FINAL SCORE: CURE 65 RADIOHEAD 58
*
By now you've probably read enough analysis of the Elite Eight songs already, but if you missed it, get up to speed, starting with the Sweet Sixteen coverage below. For this game we offer you our expert analysis of each song in eight categories that may or may not be meaningful to you in deciding your vote. Ratings are of five possible teardrops, five being the maximum, one the minimum. The Committee Members also offer their game predictions below (which may or may not correspond with their votes and the leanings of their hearts).
(1) Cure, "Pictures of You" • Sweet 16 • 2nd round • 1st round
(2) Radiohead, "Fake Plastic Trees" • Sweet 16 • 2d round • 1st round
*
(1) The Cure, "Pictures of You"
vs.
(2) Radiohead, “Fake Plastic Trees”
Ah, the tragedies of the bracket system. Can't I just vote for both of these songs and neither of the Buckley/NMH showdown?
ReplyDeleteI know, right? It's weird how these two much more closely related bands end up having to battle for the one spot in the final four. The songs are much more different in the other game. In a way, though, the harder the decision, the more it reveals. The easy choices don't tell you (or us) very much about yourself.
ReplyDeleteI saw Radiohead inbetween Pablo Honey and The Bends. I had this one friend who was into Radiohead in a way that turned out to be sort of visionary - he was already hip to the "Creep sucks" argument before the band started making it, and he was all over the nascent early 90's dial-up Prodigy era internet trading Radiohead bootleg mix-tapes with all of this "groundbreaking new shit" that didn't sound anything like Creep. A lot of those tracks turned up later, and not just on "The Bends," but when we were headed to the show, this dude was especially excited about this one super-rare, Radiohead BBS only track called "Fake Plastic Trees" and he just about split his face in half when the track finally hit. And I'll admit, even an all-ages show in Portland, Oregon who had never heard the song knew to quiet down and pay attention for four minutes. The song had incredible power, especially hitting for the very first time.
DeleteThat being said, the real show stopper wasn't Fake Plastic Trees - it was Fade Out (Street Spirit). In a different history, that song makes this list instead. It fits most of the same descriptors insofar as it's still definitely proto-Radiohead, but the guitar structures are less conventional and the bloops and bleeps don't seem as far away.
Epilogue: At the end of the show, my buddy jumped up on stage to grab Thom Yorke's cup (of vodka, as it turns out) just as Yorke was turning around to retrieve it. Yorke let him keep it (violating a few alcohol-to-minors ordinances), signed it for him, shook his hand, talked to him for a few minutes. Yorke never really did seem to develop the latter-day rock star psychobaggage - I like to think he's still down to pass his booze off to the occasional adoring 16 year old, even if the mixtapes and $13 dollar shows are long gone for all of us.
I feel comfortable and enlightened to admit that I was also a 90s dial-up, Prodigy-era, internet-trading, bootleg kind of dude. Though it feels vaguely nostalgic discussing it, I don't miss the days of 56k bandwidth, begging for one 5MB MP3 to finish downloading via some poorly organized Napster user who fucked up all of the file's metadata. So much effort went into sideloading my early Rio media player with illicit music, a device which basically contained a complete hard drive (i.e., fragile spinning platters) and weighed as much as a small animal. Not to mention when files were finally acquired, there was like a 62% chance they were a) transcoded to shit, because no one understood how to rip digital music properly, b) a completely different artist that sounded remotely similar, enough to fool some tone deaf halfwit in Akron, OH, or c) a trojan virus propagated from the ill-fated Kazaa P2P service that devoured your computer-illiterate buddy's Windows 98 configuration like a sweet fruit.
Delete1995-era eBay was also sweet for fan-made VHS tapes of live shows. I've got some wicked death metal shows on magnetic tape somewhere.
Please allow me to continue to disparage the voters who selected, for some ill-defined and perhaps not well-considered reasons, Radiohead over This Mortal Coil earlier in the tournament. I pretty much hate you, though I quite like Radiohead. I guess I'm mad because my precious little tunes aren't acknowledged the world over to be the brilliantly soul-crushing expressions of grief and malaise which I know them to truly be. How do I say this with utmost political correctness? My sense for these things is better attuned than yours, and you've made a glaring error which you will come to regret in your later years.
ReplyDeleteAnd let's now talk about another severe and painful oversight in this bracket, that being the omission of two deeply sad songs called "Love Songs on the Radio" and "Tomorrow's Taken," both of which can be heard on the same album by ex-Slowdive band Mojave 3. I don't know whether it's better or worse that these spectacular gems have not been subjected to this cruel, subjective voting process. But I'm sure that I'm enraged nevertheless, and by that I mean to overstate my immeasurable disappointment. No one can take away their place in my heart. You hear that? No one. And I freely admit that a large part of my bellyaching over this has a great deal to do with my not having banged Rachel Goswell in the 90s. There was simply no opportunity to make that spark happen, though I maintain there would have been a standing chance. I also want to emphasize the virtues of the Mojave 3 songwriting itself, which is second-to-none. But also: Rachel Goswell.
Once, circa 2008, while enrolled in a capstone course taught by one of the committee members, the entire class of students was put on hold for a brief moment, detained really, while said committee member and I spoke about his having (then recently) seen a Mojave 3 concert. As I recall, Rachael Goswell was not present to perform, which is a sad thing, indeed. But I was jealous anyway. And the rest of the class was just baffled, and then no one ever spoke of this band again, though they went on to put out more solid music.
Strong words from the peanut gallery! You're right that ASK ME TOMORROW came out under the cutoff (2001) and could have been considered. It wasn't for two reasons, though as you note, that album and the band is indeed quite close to one member of the committee's heart: (1) while the cutoff for songs was 2001, in practice we skewed quite a bit earlier and only made exceptions for later-era considerations like the singular Neutral Milk Hotel (which, while we realize was not to everyone's taste, did make it to the Elite Eight) and Gary Jules, whose cover of "Mad World" we actually didn't even realize was as late as 2001, so of the era did it seem in retrospect (since it's a cover of an 80s song and was the big song in Donnie Darko which recanonized a bunch of 80s jams, no surprise: it also made it to the Elite Eight). And more importantly, (2) we considered Mojave 3 to be too close to Slowdive (in vocals and affect) to want to draft them against our tendency for earlier years. Sure, we could have wedged them in, but we also doubt that they would have gone very far, since shoegaze did not seem to correlate well with the kind of sadness our voters favored. In a 90s-oughts bracket they'd definitely be on the list, however. And whether we should have picked them OVER Slowdive is a harder call.
DeleteI'd like to rekindle this thread with some new information about RACHEL GOSWELL. She is a member of Minor Victories, a new British alt-rock supergroup. The band members are guitarist Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai fame, vocalist RACHEL GOSWELL of everything fame, and Justin and James Lockey. An exciting, self-titled album was recently released, featuring the brilliantly mellifluous singing abilities of RACHEL GOSWELL.
DeleteYou know, I read this a while ago but only just got around to listening to them; not sure why, but they're very good. Nice rec.
DeleteGlad you agree! Long live guitar rock. This weekend I rediscovered Tegan & Sara's 2004 release “So Jealous,” and I wonder why they got away from guitars. Check out the track, “I Bet it Stung,” and try to find a counterpoint. “I love the rock and roll.”
Delete