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i respect radiohead for experimenting. i don't much respect them for being on a major and then complaining about what that has brought them.
i rarely listened to or ever will listen to them. as a cult pop band i can respect them for their music. they try new things and branch out into electronics, (a natural progression in my eyes) and then every stupid cunt in the mainstream creams at how unbelievably alternative and original and genius they are. nope, not really, if you are the type who does not believe and buy into what corporate arts tell you to you'll probably know that the music radiohead made was never in anyway terribly new or innovative. i have no problem with that, you can hardly expect a pop band to make a boards of canada album can you?
underground people don't like the idea of kid a etc. being hyped to shit and called innovative and original and experimental etc. because they've been listening to music a million times more challenging and innovative for years.
mainstream people haven't heard said underground music and are ignorant to it, and believe that because what radiohead do is new to them it must be new to music.
this is a classic conflict, it's happned with a million bands. put simply, kid a is innovative for radiohead and radiohead alone, they are a cult pop band. they will always make music with this kind of overbearing poppy edge to it. radiohead are innovators of the pop format. all the musicians they copied and were influenced by for kid a are innovators of electronica and music in general. of course, to someone who reads the wire magazine kid a will not sound so amazingly innovative, what it could sound like tho, is a nice distillation of experimental sounds into the pop format.
you guys can bitch or argue if you want. it's pretty pointless. to me the reason for music is for people to enjoy and be inspired by it. so some kid who isn't aware or interested in non mainstream music, but probably thinks he's a hip as fuck for listening to the bands that get less video plays on mtv2 might go and pick up kid a tomorow and get his mind blowed. so what? good for him! not everyone has the mind to appreciate, the desire to seek out or the interest to explore and enjoy more challenging and underground music, so if radiohead or someone comes along and distills some of these innovations into the pop format for more people to hear and enjoy i say good for them. in the future, radioheads music will sound a lot more dated and uninteresting i'm sure. the music it was influenced by will probably outlast it.
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