Thom Yorke – “Open The Floodgates”

Thom Yorke – “Lotus Flower”

Thom Yorke – “Skirting On The Surface”

Thom Yorke – “Judge Jury & Executioner”

One thing is for sure, Thom Yorke keeps the music industry and fans on their heels. Everything that he does seems to be clouded in mystery, whether it be releasing or not releasing a new EP via a cryptic message contained in a new track or sneaking around LA rehearsing with a new band featuring Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. The as yet to be named band is comprised of Yorke, Flea, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck/R.E.M. drummer Joey Waronker and percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Mauro Refosco. The band already has two shows scheduled at the Orpheum Theatre in LA on October 4th and 5th and as Yorke claims “the set will not be very long cuz ..well …we haven’t got that much material yet!”

If any of you end up going to the show I would love to hear a review because I am having a really hard time seeing Flea and Yorke’s styles finding a middle ground. Although Flea has been studying music composition at USC since fall of last year so I’m sure that his knowledge and ability have broadened during that time.

Go here for Radiohead’s official announcement

Yesterday the track list to Twilight: New Moon was released to the enjoyment of millions of tweens that oh so want to be a vampire in love and to the dismay of indie music lovers. Rumors had been floating around for quite some time that Thom Yorke and Bon Iver would each be penning a song to the soundtrack but most of us didn’t want to believe it. Until it was confirmed. The album will also feature brand new songs from The Killers and Grizzly Bear to boot.

Dismay? One would think that, to Thom Yorke fans, the announcement of a new Thom Yorke track would be neutral-to-positive news. And to Bon Iver fans, a new Bon Iver cut, the same. But Patrick confirmed that, indeed, the news was met with raucous protest, and his point is well documented.

I don’t want to make light of the argument that all is lost (admittedly I think I just did), so let me condense the 76-comment thread linked above into three words for you: pearls before swine. That link takes you to a Stereogum article, and the commenters are irate. They don’t like the first film. They swear they won’t like the second. They’re mad at Thom Yorke, mad at Bon Iver, mad at Atlantic, mad about the “commercialization” of indie rock, mad that 13-year-old girls will gobble up all the tickets to indie rock shows. But more than anything, they’re just mad about the association of a good thing (indie rock) and a bad thing (vampire lit). Pearls. Before. Swine.

Yes, I made a joke about it, and then yes, I made another one. But if you demand a serious discussion on the subject, you’re required to drop subjective terms like “good,” “bad,” “indie,” “commercialization,” “beginning of the end,” “bullshit,” “abomination,” what have you. Of course after you drop all of those terms from the argument, you have a blank page.

Be glad that your favorite bands are getting a bit of exposure. The more royalties they pull down from these Faustian arrangements means more free downloads for you.

And if you absolutely cannot stand the fact that money changes hands over the noble art of music creation and appreciation, click here and never leave.

A friend plays for you a CD of a handsome, winsome songwriter. The name (Jack Buckley? Jeff Shuckley?) does not ring a bell. Grace, it’s called.  Obscure musician. Sure, he had a semi-famous father (“don’t belie the one who left behind his name”), but tell the truth, in 1997 had you really ever heard of “Tim Buckley?”

Tracks 1, 2, 9 and 10 really stay with you.  You listen again.  You like it more.  And again, and more.  Again, more.  You buy a copy: maybe through Amazon, but probably at your local boutique.  Can this guy write a bad song?  That voice: operatic, troubling, troublemaking.  Like a heavy storm gale, albeit beautiful, with the occasional terrible gust like beautiful hurricane winds.  Great songwriting.  Great guitar work.  Great look.  Yet simple.  It’s all so perfectly simple.

In time you realize something big: this is one of the finest LPs you’ve ever heard.  You call the friend and tell him that it’s resolved: this is his best find in 10 years.  He says, “Yes!  And to think that Grace is his last album!”

“Sorry?”

“He’s dead.  He drowned.”

As tragedies go — at least musical tragedies — you’d be hard-pressed to find one that surpasses this one. Special interest groups will throw out all sorts of names, but Buckley left us with a single studio release, ten tracks, and, literally, a few sketches for another LP. That’s it.

We all know the rest of the story.  Coldplay has risen to superstardom singing material Buckley would have been embarrassed to write.  Thom Yorke cites Buckley as a vocal influence.  Ours — and let’s call it by name, here — is a passable first-generation clone.  Jeff Buckley stands with dream brother Kurt Cobain as one of the few musicians without whom it is simply impossible to imagine modern music. Look how many times those ten cuts have been repackaged, rearranged, rediscovered, and still we buy. The suits could release these tracks one hundred more times and we would still buy.

By point of fact, his estate has just released another such LP.

It’s called Grace Around the World, and it all but recreates his studio masterpiece in the form of twelve live recordings. “So Real” appears twice. “Grace” appears twice. Otherwise the original track listing is basically intact. Go give it a spin. Or go listen to Starsailor give it a game attempt.

Ain’t no way we’re topping that one, so this is where we close.

Fred+3

So we turn from a music book to the music book: The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music, by Friedrich Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy was first published in 1872; the author was still quite young, and had yet to descend into his much-documented madness. At the time Nietzsche held a coveted professor gig at the University of Basel, remarkable for someone his age.

The book was odd, even for the time. Nietzsche subdivides art into two forms, the Apolline — or visual — arts, and the Dionysiac — or non-visual — arts. (By non-visual arts, he simply means music.) Apolline art, the realm of the Greek god Apollo, individuates us, and most notably reminds us of our mortality. Dionysiac art, the realm of Dionysus, gnaws away at the self, and reminds us that we are a part of something much bigger.

He also sets aside a disproportionate number of pages for friend and composer Richard Wagner. A modern day equivalent would be a university textbook written by a personal friend of Thom Yorke, in which the author not only dedicates the textbook to Thom Yorke and spends half of the book’s pages discussing Radiohead, but neglects all other contemporary artists at the same time.

The book was not received well, and it is clear that Nietzsche grew tired of defending it. In 1886 he appended a foreward to the book, “Attempt at a Self-Criticism,” in which he refers to The Birth of Tragedy as “questionable,” even “impossible.” Yet large segments of the book attempt to explain the allure of this most peculiar of art forms, and our bewildering, yet human response to it.  You may one day lose your hearing from too much music appreciation.  You know this and accept the risks.  Would you similarly risk losing your sight by staring at Van Gogh paintings?

This book should prove to be much more rich with quotables.  And to that end, here is our first:

Singing and dancing, man expresses himself as a member of a higher community: he has forgotten how to walk and talk and is on the verge of flying up into the air as he dances. The enchantment speaks out in his gestures. Just as the animals now speak and the earth gives milk and honey, so something supernatural also echoes out of him: he feels himself a god; he himself now moves in as lofty and ecstatic a way as he saw the gods move in his dream. The man is no longer an artist; he has become a work of art.

And here is some Wagner you might have heard: