"A Heart that's full up like a landfill, a job that slowly kills you, bruises that won't heal".......That to me is the most crushing opening line of any song I've ever heard......it has echoed my sentiment for a large bulk of the time since my first listen...soon after I bought the OK Computer album in 1997. It doesn't matter where I am....wedding...comedy show....walking in anonymous crowds....kicking back with my best friends................this song will stop me in my tracks, it will often bring me to tears..it is an unstoppable force.
I may sound like I'm complaining here....but my life since I left for college the first time...has not been so easy. I have had so much joy.... great friends, family and laughter,living in so many cities, marriage and a son....in many ways I could not have asked for more. But the choices I've made to be the artistic, nomadic, inquisitive person coupled with the losses and the fears and the heartache I've experienced for most of my adult life have made me a guarded, angry, depressed, frozen in time, unrealistic person with unfinished business and scattered dreams and a loss of identity..... I have all of this knowledge, and some would say talent....and I don't know what to do with it. It seems to be endless...though I know that I'm the only one who can change it...........but sometimes the damage done shoves me in a corner and forces me to stay there....still.
I needed the OK Computer album to get through 1998, and then again in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002.......2006 and on and on. Years I would love to blot out..some partially, from my mosaic.
It is something I feel the need to say about this album and certain albums...they become a part of you for different reasons...Like Badmotorfinger, The Unforgettable Fire, Led Zeppelin III, Exile on main Street before it..They are your second skin, your "exo-skeletons", your pacifiers, your happy pills...in music form.....The album is not a pick- me- up so to speak...but it makes me feel real, a human with faults, dreams, desires and bruises that won't heal. The blood coursing though my veins may be cold..black..slow...but I'm real....I live and breathe.Thom Yorke...the lead singer and nucleus of Radiohead......his voice, his delivery and lyrics...they cut through me like Ginsu, like laser...so many questions, scientific challenges, tainted life experiences, ice ages, broken people,, investigating your memories, looking forward with defenses flaring......
And I know some of you will scratch your heads with this choice...but you just don't have a personal relationship with Radiohead and I do. Thats all I can tell you....this album has sucked the morale out of my recovery and at the same time filled it with glee.....it rebuilt my bones..cut my vision in half......and this is a song that BEGS for No Alarms...No Surprises....you retreat to the simplicity of a safe and secure life in the country or suburban sprawl...where you cannot be straight-jacketed by your fears....you escape the extraneous, hurling debris and shrapnel of heartache exploding.
"I'll take a quiet life with a handshake and carbon monoxide"........super heavy.
It is my mantra...in a defense mechanistic, melodic way.......No Alarms and No Surprises............
Top 10 Radiohead Songs
1) No Surprises
2) Pyramid Song(Amnesiac)
3)Morning Bell(Kid A)
4)Subterranean Homesick Alien (OK Computer)
5)How to Dissappear Completely(Kid A)
6) Let Down(OK Computer)
7) Knives Out(Amnesiac)
8) Optimistic(Kid A)
9) True Love Waits.....look for it
10) Lucky (OK Computer)
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