My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wrote about music.
His writing is part music-critique, part memoir, part cultural snapshot. A reminder that many of these pieces were written a decade ago, in some cases more. Melody is now my brother’s wife (and like a sister to me), and they have two sons, whom I love dearly. And Bren’s son Cashel is now a college student. WTF.
I have always loved Bren’s writing, so I am happy to share it with you!
Hollywood Bowl, Pt. 2: Radiohead Is Not There
Somehow I am at The Hollywood Bowl and Radiohead is about to take the stage. It is a crisp fall night in Los Angeles. How the one-hit wonders of “Creep” turned themselves into the greatest and most subversive popular rock act in history is something I will never be able to truly comprehend.
When I first heard “Creep” I was singing along by the second chorus. In an era of spearhead, zebrahead, myriad-other-heads, another band ending in -head seemed destined for the scrap heap of marginalia. Even the heavy chunk of the guitar kicking in right before he says “I’m a creep” seemed TOO of the moment. This riff was so spot on it threatened itself with cliche. I wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d never heard from these fellas again.
And then came OK Computer.
Oh, I know they released The Bends before it and “Fake Plastic Trees” was on the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, but for me, Radiohead truly came into being the first time I heard “Paranoid Android”.
Unsettling. Gorgeous. Terrifying.
Listening to Radiohead for me is like being trapped inside a camera on the nose cone of a missile that will one day descend to earth and wreak utter destruction. Before it makes that awful fall it endlessly circles the planet revealing the true nature of existence through sheer observation.
To truly demonstrate the disparate natures juxtaposed within their music, I used to sing “No Surprises” to my son as a lullaby. He would have been less than one year old so the lyrical content couldn’t keep him awake and petrified.
They are (as close as I can tell…)
A heart that’s full up like a landfill,
a job that slowly kills you,
bruises that won’t heal.
You look so tired-unhappy,
bring down the government,
they don’t, they don’t speak for us.
I’ll take a quiet life,
a handshake of carbon monoxide,with no alarms and no surprises,
no alarms and no surprises,
no alarms and no surprises,
no alarms and no surprises,
Silent silent.This is my final fit,
my final bellyache,with no alarms and no surprises,
no alarms and no surprises,
no alarms and no surprises please.Such a pretty house
and such a pretty garden.No alarms and no surprises (get me outta here),
no alarms and no surprises (get me outta here),
no alarms and no surprises, please.
When I started singing it to Cashel, I made up the words as I went because I didn’t know them. Mine were as follows…
This is the final act
I’m going nowhere fast
No alarms and no surprises
No alarms and no surprisesThis is the pit of love
Fantastic from up above
But when you’re down in it
You’re flying
When you’re down in it
You’re flying low
Now, it doesn’t rival “Rock A Bye Baby” for sheer creepiness, but that is how Radiohead helped my little boy get to sleep.
Radiohead transformed themselves into a juggernaut of iconoclastic melody and bombast. The fact that such a complicated message struck such a widespread core has been a comfort to me. Their artistry articulated something very profound about the new ways in which we related to each other as human beings. Or didn’t relate to each other as the case may be.
Again, somehow I am at The Hollywood Bowl and Radiohead is about to take the stage. And no pristine setting can counterbalance the primal force of decay and despair that roars forth from this collective. They obliterated us. Their sound expanded to fill the canyon. It was as if some Terminator had been created far in the future, all technology and records of human brutality and beauty had been fed into a genesis machine, and then the machine had been given old tapes of The Clash and The Beatles. The result? The collected output of Radiohead.
During their encore, they began looping their instruments and combining them with a found radio broadcast. As the layers grew, the sound now included aspects that were NOT actually present. The song morphed into some twisted actualization of humanity. There were sticks being smashed against animal skins and fingers plucking cat guts stretched into strings there were ones and zeros in the air funneled through silicon steel plastic and ozone.
One by one Radiohead left the stage. The music continued without them. It was out of their hands. Radiohead was no longer there.
— Brendan O’Malley
I LOVE Radiohead. Something about the way the music operates under Yorke’s voice just does it for me. I’ll go weeks without thinking about them and then, say, the refrain from Burn the Witch will float into my brain and I’ll have to put it on repeat for four hours. I’ve never seen them live; reading this account of a critical time in their evolution is so vicariously, retrospectively exciting!
This is actually a lie, I can’t go weeks without thinking of Radiohead because all their albums are on my phone and computer and the shuffle always chucks them up. But once a month have this oh, yeah…..I really love Radiohead moment. They’re just one of those artists, like Bowie, that I seem to have an endless capacity for rediscovering just how much I enjoy them.
Their stuff is so deep. and his VOICE. There’s a Youtube clip somewhere of him singing “Creep” with all the music taken out – just his vocal track. The man has an astonishing voice!
There is something very primal for me when one of their songs come on part of it has to do with very specific time/place memories attached to those songs – particularly OK Computer – which sometimes is too evocative of that time in my life I have to turn it off. It’s amazing how that music just wove itself into the contours of my life at that time. I mean, it was an unavoidable album in that way.
I of course was aware of “Creep” – if you were a sentient being in the couple of YEARS after that album was released – you’d be aware of that song. But OK Computer was the one that drew me in deeper.
I can’t listen to Radiohead at ALL anymore. OK Computer was like this tsunami and it kind of swept all the other Radiohead albums away with it. So those are gone and OK Computer is SO of a time that it is painful to listen to.
Also I will never forget that video of him and the astronaut helmet slowly filling up with water. Amazing.
Bren – it’s kind of amazing how that happens sometimes. also how far “Creep” went – I mean it was so huge I think they toured for 2 years or something like that on the strength of it alone??
I like how you said that a difficult message like Ok Computer hitting such a wide number of people is comforting. Doesn’t happen often.
Thank you for all your amazing writing, my brother!