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July 13, 2006
OK, Thom, I Guess You're Pretty Good...
Hey, has everybody seen this clip of Thom Yorke playing an acoustic version of "the Clock" from his solo album, the Eraser? It's taken from an episode of the Henry F'in Rollins show set to air Saturday night on the Independent Film Channel.
Thom Yorke - "the Clock"
Now, I've never been one to claim that Radiohead should chuck all their electronic trappings and return to some kind of "pure" guitar rock. Blips and bloops and I have make out parties all the time. But what is it about transposing this song from synthetic backdrop to acoustic guitar that makes it so much more interesting? Well it isn't 1999 anymore, and maybe the whole skittish IDM thing just doesn't sound very mindblowing now. Mainly, I think it's that contrary to the hushed slowdown that you normally expect when a song gets turned acoustic, this version has more energy than its drum machine counterpart.
See, subverting expectations is the key here. We expect Thom Yorke to play with marginal electronic sounds now, so he should move away from them. Also, he should toy with some new kinds of melodies. I mean, his voice is still phenomonal, and it's still hard to believe that it's coming spontaneously from the little man, but does anyone else think that this vocal line is hard to differentiate from like ten other Radiohead songs? Change it up, pal!
At the end of the clip you get a teaser for another Yorke performance, this time with added help from Jonny Greenwood and producer Nigel Godrich. Will Godrich be twiddling knobs on an Eno box? We can tune in to IFC at 10:00 on Saturday and hope.
To take a page from Keith, let me applaud IFC for the shrewd marketing. Give out a free clip before your show even airs, make it easily bloggable, throw in an advertisement for an even cooler clip to come, and in the process make your show a destination for a slew of people who have pretty much given up on TV as a meaningful source for cutting edge music. What they'll find (as I was surprised to), is that even though his guest list is pretty spotty (Ben Harper? Ben Folds?) he does have an occasional cool booking. You can browse around here to see (and wonder why Henry's so mad at you), but I offer Tubed proof below:
Dinosaur Jr. - "Forget the Swan"
J. Mascis looks like the Crypt Keeper, but still...
Tags: Thom Yorke, Radiohead, Henry Rollins, IFC, Dinosaur Jr.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at July 13, 2006 12:19 PM
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