The Watch - What Does 'Justice League' Have in Common With Radiohead’s 'OK Computer'? (Ep. 136)

Episode Date: March 27, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald discuss the new trailer for DC’s 'Justice League' (2:00) before revisiting the cultural significance of Radiohead’s 'OK Computer' 20 years after its release (13:16). Then Andy recommends a new TV show (42:40). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by The Masked Man Show. It's the biggest time of the year for professional wrestling, and all this week, David Shoemaker is previewing the WrestleMania matches with a couple of very special guests. You can subscribe to the Masked Man Show on iTunes SoundCloud Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now.

Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at Thurnair.com, and joining me in the studio is my subject. Mediterranean homesick alien. It's Andy Greenwale! I'm so excited, buddy. Big show today. What's up, man?

We're going to talk today about an album that turned 20 years old last week. Ooh, this is one for the old heads. Radioheads. Okay, Computer, will be the subject of most of this podcast. So if you're not into Radiohead, like our producer, Zach, it can be a great pod for you. You can stop listening, like our producer Zach. We're also going to talk a little bit about crashing, and Andy has a show. He wants to breathe a little bit of that Greenwald.

Aaron. I'm excited. I'm surprised. Fun fact, guys. Like Tom York, Chris Ryan hates surprises. All weekend, he was like, what's the show you want to talk about?

No, I just want to know. It doesn't matter, man. Just let it happen on Mike. It's fine. It's all live. First, we're going to do a little bit of inner out. And we've got to start with them. Before that, though,

could I do one bit of housekeeping? I think last week we said we were going to do a music of 97 pod. And I think that we should tell the people that we talked about this over the weekend. and we're going to do a music of 1997 pod. We're going to do it real, real big in a couple months. So this is why this is just an OK computer pod. Just sort of a pair of teeth, if you will.

And there's plenty to talk about with OK computer. It's a seminal record. We are going to do that bigger podcast. All of this was suggested, by the way, by a listener named Courtney Harding, who is an instructor at NYU, who had me on to talk to her kids, had me on via Skype to talk to her class. Can we see that on YouTube? I think you can see it on Vimeo. Vimeo.

Can you really see it on Vimeo? No, I don't think so. But I want to thank her for inviting me and also for the idea because we're excited to do these music pods. Shout out to Courtney. In or out. Let's start. Bottom line, are you in or are you out? In or out of what?

We're going to start with this Justice League trailer because it's a pile of shit. There's an attack coming. Not coming, Bruce. It's already here. Yeah. It's really bad. I mean, it's kind of disingenuous to be like. like in or out on something that we camped

out outside of a year ago. We don't want to see this. That said, here's what I want to run this by you. Because it looks really, really bad. What you might not know from the... Tell the folks

a little bit about what Justice League is. This is what I'm saying. What you might not know from the two and a half minute trailer is the plot of the movie. So in that way, it's kind of an avant-garde cinematic excursion. And so Can I tell you what it's about? Yeah, is it, can I pitch you on what it is about?

Hit me. Because you were saying to me, like, watch this. I can tell from the trailer what it's about. Okay. It's the Avengers, but it's a pile of shit. Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah, it's like the Avengers, but like with the dimmer set much lower. Yeah.

Here you go. Here's the synopsis. This is according to the Internet's number one movie gossip site, Wikipedia. Months after the events of Batman v. Superman and inspired by Superman's sacrifice for humanity. This is like, it's like 1066. Like, who gives you shit what happened at Batman for Super Maddenet? Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince assemble a team of meta-humans. By the way, that's also what you, Sean, Juliet, and Mallory did when you formed the rear.

Consisting of The Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg. By the way, that's not a team, that's just three dudes. Are you ready for the threat, though? You can't even play pickup ball. To face the catastrophic threat of Steppenwolf and the paramed. and the parademons who were on the hunt for three mother boxes. So is that like Gary Seneas' theater company? That's what I was about to say.

The threat of Chicago Theater. Are you guys putting on True West? They are doing the illest August Osage County that has ever been done by MetaHumans. Yo, did you see my dude Tracy Letts has a CBS show? They sort of took superior donuts and put the god Judd Hirsch in it? When you say took, you mean handed him sacks full of millions of dollars for his play? But that's what I don't get is like, why would you buy superior donuts and then be like, we need to make this into a sitcom?

There have been people who have been like, Pulitzer prizes are nice, but what do they really get you in life? Right. Let me tell you what they get you because the Letts household is caking up. It's not just Playwright Tracy Letts, aka the evil head of the CIA on homeland, aka the dude who has a heart attack in the pilot of divorce. Yeah. AKA the dude who is eating gold-plated donuts off of the CBS cache from Superior Donuts. Who's he married to, Chris?

