Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [133]
“Analyse” 4:02
“The Clock” 4:13
“Black Swan” 4:49
“Skip Divided” 3:35
“Atoms for Peace” 5:13
“And It Rained All Night” 4:15
“Harrowdown Hill” 4:38
“Cymbal Rush” 5:15
Where we got our big ideas
SEAN BURT lives in Tucson, where he teaches Hebrew Bible and ancient Jewish history and literature at the University of Arizona. By the time you read this he will have completed (knock on wood) a dissertation on narrative genre and ideology in the biblical book of Nehemiah. He paid full CD price for the In Rainbows mp3 files.
DAVID DARK is a Nashville-based educator who believes Radiohead and isn’t afraid to say so. He thinks “You’re All I Need” should be played (or sung) at the beginning of every working day at the United Nations. He is the author of The Sacredness of Questioning Everything and Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, the Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Religious Studies at Vanderbilt University.
MARK GREIF is a founding editor of n+1 and Assistant Professor of Literary Studies at the New School in New York. He works on twentieth (and twenty-first) century intellectual history and the arts. One of his most prized possessions is a Christmas card from Radiohead cover-artist Stanley Donwood.
LINDSEY FIORELLI is an undergraduate at Oberlin College majoring in English and Philosophy. She began listening to Radiohead a few years ago, and became obsessed with OK Computer. This obsession resulted in her having a dream that was set to the video of “Paranoid Android” in which she was one of the cartoons in the video, one of the “androids.” Needless to say, she woke up a bit confused and decided to not listen to “Paranoid Android” for quite some time afterwards. This is Lindsey’s first publication.
TIM FOOTMAN is the author of Welcome to the Machine: OK Computer and the Death of the Classic Album (Chrome Dreams, 2007), and has also written for The Guardian, Mojo, Plan B, Time Out, and the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. An alumnus of the University of Exeter (where he lived next door to the drummer from the Headless Chickens, and failed the only philosophy exam he ever took), he currently hovers somewhere on the metaphysical flight path between London and Bangkok, and at culturalsnow.blogspot.com. His favorite Radiohead lyric is the horn section from “The National Anthem.”
BRANDON FORBES is a freelance writer, and occasional drummer, living in Chicago. He has written widely in music criticism and recently composed two volumes on Green Living for World Book. His first true experience of Radiohead’s artistic power was in college, when late one night he was so completely freaked out while listening to “Climbing Up the Walls” alone in his dorm room that he was forced to turn off the CD and turn on some lights. He has an MTS from Duke University and would like to remind everyone that this is really happening.
BRADLEY KAYE is currently a Ph.D.candidate in SUNY Binghamton’s Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture Program. On October 3rd, 2000, the day Kid A was released, he was a pesky undergraduate at SUNY Fredonia. He had heard rumors that the album’s title derived from a playing card set devoted to the work of the French Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan called, “Kid A in Alphabet Land.” Thom Yorke denied this connection. Unsatisfied with Yorke’s rebuttal, Bradley did further research. Upon finding out that the card set was created by an American intellectual who hosted a webpage located at www.Freedonia.com (accessible now via The Wayback Machine), Bradley felt like a paranoid android. This discovery seemed scripted and Bradley had to remind himself, “it’s not like the movies.”
ADAM KOEHLER does it to himself. And that’s why it really hurts. He’s an Assistant Professor of English and Director of Composition at Manhattan College. He’s also an editor for The Avery Anthology, which publishes innovative and experimental fiction by previously unpublished, emerging, and established writers (www.averyanthology.org). He lives