01. Radiohead - Hail To The Thief
02. Evanescence - Fallen
03. Stereophonics - You Gotta Go There To Come Back
04. Annie Lennox - Bare
05. S Club - The Greatest Hits Of

Radiohead's involvement with the Trade Justice Movement came out of the awareness raised by the Jubilee 2000 campaign which highlighted the crippling burden of debt faced by the developing world.

Following on from that campaign, NGOs such as Christian Aid, Oxfam and CAFOD were telling us that, although aid and debt relief were essential, if we were to be truly effective in wiping it out in the long term, then the issue of trade and the illogical, grossly immoral rules that govern it had to be challenged. This is where the Trade Justice Movement has come in.

I like the fact that the Trade Justice Movement is a coalition. It reflects the way this campaign is supported by a great many people in this country who realise that, in an increasingly interdependent and globalised world, we in the richest countries have a responsibility to the world's poorest.

This is not merely a responsibility based on compassionate grounds. There are now, more so than ever, pragmatic reasons. Poverty and inequality are the greatest human threat to the well-being and security of all human beings on our planet. The Trade Justice Movement seeks to redress the balance.

US music fans using MP3 file sharing networks such as Kazaa could face legal action from the body set up to represent major record companies' interests.

The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has long bemoaned the ever-growing numbers of music fans obtaining music for free from the internet, and now intends to file "several hundred" lawsuits against users making "substantial" numbers of music files available for download, Ananova reports.

Debate rages as to the effects of file sharing on the music industry. The RIAA blames it for dive-bombing CD sales over recent years, while networks and users themselves insist that it is a useful and legitimate way for fans to find out about new music - and one that will not go away.

RIAA president Cary Sherman reiterated the view that file sharing is both wrong and illegal, and that users should not expect supposed online anonymity to prevent them from having to face the music over their downloading habits. Sharman Networks, who operate the hugely popular Kazaa network, accused the RIAA of declaring war on its customers, and said they themselves were more interested in working with record companies than against them in developing file sharing in the future.

Amongst others, Radiohead's just-released album Hail To The Thief was widely distributed online before its official release, but still rocketed to the top of the charts when it eventually hit the shops.

21:45 - 23:00 Björk
23:40 - 01:25 Radiohead
01:55 - 03:30 Underworld

01. Monica - After The Storm
02. Luther Vandross - Dance With My Father
03. Metallica - St. Anger
04. Radiohead - Hail To The Thief
05. Annie Lennox - Bare

When the Music Lounge met Coldplay's assistant at the Sasquatch Festival last month, he said "his band" was the best British group in music right now. Though, we corrected him immediately by saying, Um...what about Radiohead? Coldplay is really, really good, but Radiohead is fucking brilliant. Conversation over.

With that out of the way, we're pleased to announce Radiohead's second tour leg includes the Seattle area. They'll be at the Whiteriver Amphitheater on August 31. Tickets go on sale next Saturday, July 28. You're going to kick yourself if you sleep in and don't get tickets because it will sell out. However, you may want to consider a trek to Vancouver for their August 30 show with R.E.M. and Wilco on the bill.

1. (1) Hail To The Thief - Radiohead
2. (7) Fallen - Evanescence
3. (4) You Gotta Go There To Come Back - Stereophonics
4. (8) Best: The Greatest Hits Of S Club 7 - S Club 7
5. (3) Bare - Annie Lennox

Sept. 23: Mountain View, Calif. (Shoreline Amphitheatre)
Sept. 25-26: Los Angeles (Hollywood Bowl)
Sept. 28: San Diego (Coors Amphitheatre)
Oct. 1: Woodlands, Texas (Mitchell Pavilion)
Oct. 2: New Orleans (UNO Lakefront Arena)
Oct. 4: West Palm Beach, Fla. (Sound Advice Amphitheatre)
Oct. 6: Atlanta (Hi-Fi Buys Amphitheatre

It was the latest battle over copyright infringement between the music industry and Internet-savvy fans, this time over lyrics and sheet music being distributed on Radiohead fan Web sites. In this case, however, the story had a happy ending.

It's my magical story, said Mary Bichner, the Philadelphia-based Webmistress of Radiohead for the Pianoforte (RFTP).

Last Thursday, just over a week after threatening legal action against Bichner for posting her handwritten piano transcriptions of Radiohead songs on the Web, Warner/Chappell Music backtracked on its demands that she take down the scores. Warner/Chappell, which owns the publishing rights to most of the British band's songs -- bowing to pressure from a torrent of vitriolic emails and telephone calls from angry fans -- has issued free "fan licences" to RFTP and several other fan sites, which gives them the right to distribute lyrics and arrangements over the Internet.