Do you want to tell the world? Carrie Coon. Oh, that's right. Now, Carrie Coon, you may know as the lead actress on HBO's The Leftovers, which is returning next month. But guess what else is happening? You're like TV Guide today. What's going on with you? You're so fond of tidbits.

I have my first coffee in six months sitting next to me right now. Carrie Coon's the star of Fargo season three. Yeah, yeah. That household is literally on fire right now. Yeah, they could buy the Raiders. That is so much more interesting to me than Justice League. But here's my new... Do you think that CBS should...

Why don't they just buy a bunch of great Chicago playwright's work and turn it into daffy sitcoms? Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, the story of six men working in real estate. Three guys, Glenn Gary, Glenn, and Ross. They all find out they could be the father of the same teenage girl. Um, guys, look, here's my new point. I was going to say it looks stupid because it just looks stupid because Zach Snyder is the worst thing ever to happen to American cinema.

But I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say, if you're making a movie about the threat of Steppenwolf and the parodemans looking for mother boxes, it should look a lot more interesting than this. Because that is super weird sounding. That sounds literally insane. And can I give you one more tidbit about this movie? Yeah, man, hit me up.

All I want is tidbits on movies. Do you know that Jesus Christ himself, Willem Defoe is in this film playing the part Nudis, Nudis, Volko, an Atlantean advisor to Aquaman. Oh, like, so he's from Atlantis. You put the word to my mouth. I don't know.

Maybe he's the son-in-law. You know what I mean? Maybe he's the Jared Kushner of the undersea. But he's not like Arthur Blank's, like nephew in Atlanta. First of all, Arthur Curry. No, Arthur Blank, the guy owns the Falcons. He meant Arthur Blank, Aquaman. Wait.

What is happening? Aquaman's name is Arthur and there's so few Arthur's yeah oh I didn't know that yeah he's he's chef Curry with the ocean okay Arthur Curry okay um it's just it just looks real dumb but it's like if you told me there was a movie with Ezra Miller and Willem DeFoe and Jesse Eisenberg and Jeremy Irons and Diane Lane and Connie Nielsen I mean come on man here's my problem with this fam if you're going to spend so much money on these movies just make them look good like this they just like the cyborg thing is just like uh shit we don't have ir man.

Yeah, that's what it is. Could we? Exactly. There are so... And what did you say the Avengers bad guys are? The Chattara? Chitara is actually

a pasta shape that's cut in the shape of guitar strings. The guitar. Are you being for real right now? Of course. Why would I make that up? Because you said that

like you were Rick Steve's Guide to Italy. I just couldn't tell if you were being serious. I am. It's getting a little goofy in here. I'm sorry, let's keep it going. Do you know that Kieran Hines plays Steppenwolf? Kieran Hines is in every single film.

His voice is terrific. He's in Frozen, as I learned recently. They have to have a dark web server for Kieran Hines' IMDB page because it's just too much bandwidth. I do want to... Here's my only interest in this, and we'll move on. And it actually leads into something I was going to say about, OK, computer.

Trust me on this. Because one of the things I want to ask about when we get there is... Computer. Could you make a... avant-garde masterpiece like that, but also grab a chokehold on the popular imagination the way that album did.

That album was difficult in avant-garde, and they made a whole film about how they didn't want to be on camera, wink-wink. And yet it still captured the popular imagination. Justice League is a $300 million movie starring some of the most famous iconic characters in history. It's going to come out. But it essentially plays like a line item

in Warner Brothers budget, right? Like, even if it makes $100 million, $200, $300,000, $300 million, is this going to move the culture in any positive way? Yeah, well, it actually have fans. And I weren't just fans of Batman that are, like, varying levels of disappointed with it. And by the way, I'm not just to be clear. I don't think Infinity War is going to move the culture in any way either at this point. These things are just being made because they have to be made. But it's such a weird thing.

It's a really weird thing. In or out. So we're out on that. In or out. I'm in on doing a Rick Steve's style. travel log show with you. In or out on Barry Jenkins adapting. Colson Whiteheads the Underground Railroad for Amazon.

Super in. Yeah, of course. I think this was a poorly kept secret. I think we alluded to this before. Yeah, I think Sean actually may have talked to him. I mean, I don't know if they discussed this specifically, but Sean Fennessee did a great interview with Barry Jenkins prior to the Oscars. And he's a really good example of a guy who, you know,

despite the success of Moonlight, critical and otherwise, probably you know, isn't necessarily, I don't know necessarily that studios are lining up to let Barry Jenkins make the stuff that he wants to make still. Do you know what I mean? There's just not that many movies like that, you know? Well, I think the exciting thing is

is when you see someone who has the talent and the vision and the sense of self, I mean, he's not an older guy by any means, but he's also not, he's older than Damien Chazel, for example. He's a guy who has worked within the system. He's, you know, he wrote on the leftovers. he finally got it together to make this indie. He had made a previous film.

