Radiohead and Philosophy - Brandon W. Forbes [8]
Yet there remains something in Radiohead rooted in that magical, nostalgia-inspiring decade of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, moon-landings, and the ecology movement sparked by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.. In “The Bends,” Yorke sings “I wish it was the Sixties,” but, in fact, it still is. Stephen Still’s iconic “There’s something happening here/what it is ain’t exactly clear” has become Yorke’s “I’m not here, this isn’t happening” (from Kid A’s “How to Disappear Completely”) or “something big is gonna happen” (from Hail to the Thief’s “Go to Sleep”). Some of these chapters use existentialism, psychoanalytic theory, or theology to explore the possible transformations that may be afoot. Others take up the ethical complexities—environmental and economic, mainly—of the music industry and what it may evolve into (in light of the controversial pay-what-you-want model for In Rainbows). Others address the politics latent in Hail to the Thief, the human-machine interface explored by OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac, and the ways that the band’s music takes us from Aristotelian tragedy to what it might mean for Martin Heidegger to press a button on his postmodern iPod.
There may even be a small but important truth behind the ‘space-rock’ idea, after all. For if Yorke’s occasional references to spaceships and planets are understood phenomenologically, as I’ve been suggesting, then the possibilities for experience, understanding and political engagement lurking in Radiohead’s music and explored in these chapters may be a metaphorical space ship ride—not toward the insanity lurking on the dark side of the moon, however. Like early Pink Floyd, we’ve set the controls so the light of the sun will enlighten us about what kinds of worlds and what kinds of experience are out there. If we pay close enough attention, we may find our way to a better, less terrifying, and previously unknown planet Earth.
2.
Radiohead, or the Philosophy of Pop
MARK GREIF
I’ve wondered why there’s no philosophy of popular music. Critics of pop do reviews and interviews; they write appreciation and biography. Their criticism takes many things for granted and doesn’t ask the questions I want answered. Everyone repeats the received idea that music is revolutionary. Well, is it? Does pop music support revolution? We say pop is of its time, and can date the music by ear with surprising precision, to 1966 or 1969 or 1972 or 1978 or 1984. Well, is it? Is pop truly of its time, in the sense that it represents some aspect of exterior history apart from the path of its internal development? I know pop does something to me; everyone says the same. So what does it do? Does it really influence my beliefs or actions in my deep life, where I think I feel it most, or does it just insinuate a certain fluctuation of mood, or evanescent pleasure, or impulse to move?
The answers are difficult not because thinking is hard on the subject of pop, but because of an acute sense of embarrassment. Popular music is the most living art form today. Condemned to a desert island, contemporary people would grab their records first; we have the concept of desert island discs because we could do without most other art forms before we would give up songs. Songs are what we consume in greatest quantity; they’re what we store most of in our heads. But even as we can insist on the seriousness of value of pop music, we don’t believe enough in its seriousness of meaning