Mini-Discourse

Is there anyone out there who does not know that Radiohead's fourth CD Kid A arrived in stores on Oct. 2 (the 3rd in the U.S.)? Even if you don't know anything about the band or have no interest in them or their music, the media have conspired to anoint this the great release of the year. Advance word and advertising might lead you to expect this to be the first album of the century, the dawn of a new age. Or something.

Radio stations around the world have been playing the album and you can hear it online at Amazon and elsewhere. MTV2 played the CD three times: once on September 18th and twice on the 19th. I tuned in to MTV2 thinking perhaps they would air some of the 40-odd "blips" the band has released (these can be seen on MTV2 and online various places, including the Capitol site). Instead I saw something very simple that seems right to me. It functions as both an advert for the new cd and a mini-discourse on Radiohead's music.

After a fade out from the typical MTV introduction by a VJ-non-entity, the screen shows a room in black and white. The camera is positioned so close to a turntable that a spinning vinyl disc fills the bottom half of the screen. In the background are some 20- to 30-year-olds walking around the room, but mostly working at what look like computer terminals. We can hear voices, apparently theirs. Fingers remove the disc and replace it with another. Then the music starts. No question this is Radiohead. After the track, and the other nine, there is a cut to the evil grinning bear thing that is Radiohead's current icon. Between songs, we hear the voices in the room, perhaps speaking English, but their words are never clear.

Probably inspired by the Replacements' now famous video of the speaker (for their song "Bastards of Young" ), but of course lasting much longer, the video is monotonous. The only change is that at some points the figures in the background are moving in reverse, and, of course, the images of the bear. The simple presentation allows the viewer to concentrate on the music (which is at least part of the point the "Bastards of You" video made all those years ago).

This video is, to me, even more evocative than "Bastards of Young," however. Attaching the camera to the turntable isolates the viewer from the sort-of community on the other side of room whose members smile and talk to one another. The disc sounds fantastic but keeps us from hearing the community's conversation. Visually the disc is a barrier between the viewer and the community. The arm of the turntable occasionally blocks the view of the others completely. The stereo, which issues the Radiohead's music, separates the listener / viewer both visually and aurally from the people in the room. The presentation, therefore, illustrates admirably the isolation and loneliness one senses in Radiohead's music and vocalist Thom Yorke's distinctive delivery.

Theodor W. Adorno, in Introduction to the Sociology of Music, says that popular music gives the listener the mistaken impression that a song exists solely and specifically for the listener and maintains that because of this effect, popular music isolates individuals from one another, even beyond their usual loneliness. Radiohead is an exemplary case. Of course, Adorno had not heard Radiohead when he wrote his critiques of popular music (and other art forms). If he could hear OK Computer, The Bends or Kid A, he would realize that Radiohead makes music you relate to deeply, as though the band is expressing your feelings more eloquently than you can. You feel a relation to the music, not to the band and not to other fans.