I think that what he has clearly is a good sense of his artistic self, knowing that he can work in any medium, basically. He's not going to feel like he needs to make another movie next if what he's inspired to make isn't necessarily a two-hour movie. So adapting this best-selling novel for Amazon is hugely exciting. Also, we're in a world where Amazon is funding movies and TV shows. I mean, it really is just content going on their servers. So take the money and make something cool.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm in. Let's get to our conversation about Radiohead's OK Computer. First, a quick break from our sponsors. Hey, guys, just want to tell you a little bit about the Black Tucks. Looking great for a wedding or a special event has never been easier with the Black Tux.com. With high-quality rental suits and tuxios delivered straight to your doorstep, the Black Tux is giving guys a new way to rent.

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Yes, yes. Okay, man, so let's talk about Okay Computer, which was a really interesting record to revisit, partially because it didn't, for me, didn't need revisiting, because every song on this album has, with the exception of, like, fit or happier, which even that was the ad campaign. But pretty much every song on this album is, like, a memory. I mean, it's like a recent memory. It's like, it's something that, like, as soon as I hear the opening notes, I'm like, I just, I know all the words. I know. That's how a huge character it played in our lives. Although, I would say that it is neither of our favorite few radiohead records, right?

Yeah, it was interesting to go back to it. It is, and this is often the case with bands where, especially iconic bands, where it's possible for an album to be absolutely universally recognized and heralded as their greatest achievement. But not necessarily my favorite. And I don't mean that to be too cool for school. I don't mean that to sort of cast shade on it. It's a masterpiece. It is a conceptual masterpiece.

I think that personally, I actually like KD A more. I think KD.A. is also a masterpiece in a very different vein. You and I, when we could talk about this, I think you and I both love the Ben's and the songs on the Ben's. And low-key 10-year anniversary in Rainbows. I love in Rainbows. In Rainbows is also a masterpiece. But OK Computer has that extra juice.

It has culturally, in terms of popularity, it's the one. And I think everyone is pretty confident and comfortable saying that about Radiohead. That's going to be the calling card. For as much as I remember the song for song on this record, it was interesting to go back and read about the production, the rollout, and like the kind of reception of the album, because that also brought back memories that were just a little bit less. and the forefront of my mind, especially, you know, when paranoid Android was released, that was a, yeah, that was like, I remember the, like, five, the five minutes where you're, like, looking around and being like, do I like this? Do you like this? Is this cool? Like, wait, this is really cool. Oh, my God, the end of this song is amazing. And that it was a, everything about this record was a little bit of a challenge to the listener. And that's one of the things that it will always have my respect for.

But that's what I meant, you know, and I was, I was sort of kidding, but I kind of wasn't when I was talking about Justice League. minute ago, because think about not just the balls on this band, but also the state of mass media and culture, that they could basically drop a six-minute prog-rock song with a cartoon video and just stop time around it and make everyone turn to pay attention to it. That was Paranoid Android was on MTV constantly. That song was on the radio. And I do think one of the things that separates this record from avant-garde power. albums that are released today because they are certainly still released.

And this is something that was written about pitchforks done a whole, blew out a whole week of coverage on OK Computer. And I recommend checking all of it out. It's really interesting writing. But there's one long piece, I think, by Mark Hogan, it's basically like, is this the last great album? Because basically the album fell off a cliff, or at least in terms of its rock album in its prominence.

I do think that it was possible then to still, to basically turn your back on the spotlight but not quit the stage in a way then. Now it's very common to see artists who are ready to make the next leap, make bold artistic statements. I mean, you could look at something like Frank Ocean last year, but not want the spotlight in that way

and the spotlight is all too happy to turn somewhere else. You can make, you could make noise in a quiet, way in 1997 that I don't know if you still can today. Those records find their audiences and they are beloved and they are talked about and written about. But OK Computer was a blanket across pop culture in 1997. And it's funny that you say make noise in a quiet way because the Benz was a hit. The Benz was like a massive album.

Not in America though. No, but I think high and dry and just and fake plastic trees were alternative rock staples. Eventually. I mean, I think that's the other thing I wanted to talk about was to really put people back in bring people back to the 90s. Like, start there. Start in like 94, 95, whenever that is. So I remember, I'm sure you do too, when Creep was a radio hit off of their first record, Pablo Honey.

