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I don\u2019t know when I became a fan of the band Radiohead.\u00a0 They seemed to creep up on me by stealth.\u00a0 I\u2019d been aware of them for years before suddenly, one day, I realised: \u201cHey! I really like them!\u201d<\/p>\n
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Appropriately for a band who crept up on me, the first song by them I heard was Creep<\/em> from their debut album Pablo<\/em> Honey<\/em> (1993).\u00a0 Though a massive hit, I didn\u2019t actually like Creep<\/em>, finding it dull and plodding. \u00a0My disdain for it was shared by Radiohead themselves, with guitarist Ed O\u2019Brien saying of their performances of the song during the early 1990s<\/a>: \u201cWe seemed to be living out the same four and a half minutes of our lives over and over again.\u00a0 It was incredibly stultifying.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At this time I worked as a university lecturer in the northern Japanese city of Sapporo.\u00a0 One day\u00a0 in 1995 I received a gift from a cool indie-kid in one of my classes, Yoko Koyama, who\u2019d discovered that despite my outward veneer of grumpiness and grouchiness I was, underneath, a sensitive soul who was heavily into music.\u00a0 The gift was a cassette recording of Radiohead\u2019s newly-released second album, The<\/em> Bends.\u00a0 <\/em>I diplomatically accepted it, not expecting to like it much on the basis that I hadn\u2019t been impressed by Creep<\/em>.\u00a0 But when I listened to it, I thought, \u201cThis is actually pretty good.\u201d\u00a0 Not brilliantly good, but definitely good.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Around then, Radiohead visited Sapporo and played a gig, but the night of their concert was one when I had to teach a couple of evening classes at the university.\u00a0 So I missed the chance to see them.\u00a0 The next day, I went into one of my regular Sapporo drinking hangouts, the Beifu-tei Bar, and got talking to a mate of mine, a Scotsman from St Andrews called Stevie Malcolm.\u00a0 Stevie informed me, \u201cAye, thon English rock band were in here last night after their gig.\u00a0 What dae ye call them?\u00a0 Thingmie-heid.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou mean, Radiohead?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cAye, Radio-heid!\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I got the impression Stevie had chatted away to Radiohead barely knowing who they were.\u00a0 Though from the band\u2019s unconventional approach to the music industry and their discomfort with the trappings of superstardom, they probably liked chatting to strangers in bars with barely any idea of who they were.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1997 Radiohead released their third album OK Computer<\/em>, which even my snobbiest, most purist music-loving friends, who\u2019d dismissed Pablo Honey<\/em> and The Bends<\/em> with a contemptuous flick of the hand, had to admit was an awesome record.\u00a0 It still figures prominently when music publications list the best rock albums of all time and retrospective reviews frequently award it a full five stars.\u00a0 And though subsequent albums \u2013 Kid A<\/em> (2000), Amnesiac<\/em> (2001), Hail to the Thief<\/em> (2003), In Rainbows<\/em> (2007), The King of Limbs<\/em> (2011) and A Moon Shaped Pool<\/em> (2016) \u2013 never created quite the same stir, and often made demands on the listener by veering off into the avantgarde, experimental and left-field, I\u2019ve found all of them laudable.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It helped that, unlike other bands who at various times were massively loved by audiences and hailed by critics as world-straddling musical colossi, Radiohead never seemed in your face that much.\u00a0 So you didn\u2019t grow sick of them.\u00a0 Whereas for a few years U2 or Oasis, or even REM, seemed to be everywhere in the media, with the result that their ubiquity led to a backlash \u2013 the public losing interest, the critics getting disenchanted, familiarity generally breeding contempt \u2013 Radiohead were more subtle, less intrusive and lower profile.\u00a0 Perhaps their credibility endured because of that.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even their appearances in popular culture tended to be wry and quirky and happened in unexpected, and cool, places.\u00a0 For example, I remember the very last episode of Father Ted<\/em> (1995-98) when the suicidal priest Father Kevin (Tommy Tiernan) gets cured of his depression by Ted playing to him Isaac Hayes\u2019 joyous Theme from Shaft<\/em> (1971) \u2013 only to lapse back into suicidal depression when he hears Radiohead\u2019s Exit Music<\/em> (For a Film)<\/em><\/a> (1997) playing on the radio in a bus.\u00a0 Or when they turned up in a 2001 episode of South Park<\/em> called Scott Tenorman Must Die<\/em> and added a final layer of torment to the unfortunate Scott Tenorman of the title.\u00a0 Scott is a kid who\u2019s been tricked by Eric Cartman into eating the minced bodies of his dead parents.\u00a0 When he discovers what he\u2019s done, he understandably bursts into tears.\u00a0 Just then, his favourite band, Radiohead, happen to stroll past, see him and cruelly mock him for being a \u2018cry-baby\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From x.com<\/a> \/ \u00a9 Hat Trick Productions <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 South Park Studios<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Anyway, last week on November 5th<\/sup>, Radiohead\u2019s vocalist and main songwriter Thom Yorke rolled up here in Singapore to play a solo concert as part of his Everything<\/em> tour.\u00a0 Yorke has a long history of making music on his own, from his 2006 album The Eraser<\/em>, through 2014\u2019s Tomorrow\u2019s Modern Boxes<\/em>, to 2019\u2019s ANIMA<\/em>, and he\u2019s also been involved in a couple of side-bands like Atoms for Peace and The Smile, so it\u2019s not a surprise to find him performing without the rest of Radiohead.\u00a0 I attended the gig accompanied by my better half, Mrs Blood and Porridge, who wouldn\u2019t have missed this occasion for the world.