing store of oil has begun. Top gun takes all.
“Are you such a dreamer,” sings Yorke, “to put the world to rights?” That is precisely what Radiohead dream. What is striking is that such groups, with their world-wide sales, have the political clout to back up their dreams. Arguably, Bono has done more to alert the west to crisis in Africa than the whole PR bureau of the UN.
The hottest group in the world currently is, one gathers, Coldplay. Chris Martin, its lead singer, insists that “fair trade” is brought up in interviews. The 10 million purchasers, worldwide, of A Rush of Blood to the Head are piously directed, having listened to politik, to activist websites. Many click as directed. Cynics see the political agitations of Yorke, Martin, Bono, and Damon Albarn of Blur (“We’ve got a File on You”) as T-shirt and Diet Coke protest by “knobhead students” (as the earthily unstudious Liam Gallagher calls them) who feel bad about being rich.
It’s more than that. The novelist (and sometime guest performer with U2) who most clearly apprehends the potential power of this constituency is Salman Rushdie. Rushdie calls the power of these musical evangelists “Orphic” – like Orpheus, their lyrics can change the world. Perhaps.
The politician who most clearly perceived the voting power of youthful music-lovers was Bill Clinton, who played the MTV audience as assiduously (and profitably) as he did middle America. Tony Blair is smart enough to do a Clinton when it suits him: eg, his assertion that “I used to like Oasis, now I’m more of a Coldplay guy”. Blair is also smart enough to get behind the warmonger Bush when required. He’s smart but is he, when push comes to shove (on fair trade, for example), really “a Coldplay sort of guy”?
“If there is hope”, wrote Orwell in 1984, “it lies in the proles.”
It’s 2004, and if there’s hope it lies, strange to say, in the “knob-head students”.
Dream on, Radiohead.”
(Thanks to At Ease.)

A very used-car salesman e-mail arrived from w.a.s.t.e. this morning-
It’s official, w.a.s.t.e. has gone crazy.
We must be, as we are slashing prices for our outrageous winter sale.
Many of our popular t shirt designs are reduced from quite reasonable to just silly prices…. We must be bonkers!!
go to www.waste.uk.com go to the shop and hit the red sale button.
Oh and we have also added the UK NOT OK design to our store you can find it in the newest dept.
that is all.
w.a.s.t.e.
ps Happy New Year
There are some nifty deals available, with shirts as low as ?7.50, and even XXL sizes for us larger folk. Might want to hurry, though…

At Ease is reporting that tickets have gone onsale for FUSELeeds2004, a concert series featuring Jonny Greenwood (we reported on it earlier.
To get them, it appears you have to call the box office at 0113 222 3434. Their website doesn’t appear to currently feature any further information.
(Thanks to At Ease.)

Almost missed this very interesting article about Radiohead’s recent takeover of BBC’s 6Music. An excerpt-
“There will have been those who suspected that BBC 6Music was playing some sort of prank when it invited Radiohead to act as station programmers over Christmas week.
Radiohead’s popular reputation is not far from that of Dickens’ festive refusenik Scrooge: grumpy, volubly dissatisfied with everyone and everything, and on balance unlikely to partake of the office-party conga.
There will be those who imagine that Christmas music chosen by Radiohead will tend towards Slovakian funeral marches, sinister electronica overlaid with air-raid sirens and, perhaps, the lonely whimper of a small boy they’d had trapped down a well especially for the purpose.”
You can read the whole article here.

Radiohead got a mention in a USA Today article about Switchfoot.
While recording Letdown, Jon and his bandmates also bumped into Radiohead ? almost literally. “We went into what we thought was our studio, and Thom Yorke and the rest of the guys were there. I thought, ‘This is so great: Radiohead is in our studio, hanging out.’ In reality, they were tracking their own record. So I walk in, introduce myself, say ‘What’s going on?’ They’re obviously completely taken aback by this kid barging in and asking questions. I walked further in, and finally Thom Yorke comes up to me and says, ‘I don’t mean to be an idiot, but if you could please leave? It’s a private studio.’ He was very kind about it, though.”
Read the entire article here.
UPDATED- I was a bit hard on the poor guys from Switchfoot. In doing some homework, they aren’t the band I was thinking of (thanks to Ara and Steve for pointing that out). So Switchfoot, accept my most humble of humbles, and thanks for tuning in… -D

From Forbes.com-
A European consumer watchdog body is suing the world’s largest music companies for selling copy protected compact discs that won’t play in car stereos and on computers, the Belgium-based organisation (‘Test-Aankoop’) said on Monday.
Industry observers believe Test-Aankoop’s suit is the biggest European legal challenge yet to the music industry’s controversial campaign to release copy-protected discs, to minimise the impact that digital piracy is having on sales.
Test-Aankoop cited more than a dozen top-selling releases including Radiohead’s “Hail to the Thief” that could not be played on multiple devices. EMI, Radiohead’s record company, has been named in the suit, which is expected to be heard this week in a Belgium court. The group said it wants the labels to end the practice of issuing protected discs and to reimburse customers.
Since introducing two years ago copy-protection technology — which typically amounts to a layer of data embedded on the rings of a compact disc that prevent playback on all but a home stereo or portable hi-fi device — the music industry has been hit with torrents of criticism from individual consumers.
You can read the entire article here.