And because I was already a fully fledged adolescent snob, I turned my nose up at it. Right. And I did not buy Pablo Honey because it was just another seemingly like grunge-biting single in a sea of them. Yeah. The Ben's came out, and I remember going to Tower Records and seeing that Radiohead had put it on another record. I was like, wow, I guess they put out another record. Can I say one thing about creep really quickly, though? Regardless of whether you like it or not, it is the first chapter in what would be a recurring theme throughout radio's career,

which is basically being in a prison of their own design. So they write this song, Creep, which they kind of, I mean, they actually want to playing it a lot more in the last few years live. In the last five or six, 70 years. And revisiting it. But, you know, initially they had written this song and it was kind of like, thrown into the mix of a pool of songs that Andy and I actually have quite a bit of affection for but it was basically a quiet, loud, alt-rock gimmick song.

Like who sucked out the feeling by Superdrag? Same with Loser, which is, you know, in Barry Walters' his spin review of OK computer, he draws a lot of parallels between Radiohead and Beck. And Creep and Luzer were both these anthemic generational statements that the author of those anthems had wanted nothing to do with. they wrote them off.

Yeah. Yeah. There's still, to this day, few things more 90s than a band having a hit record and refusing to play it. Yeah. It was kind of incredible.

So they made creep, they put out the Benz. Some people are a little bit skeptical about it. The Benz is a masterpiece. The Benz has, Benz is one of the great, great anthemic rock records of the 90s or of our lifetime.

But it, you know, it was sort of DOA here for a long time, but it grew slowly in a way things could back then. And fake plastic, trees is basically a power ballot. And that's the song that really shot it into the stratosphere to the extent that it went there.

Yeah. I think the album peaked in the lower bottom of the Billboard 200 and then a year later, it peaked at 87 because of high and dry and fake plastic trees. In the UK, where they were already a little bit more successful, Street Spirit was released as a single. What a world is this? Street Spirit has an incredible video, too. And that was their biggest hit.

Do you remember that the black and white with the jumping off of trailers? The videos also were a big way that we learned about this band. I mean, my first, my reintroduction to them was Tom York in the shopping cart in the fake plastic tree's video. And then the Just Video where everybody lies down. Just Video is brilliant. Yeah. That might be my favorite video of theirs. The point being, it was a really unique thing where somehow, again, and this felt very organic at the time in a way I don't know if things still are, the Ben's had done the slow work of changing popular opinion about them so that people were really.

ready for OK Computer to be a massive record. They weren't ready for this particular record. Now, I remember very distinctly, because Andy and I at this time were like starting to get really into British pop music and buying a lot of like British import stuff. And there was a charity record called Help. Yes. God, Help is a big record. And I think that's 95, 96.

Help came out. It was recorded in one day. It was a benefit record. Yeah, it was a benefit record where all the songs were recorded in one day. It was released. It was a big deal for me was in the fall of 95. Went to In Your Ear Records and Providence, Rhode Island on Thayer Street. I'm sure it's no longer there.

And I bought What's the Story Morning Glory by Oasis that Help compilation and Super Chunks? Here's where the strings come in. That was a pretty big day at the old record shop. That's a good hall. Good hall. Yeah, help was amazing. And it had all these great songs backs that we were. It had Swade's cover of Shipbuilding.

That was a classic. Which was really good, Elvis Costello's shipbuilding. It had morning air by Portis Head. It had Stone Roses love spreads. There was an Oasis and Friends song. You know who the friend was? Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp.

Right, yeah. But what I also had was Lucky by Radiohead, which was the first piece of new music that they had really released since the Ben's. And was this, I remember that like there were people were like, oh, these guys are going for it in like a really big way. They've changed their sound. It's just this morose, very. almost like, it wasn't quite related to the fame, whatever fame they might have gotten in England from the Benz, but it was like just very obviously what you're talking about,

which is this like, we're going to take a step off the diving board and see what happens. And one thing that it's worth mentioning about the release of OK computer, this happened in the early 90s too, where basically something comes along and it's a lightning strike that just clears the field. And up until the release of OK Computer, you had a lot of Lad Rock in England. You had the Brit Pop Wars between Blur and Oasis.

You had a lot of like a kind of bro-y culture around music that was like this, you know, Guy Ritchie kind of like enthusiasm for traditional masculine British culture. Mad for it. Logger, logger, logger. And in the same year, OK Computer comes out and then Be Here Now comes out by Oasis. And you just see basically like the collapse of that lag culture and the explosion of this. What would really be a theme for 1997, this like incredibly open-eared postmodern pastiche pop music that's like Bjork and Radiohead and Beck and all these people who are just taking and borrowing from rap and dance and all these other genres and making something all their own. In hindsight, the take that I had about 97, especially in the role of British music, was first of all, you listen to OK. a computer, and then you think about

where we are in the world now, and you think about 1997, I'm like, what were they so upset about? I know. What was he so upset about? There's no internet. It is very hard to imagine a more stable year for the large Western civilization is than 1997.