\u00a0 She\u2019s such a dyed-in-the-wool Radiohead fan that the other day she even made our cat<\/em> watch the video for 2016\u2019s Burn the Witch<\/em><\/a> on YouTube.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yorke played at the Star Theatre, which I\u2019ve visited a couple of times in the past.\u00a0 At previous gigs there, I was not greatly impressed by the crowd, many of whom seemed more interested in filming the event on their phones than getting into the excitement and vibe of the music itself.\u00a0 As I wrote a while ago about a Deep Purple concert: \u201cWhy remove yourself from the occasion and gaze zombie-like at tiny figures moving about a tiny stage on a tiny screen\u2026?\u00a0 It\u2019s also, needless to say, disrespectful of the performers onstage\u2026\u00a0 Honestly, there were times when the auditorium was so densely flecked with glowing phone-screens you felt you were flying over Las Vegas at night.\u201d\u00a0 But tonight\u2019s audience, Singaporeans and foreigners alike, seemed to be genuine Radiohead fans and Thom Yorke-lovers who knew the great man wasn\u2019t going to appreciate having a thousand phones pointed at him by a thousand glaikit dimwits.\u00a0 So, thankfully, phone-usage was at a minimum.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the most physical of performances.\u00a0 Yorke spent most of his time on a patch of stage encircled by musical equipment, including several keyboards, and looked like a cross between Rick Wakeman of Yes and Captain Nemo tinkling out Sebastian Bach\u2019s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor<\/em><\/a> on his organ.\u00a0 He did, occasionally, venture towards the audience to play guitar or indulge in some shuffling dancing.\u00a0 The latter drew affectionate cheers.\u00a0 I have to say seeing Thom make his funky moves brought a smile to my face, as it seemed to prove there was at least one person on the planet whose dancing is even worse than mine is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n But what of the music?\u00a0 I\u2019d read a worrying review of a gig from earlier in the tour, in Sydney, where the writer observed<\/a>, \u201cEach Radiohead\u00a0song that\u2019s played \u2013 they make up just under half the setlist \u2013 is met with a hushed reverence, while loud chatter is heard every time something else gets an airing.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe that means modern-day Sydney concertgoers are disrespectful bozos, for that certainly wasn\u2019t my impression of the Singapore crowd.\u00a0 Yes, the ten Radiohead numbers he played during the set \u2013 coming from a range of the band\u2019s albums, though nothing featured from Pablo<\/em> Honey<\/em>, Hail to the Thief<\/em> or The King of Limbs<\/em> \u2013 were enthusiastically received.\u00a0 But the audience showed their appreciation of the non-Radiohead stuff as well.\u00a0 This included material from all three of Yorke\u2019s solo albums, two new songs (Back in the Game<\/em> and Hearing Damage<\/em>), and two he\u2019d composed for the 2018 soundtrack for Luca Guadagnino\u2019s remake of the Dario Argento 1977 horror classic Suspiria<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It all meshed together nicely.\u00a0 The solo material evoked at different times the sounds of the Aphex Twin, Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails and I even wondered if Yorke was getting a bit disco-y at one or two points.\u00a0 Naturally, electronica-rooted Radiohead numbers like Idioteque<\/em>, Everything in its Right Place<\/em> or Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box<\/em> (off Kid A<\/em>) slotted in seamlessly among that lot.\u00a0 Surprisingly, though, the band\u2019s more conventional \u2013 dare I say more tuneful \u2013 songs, like How to Disappear Completely<\/em> (Kid A<\/em> again) Fake Plastic Trees<\/em> (off The Bends<\/em>), and All I Need<\/em> (off In Rainbows<\/em>) fitted in smoothly too, making it an impressively cohesive set.\u00a0 Maybe it was because Yorke\u2019s falsetto \u2013 often mocked, but inimitable, haunting and gorgeous \u2013 provided the aural thread that stitched together all these disparate pieces of musical cloth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Praise is due too for the accompanying light show, with several tall screens treating the audience to dazzling and dizzying displays that, during the evening, seemed to range from daubs of luminous green graffiti to blizzards of multicoloured confetti, from drizzles of Matrix<\/em>-style code to what looked like, frankly, masses of glowing spaghetti.\u00a0 Occasionally, these gave way to stark white light, and darkness, where, at his consoles, Yorke looked like a torturer operating his torture-machines in a gothic dungeon.\u00a0 Occasionally too, the chaotic patterns coalesced into the ghostly features of the man himself.\u00a0 Thus, the show was an impressively visual as well as aural experience.\u00a0 I have to say it was easier on the eyes than the screens at the previous gig I\u2019d been to at the Star Theatre, which\u2019d subjected me to regular, unflinching close-ups of the 78-year-old visage of Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By the concert\u2019s end it seemed the many diehard fans in the crowd had got their money\u2019s worth.\u00a0 Their frequent cries of \u201cI love you, Thom!\u201d had never lessened in enthusiasm while the 22-song set wound on.\u00a0 And presumably the guy who shouted, before the gig and behind us on the escalator while we rode up to the theatre\u2019s entrance, \u201cPlease, Thom, don\u2019t play Creep<\/em> tonight!\u201d, went home happy too.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A good evening, then.\u00a0 It certainly took our minds off the horror that was happening elsewhere on November 5th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I don\u2019t know when I became a fan of the band Radiohead.\u00a0 They seemed to creep up on me by stealth.\u00a0 I\u2019d been aware of them for years before suddenly, one day, I realised: \u201cHey! I really like them!\u201d Appropriately for a band who crept up on me, the first song by … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Screenshot-2024-11-13-082706.png\")
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