While several of these sites were informed about the special one-year fan licences earlier this month, Bichner was only contacted by Warner/Chappell last week. Her site is back online today, though now the scores have complete writer credits and copyright notices attached.

The band gave it the OK, so they did a special licence for me, Bichner said. I'm so excited (Radiohead) actually talked about me.

Radiohead have gone to number one in the album charts with their new release Hail To The Thief. The band's sixth studio album - was released on Monday and outsold last week's number one, You Gotta Go There To Come Back from Stereophonics, which slipped to number two.

Official sales figures for Hail To The Thief have yet to be released. Earlier in the week, however, the album was thought to be on track to become the fastest-selling album of the year so far.

Record shops said it was selling so fast that it could overtake last year's fastest-selling albums by Coldplay and Robbie Williams.

Coldplay's A Rush Of Blood To The Head sold 270,000 copies in its first week and Williams' Escapology sold 260,000 copies.

Hello! So its announcement time again and here are details of confirmed Radiohead dates for August 2003. w.a.s.t.e. has once again secured an allocation of tickets for the fanbase and we will be going on sale with these tickets on the 21st June 2003 for all dates except Seattle which goes on sale on the 28th June 2003. To purchase tickets, please go to www.waste.uk.com and click the link for USA tickets. Below are details of the dates and the relevant info to make your ticket buying experience that little bit easier.

Location : Tweeter Center, Boston
Show date: 13th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com charge by phone number 617/288-6000 & 508/931-2000, or Tweeter Center BO (limited window service)

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Location : Parc Jean Drapeau, Montreal, Canada
Show date: 15th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 12 midday 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Admissions Outlets, www.admission.com, charge by phone # - 514/790-1245; 800/361-4595

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Location : Molson Ampitheatre, Toronto, Canada
Show date: 16th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.ca or charge by phone 416/870-8000, or Molson Amp BO (no first day tix sales)

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Location : Tweeter Center, Philadelphia
Show date: 18th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00 am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or charge by phone 215/336-2000 & 302/989-2000 & 856/338-9000

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Location : Merriweather Post Pavillion, Columbia
Show date: 20th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00 am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or charge by phone numbers 202/432-SEAT, 410/481-SEAT, 703/573-SEAT, or Venue BO (M-F 10 am - 5:30 pm & Day of Show)

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Location : Blossom Music Center, Cleveland
Show date: 21st August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00 am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or charge by phone 216/241-5555 & 330/945-9400 or box office - weekends only

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Location : Alpine Valley Music Theatre, Chicago
Show date: 23rd August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00 am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or charge by phone # 415/276-4545 & 920/494-1414 & 414/276-4545 & 608/255-4646 & 920/731-5000 & 312/559-1212, or Riverside Theatre Box Ofiice 312/559-1212. Also venue website - www.alpinevalleymusic.com

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Location : UMB Bank Pavilion, St. Louis
Show date: 24th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 12 midday 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com charge by phone # 314/241-1888 & 618/222-2900

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Location : Red Rocks Ampitheatre, Denver
Show date: 26th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00 am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com charge by phone # 303/830-8497, or Red Rocks BO (day of show only), Rite Aid, Foleys, Warehouse Music, or Tower Records

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Location : USANA Ampitheatre, Salt Lake City
Show date: 28th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00 am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Smiths Tix Outlets, www.smithstix.com, charge by phone #s 801/467-TIXX, 800/888-TIXX, E Center Box Office - 801/988-8888 or USANA Ampitheatre BO (day of show only)

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Location : Thunderbird Stadium, Vancouver, Canada
Show date: 30th August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 9:30 am 21st June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.ca or charge by phone 604/280-4444

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Location : White River Ampitheatre, Seattle
Show date: 31st August 2003
Tickets go on sale : 10:00 am 28th June 2003
Ticket Outlets : All Ticketmaster Outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or charge by phone 206/628-0888 or venue box office (Saturdays from 10am - 2pm only)

In an interview with Xfm’s John Kennedy for the X-posure show, Yorke has hinted that while Radioheads new album is predominately a live, full band affair the future will probably see them moving into heavier electronic music.

We deliberately spent a long time preparing, he says of recording Hail To The Thief, And we got into the ideas of performance at the same time as using a lot of electronics, so all the computer techniques had to occur there and then. It’s something we’re getting very heavily into. So you’d prepare the computers for all eventualities and you’d go with them. It’s a very acoustic record this one, but I’ve found out that we can do all this loud stuff with computers which is the direction I think we’ll take.