I know. But then you think about a little more, and you think about a couple things. One, uncertainty about the future feels awful no matter what's going on, whether there's a reason for it or not. I mean, there's a reason, you know, we feel terrible that the thought of someone like outside

of our door, even if the door is locked, even if no one's there. It's always that feeling of not knowing what's around the corner. I mean, in 96, when Tricky put out pre-millenium tension, I mean, that was a thing people were talking about. We didn't know what was coming. And Radiohead was at the front of this idea of computers playing a larger and disruptive role in our lives. But the thing that unites, the, I mean, 97 was also unique because the three major British bands, rock bands of the 90s, all released albums that year. And they were all albums that represented shifts in what that band had been and what they would become. In February, I think Blur released their self-titled record.

OK, Computer came out in March and Be Here Now came out at the end of the summer. And it's very hard to draw parallels between those records, except if you think about what they were coming from and what they were breaking out of. And I was listening to Subterranean Homesick Alien, which you shouted out in the intro, a song I forgot existed, completely did not remember the song on the record. And what struck me when I was listening to it again was just it's kind, the observations are not exactly like a Ph.D. level on the record. Sure. You know, he's basically complaining about the terrors of suburbia and becoming a working stiff.

It's like extremely reads J.G. Ballard once. Exactly right. Yeah. All three of those records are kind of like that in a very intense way. Now, remember, Noel Gallagher was making fun of Radiohead and Liam Gallagher making fun of them left right and center. Right. If they were really so into the idea of just Old England and nipping down to the pub for a pint and celebrating the way things used to be in backwards looking, they would not have been getting zooted out of their fucking

gourds every day the way they were. All these albums, and Blurr's self-title album is breaking out of the shackle of like this sort of Ponzi satire they were doing for three records with Park Life and the Great Escape and Modern Life is Rubbish. And instead they like ran off to America to like make a pavement record just to escape. All three of these records are saying, don't trap me in this. Let me get out of this. In a kind of interesting way that speaks to each other, even though,

with good reason Ok Computer is in the stratosphere compared to this other much more earthbound records. The biggest surprise going back through Ok Computer this time was finding out, which I just, I don't know why I never knew this, but I think we think of this album as this breathtakingly original statement. And I did not know

that Radiohead were fucking biters. They were sharks, as Ray Kwan said, two years before. I made a playlist that you can find on Spotify. I'll tweet out the link, but it's called an airbag save my life if you just want to search it on Spotify. And just doing a little bit of like light Googling, I found out that a lot of these songs were very conscious

or unconscious, but like very clear nods to other classic tracks. So for instance, sexy Sadie, the Beatles is basically the beginning of karma police is pulled from the beginning of sexy Sadie by the Beatles. No surprises is mirrors, wouldn't it be nice by the Beach Boys? What was cool about this, I mean, aside from the fact that, like, nothing is new. But what I liked about it was what a lot of people loved about Radiohead, especially in this run from OK Computer through Amnesiac, was the fact that they were a trampoline for, like, ideas that were existing in these sort of rock critical canon, you know, whether it was the vaunted, the way that Pet Sounds got vaunted by the Beach Boys Pet Sounds is vunted, or, you know, deep love of the white album or Cannes or DJ Shep. Shadow or early REM, there's a guitar riff from Fall on Me by REM is basically the guitar riff

from Letdown. And I had no idea. I didn't know that there was such explicit nods. Pavement often got a lot of credit and a little bit of grief for jacking a fall song or like, you know, borrowing heavily from other songs to, you know, the opening riff of Silent Kid is just basically Buddy Holley's every day. I mean, there's a lot of that kind of stuff happening. and it almost felt like singing record reviews

and that was as a rock critic or version like an aspirate one. It was really exciting though. Yeah, you think of it. It's interesting in hindsight to be able to place it into context when for us at 20 years old this was just like, it came from another planet.

Yeah. Let's go, let's, well, we knew this quickly but I wanted to go track by track just throw out some thoughts on each track of this record. Sure. Because if nothing else, this is an excuse to revisit it. First song is Airbag. my main takeaway from this song is, you know, Tom York is putting it in quotes,

but he's saying I'm back to save the universe. Yeah, I mean, this is a very, very, very smart league track. They don't really do lead tracks like this enough anymore. I miss Tom York wanting to save the universe. You know, if there's one thing, and, you know, it's ridiculous. This is easy to say talking to a microphone and having no, no skin in their game whatsoever. They made OK computer. It's to their great credit, both as artists and probably in terms of their career, they didn't try again because they had done it.

