I've discovered a bunch of DVDs at the library offering 'independent critical analyses' of classic bands. Now, this is pretty dangerous for me as I love obsessing about this sort of thing, and inevitably I got out two DVDs: one on The Smiths and one on Radiohead's OK Computer.
The format of the DVDs is a series of interviews with fat, ageing musicologists who offer their subjective viewpoints on various songs and events in the bands' careers. It's not all that flash, but then it's not quite E! True Stories, or whatever either. Still, they pass the time.
From either DVD I didn't get a *lot* of information that I didn't already know, but it was funny to compare and contrast the two groups. Both bands are about angst, but only one of them is hugely witty and entertaining - and it isn't Radiohead, who aren't much more than an updated Pink Floyd.
Perhaps Thom Yorke's sense of late 20th Century unease is more relevant than Morrissey's 60s obsessions, but what good does a catalogue of modern woe do us? It may be exquisitely observed, but it hasn't changed anything. Indeed, OK Computer's pre-9/11 world seems rather quaint now. As if those guys had _anything_ to worry about back then!
It is interesting to reflect that there hasn't been a record to top OK Computer since it got released. In fact when you get down to it there have really only been four truly great rock bands in the past 30 years: Radiohead, Nirvana, The Smiths, and, er, Bauhaus.
Posted by stuart at December 22, 2007 8:56 PM