I Actually WAS Living In A Cave Somewhere

Ok so what I am about to say may shock you, so be prepared.

Until last July, I had never heard a Radiohead song. Ever.

When I divulged this information to my coworkers while sitting in a Field Museum lab, they didn't believe me. "You must have heard at least one of their songs," they told me. They went on iTunes, found a recording of Creep, and played it for me.

Nothing.

Karma Police.

Nothing.

Fake Plastic Trees.

Nothing.

You And Whose Army?

Nothing.

Apparently I had gone through the entire 1990s, which included all of my elementary, middle, and high school when everyone and their mother was listening to Radiohead, and I had not heard a single song. My coworkers looked at me like I was some sort of geologic anomaly; or like a Cuban saying "Fidel who?"

I went and checked out Radiohead on Wikipedia (as you can do with the above link) and noticed that their article is gargantuan. It has links to articles about all their alubms, band members, formative eras; it's like they are the greatest band ever.


And now it has all been lost on me. According to my friends, Radiohead was nothing less than the perfect, all-encompassing soundtrack for the generic, slightly pissed-off and distrubed 1990s youth. Their music is intricately interwoven into the life experience of a teenager in the last decade of the 20th century, placing them on a pedestal right next to the one the Beatles for our generation's parents.


And it is all lost on me. My childhood cannot be lived retroactively. Now that so many people are telling me about Radiohead's greatness, my mind cannot accept it. I mean, I like some of thier songs, but I am not about to throw six of their CDs into my car stereo and listen to them for the next decade. Their songs strike me as being as dark as a room with a single, tiny nightlight; as sad as a girl standing alone against a wall during a high school dance.

I think it is interesting to look back on this band that so many people hold to such high esteem, and then look at it from such an original perspective. Because it's not like I knew who they were and then disliked their music; either because of how it sounded or because it was so popular and I needed to rebel. I just never heard it; and it seems so tailor made to the time in which it was produced that it just doesn't do much for me now.

But don't worry about my musical knowledge - I knew Franz Ferdinand was going to be huge five mobths before they started blasting from US radios (mostly because Shewara told me so). And now? Can't get enough of them :)