But it was pretty cool that however unhappy he was on tour, he did put on a cape. He put on a cape to do something and put the roll-offs back. You don't make a record like this because if you wanted to make a record, like we joked about this last week, but if you wanted to make a record and like obscure yourself, there were ways to do that in 1997. Well, Oldham just didn't, you couldn't figure out who Palace was. He changed the name of his band on every record. Yeah. I mean, like, there was a degree to which radiohead was having their cake and eating it, too. They were out there in the public eye, bemoaning being in the public eye, making movies about being in the public eye, playing Glastonbury and being like, oh, God, this is such a drag, you know?

And still, and I got this from that Mark Hogan piece on Pitchfork, I completely missed this moment or forgot about it. But there is a moment in, I think it's a meeting people as easy when Tom York is like, whoa, imagine if someone likes our band as much as I like R. R.E.M. and the Smiths. He knows. Yeah, of course. He knows. He's not just choking, not just stroking his chin in Oxford. Like, he knows.

Paranoid Android, can I be honest with you 20 years on? I still don't know if I like this song. I just pure like it. Did I love listening to it? I think if you listen to it once every few years, you have to bow down to it. If you're like, let's run it back, you probably need to go see a therapist. Fair. Subterranean Homestead Existed.

Pretty good song. Damn good song. This is one of the songs I used to skip. And now I'm like, damn, this shit is good. Yeah, man, people were uptight in the night. Exit music for a film is fascinating to me because this was on the soundtrack to Romeo and Juliet. It was written actually for Romeo and Juliet.

They were screened footage by Basil Ehrman and they were like, yeah, we got one for you. This is one of the last examples of Radiohead engaging in the culture. They were very, very quick to distance themselves from. And even in the title of it, there's the ironic quotes around it. There's the parentheses.

They're making it clear that they did this for someone else. And you can kind of tell. But at the same time, in a very 90s way, making a song from the perspective of young people that isn't about our love is wonderful. It's them saying, we hope you choke. There is a adolescent bitterness in this that is actually quite refreshing.

Letdown is one of the two or three best songs Radiohead's ever made. You took the words that way not. Letdown is my co-number-one radiohead song of all time. Yeah. There is a video on YouTube of them playing Lettown for the first time in 10 years. last year at Madison Square Garden.

Because they didn't play it for years. And they start to play the guitar part and you can hear all these people in the crowd go, holy shit! Like the real radiohead fans are like, I can't believe I'm here for this. There's a thing that I often fall back on this

when talking about painting, which is something I never do. So that's why I only use this one analogy. Which is like, yeah, Picasso did that, or like Jackson Pollock did that, but they could also draw fruit. You know what I mean? Like you knew, they learned how to paint before they learned how to deconstruct painting. And if you listen to what Johnny Greenwood can do with his guitar

on like There Will Be Blood soundtrack. He can basically make an orchestra sound like a swarming end-time's locust. He can do that because he made something that is just the most purely beautiful sound you can ever imagine on the song. Yeah, the video from the garden, there's that last part, like there's the middle eight and then like the Tommy York does some stuff and starts going like, oh, and then right before it kind of gets going again in the last 30 seconds, there's this footage from the garden and Greenwood is standing off to the side.

It kind of reminds me of like when Chris Paul finally takes over in the fourth quarter because he has the guitar like in the farthest possible place before he could actually start playing it and then he just like slides into this like Peter Buck part

that's just like lights out. And it's just like one of those things like if Johnny Greenwood just wanted to be the best rhythm guitar player in the world he could but he's too busy being like for Paul Thomas Sanders. You don't really know often

when you're living. living through times of great change or tumult or the last days of something, except now because we probably are living in the last days of something. But especially because for us, when you're 20 years old, no matter when you're 20 years old, you're like, bet, let's get this. Like the future is wide open and I'm going to make it good because it has to be good because I get a chance at this, right? I do think that the thing about the 90s,

and particularly the late 90s, is there was this overarching feeling of boundaries coming down. And it started obviously at the end of the Cold War, beginning of the Internet. that suddenly you could travel more, you could, you could communicate more. Things were opening up, and that can be very, very scary, particularly if you are in what many people said pre-Brit pop was kind of a parochial country, right? I mean, I think people drew a line between like John Major Britain and the Tony Blair

Britain and all of a sudden things were a little bit more. New Britannia. A little bit more happening. And that's what I always heard and let down. It was looking, like peeking over the wall and being pre-disappointed for what was about to come rushing in to fill the space that for a minute filled you with hope. Yeah, I always thought I was also like a subtly great love song for Last Call. What is your other favorite radio hit song? We can't leave that unattended.

Idiotek and I would say probably Reckner. You know, Reckoner is top five dead or alive. Number one is Kid A, the title track. Is it? Yeah. I've never heard weirder, more beautiful music, sadder, beautiful music than that. I think about that song a lot. All right, let's keep bringing through OK Computer.

So, Karma Police? Karma Police is, that's the one. Like, that's the song that when people, all the adjectives people use to describe Okay Computer, I feel like they're talking about Karma Police. Because it is the most majestic, the most beautiful, the most haunting, and low-key funny song on the whole record. It's pretty, it's pretty an amazing. Oh, yeah.

In the video. Fitter Happier was, it's just interesting because train spotting is also 20 years old. And, you know, one of the things that made trade spotting such a sensation was the advertising campaign, which was just this speech, choose life. Yeah. Why would I do that if I could choose heroin? It's just like kind of written text speech that was very eye-grabbing at the time. And the advertising campaign for OK Computer were the lyrics from Fitter Happier, if I remember correctly.

And they were just like pop up on subway stops in England. The full page ad in the enemy. Just a little insight there. Electioneering. Come on, fan. Not every record is perfect. Here's the thing about electioneering. I remember when there was the Tibetan freedom concerts

and Tom York was singing with Michael Stipe at them and this connection, it seemed both exciting and kind of inscrutable to me between REM, who were my favorite band and Radiohead, who were the most exciting biggest band in the world all of a sudden. Again, in hindsight, they had a lot of things in common, especially in terms of their desire to be, private in a lot of ways and their

difficult negotiation of being the biggest fan in the world. And their flirtation with being big versus being true to themselves. But perhaps no greater commonality than the fact that both bands probable maybe masterpieces automatic for the people and OK computer. I think track eight is a kind of stumbling political thumb. What's track eight on automatic for the people? Ignor land.

Can I ask you a quick R.A.M question really quickly? I've been waiting five years of podcasts for this moment. So letdown. I mentioned was pulled from Fallenby. What is your, between Fables of the Reconstruction and Life Search Pagent, which one do you like? Pagent, pageant, pageant. Pageant is a very big album for me. Okay.

I mean, Fables is an amazing record. We can do R.E.M. Pod later. I'm ready for it. Ignorland is track 8, by the way, on automatic code of people. Climbing up the walls. Climbing up the walls, low-key, one of the best songs on the record. Think about that song a lot. Very, very disturbing. And also, that in some ways might be the song. it felt like an outlier when you first listened to it,

especially before those big ballads at the end of the record. But climbing up the walls probably says more about pre-sages more of what Radiohead was about to do than anything else. It's sonically very experimental and very claustrophobic and dark, and that's kind of where they went. No surprises. I quite like. This was the one that was like... That was the most British record review.

Quite like it. It's not bad. This is the one that it was revelatory. I did not know this was, wouldn't it be nice? and just inverted and wouldn't it be awful? Yeah. Like I was fascinated by the fact that they were using all this stuff from pet sounds. It's kind of a wonder that in this golden age of season finale being,

where the season finale is of prestige dramas where the expositional lift of the final beats is always outsourced to a pop song that literally every show hasn't ended a season with no surprises. Right. Like, if you did a re-edit of, like, every major television show over the last 15 years and you took out whatever Steve Earle song ended the wire or you took out whatever song ended the Sopranos or Lost, just put no surprises in, it would work. Yeah.

That's probably the vibe they were going for, but they were... It was too on the nose for them to do. Lucky is a masterpiece. Like, Lucky is so gorgeous. I still like the shipbuilding cover more. I don't... I just really... I know you're not into it, but I really love airplane crash imagery.

Yeah, I know. This is like Whip Whitaker's iPod. He just loves vibing out to it. It's a shame that they were like, we have to go back. One thing, and then there's the tourist, which is a song no one remembers, but is very nice. One more thing I'm going to throw out you before we move on. I cannot believe it's 20 years since this record. We have often, we often try to pull one album out of every band's career as the greatest, as their best.

I mean, we come from the list-making industrial complex. This is what we do. We also, you and I, have bemoaned the rise of trilogies as the only way to tell stories, right? That every movie, every piece of IP has to be repurposed as a trilogy. With that caveat, I wonder if it makes more sense to look at the lifespan of great bands and their discographies as trilogies. Because OK Computer, to my mind, is the mastered what they were going for for Pablo Honey and the Benz. It is an extension of those. in my mind, OK, computer was this incredibly visionary, sonically bold experiment.

But in listening to it again today for the first time in quite some time, I was realizing how much of it is the bends taken to its logical extreme. It's the bends stripped of the, I mean, you mentioned an obvious bite, but in many ways a lot of the bends, when the guitars, when it's time for the guitars to come in, they soar and they chime as they are supposed to. And it almost like self-consciously so on things like fake plastic trees where it's like, you know, like they... You know they're coming. Here they come.

My Iron Lung, you know, the guitars on that are, dare I say it, Beatles-esque. But OK Computer really was the culmination of the band they were trying to be. And then they tore it down and they started again. Yeah. And I think you can apply that trilogy logic to a lot of great artists. Yeah, Barry Walters in his review said that it was a DIY electronica record made with guitars. They dropped the guitars after this for a while. They did.

And last point that I thought was really smart coming out of the. those pitchfork pieces was the attempt to recast Radiohead as a soul band. And a band that Barry Walters had a great line in his spin review that he named Check 2, basically saying they bypass the heart. There are a soul band that bypassed the heart and transcends into the soul or into the spirit. People have rarely accused Radiohead of being funky in any way. But there is something soulful about this album. And I was thinking about how in Rainbows an album, we just said,

that we loved. That first track in Rainbow's 15-step. Do you remember in 2009 when Radiohead played the Grammys with a USC marching band? And they had a full horn section of 15-step. And it's like, oh, this music is in this song. Sure. This music is there. It's just through their sort of cracked filter.

And I think that that's one of the more interesting things to think about. When you look at R&B artists that have cited OK Computer as a masterpiece, or I know someone can Google it's for us, like an interview with Timbaland in like 98 or 99 where he talks about. Yeah. This record, the true, sometimes I think the true test of a great record isn't how the band's fans respond to it or even like mass fans respond to it in Starbucks. But how it's like the peers.

How it filters into the overall conversation and the overall language of music going forward. So that's cool. I can't believe it was 20 years. Let's end up the pod really quickly with just a few words about TV. Do you have a show that you wanted to recommend to me? And, uh... Yo.

Yeah, hit me up. I can't tell what this is going to be. I've named... Andy's like, I want to make a recommendation. But I don't want to tell you. I want to keep the, like, the bit is that you're going to be surprised. It's not a bit. I'm just saying...

If this is like a kid's show, I'm going to be like, come on, fam. No. This is a show you watch after you put the kids to bed. And you're like, there's a show on Netflix right now. It's called Samurai Gourmet. Okay? It is the most Japanese shit I've ever seen in my life. And I drink it up.

like ice cold sake. This show, are you ready for what the show is? Let me just give you the boardroom pitch for the show. It is about a 60-year-old man, newly retired. Is it a narrative show? Yeah, okay. Every episode is 19 minutes long. Let me just do Italian chef kissing fingers.

Perfect. This dude wakes up this first day of retirement, and he's like, I don't know what to do. I'm filled with feelings of shame because I spend my entire life working. And his wife's like, what are the plants and why don't you go for a walk? And he's like, I guess. And he walks to the train station. This is like nine. They got 10 left.

Oh, yeah. And he's like, I'm at the train station. It's the only place I know where to go. And he goes, ah, a restaurant, a traditional Japanese restaurant. It's been near the whole time. And he sits down and he looks at the menu for a long time. Where is this set? Tokyo.

So why is it surprised there's a Japanese restaurant? Because he's just walked past this restaurant. Oh, he says it's an old-fashioned restaurant. Gotcha. Gotcha. And he orders like sliced pork stir fried. And then he's like, I kind of want a beer. And he looks around at everyone else who's like about to go back to the office.

And he's like, no, that would be embarrassing. like people would think I'm a layabout. And then he hallucinates a fucking samurai walking into the restaurant and drinking an entire caraf of sake and like threatening people with a sword. And he's like, that's what I need to do. I need to be like a samurai. And he orders a big beer and he drinks it. That's the episode.

That's the whole show. The episode is called midday beer at a restaurant. This is my shit. First of all, the second episode, he goes to a bad restaurant and feels nervous about telling the proprietor. or the food was bad. This is my life. I can really relate to this dude.

What I'm saying is there is TV for everyone, okay? Yeah. And a show about a guy who's pretty excited when they grill the salmon correctly. So this is what you're looking for. When I tell you that someone on Big Little Lies got their ureth were broken in two places, you're just like, oh, cool. But like you want Japanese restaurant fantasy fiction. Season one, episode nine, croquettes of the heart.

Okay, that's it. That's the end of the podcast. Goodbye. That's a real deal. That's really a show. I didn't make it up. We'll be back on Thursday with a special guest

to talk about Legion. I can't wait. We do have a special guest. He's not a hallucinated samurai, although he could play one. And until then, we'll talk to you soon. Order a beer in the afternoon,

Baranski. You have to watch this show. Today's episode of The Watch was brought to you by Fusion TV's, the AV Glob. for sponsoring us. Pop Culture, as you may have noticed from this podcast, is everywhere. According to non-existent studies, it's 83% of the things you consume, even more than oxygen. At the acclaimed pop culture website, the AV Club, it's all they ever want to talk about.

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