It also seems that Yorke is frustrated with the confines of the traditional album format, possibly provoking a move to just releasing EPs in the future.

When you’re finishing a record, you have to confront the idea of what it’s called, and there’s no getting away from the fact that people are gonna be reacting in such a way. Yorke continued, I think next I’d love to just do EPs ‘cos I’ve had enough of this whole album thing and that sort of level of pressure and scrutiny and the way that it works in the music business.

In another interview in the Toronto Star yesterday (June 12), the singer reiterated his feelings.

I don't know what the focus in the future would be musically, but if we were to pursue this idea of EPs, if you have, say, four tracks, you can do something coherent in a different way with four tracks than you can do with a record, where you're sort of paranoid about how things will go together. If it's four tracks, that's license to explore that one area for one EP and another idea for another EP. And that's what excites me.

Though if it new material from the band does surface, we might not even know it’s Radiohead – though it may mark the end of the band too.

I'm into the idea of releasing things where maybe people just don't know who it is and stuff like that, he continued, I don't know. Maybe it dies like that.

I wanted to ... the pixie-ish Yorke stops himself and gives a faint, slightly hard smile. He does this often, stopping and smiling, as if still processing the events or sharing a joke with himself. When we finished Kid A and Amnesiac, we were thinking, 'So, what kind of lurch in another direction are we gonna take now, you know, unexpectedly, ra ra ra?'

He often does this, too, this mirthless lampooning of himself, this adopting of the snide theorising he sees as beloved of the media. And, um, that was kind of doing my head in for a while. I took a long, six months off. Then my girlfriend, Rachel, said, 'Why don't you just do a record where you let it happen? No agenda, nothing.' And that sort of made things click.

Yorke recently accompanied a fellow Oxfordian, the environmental philosopher and pundit George Monbiot, to a peace rally outside RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, home of American B-52 bombers. Yorke made a short speech attacking the war in Iraq. "America," he told the crowd of 2000, "is being run by a bunch of religious maniac bigots who stole their election and their only way of retaining power is to wage war."

As recounted in Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men, the phrase "hail to the thief" was chanted by demonstrators at George Bush's inauguration, a reference to his having "stolen" the presidency from Al Gore, who had more votes.

Despite his comments at RAF Fairford, Yorke insists the album title is not directed at the US president. That would cheapen the record, he says, not least because he hopes the album will be around a lot longer than Dubya.

The line "Hail to the thief" appears in the album's first song, 2+2=5. Yorke first heard it on Radio 4, during a discussion of a previous president, John Quincy Adams, [i>whose father stole him the election and who was known as the Thief throughout his presidency.

It struck me as the most amazing, powerful phrase, Yorke says, regardless of the circumstances. It will annoy me if people say it's a direct protest because I feel really strongly that we didn't write a protest record, we didn't write a political record.

The fact that the music was positive and has all this energy gave me licence to write the lyrics I wrote. It was only when I got to the end of it I realised how angry it was. All the way through the record there is this sense of trying to understand how one human can make a decision and affect thousands of lives.

This week has marked the biggest battle of major acts on the album chart for some time and while Metallica has ruled the world, Radiohead are ruling Britain.

Midweek sales from the UK suggest Radiohead's 'Hail To The Thief' will be England's number one album from this Sunday.

The 6th album for Radiohead has been greeted with so much enthusiasm that it has overshot Metallica's St Anger on the band's home turf.

St Anger might have forfeited a good first week chart after being released midway through last week giving it enough momentum to come in at #3 this week but their faithful fan-base who have to have the album "now" may have exhausted the biggest week of sales in just the first few days.

St Anger is expected to hold ground on the BBC chart this week, with Radiohead on top as well as a debut from Annie Lennox also coming into the Top 5. 'Bare' is Annie's first new album in a decade.

the most gigantic lying mouth of all time is now speaking at www.radiohead.tv.

you can watch the first half-hour programme and also the full there there video.

programmes commence on the hour every hour. Be sure to tune in on time or you will be unable to view the whole of the broadcast.

you may also wish to visit www.radiohead.com which has finally been upholstered in finest crushed velvet

www.radiohead.com
www.radiohead.tv

When I head out to my local record shop during my designated lunch break today-- a topic Radiohead's Thom Yorke would readily turn into a melodramatically fatalistic, Orwell-lite meditation on routine and alienation-- I'll mingle with teenagers and CEOs frantic to walk out with their own copy of Hail to the Thief. Because today, Radiohead are U2, Pink Floyd, and Queen-- they could have been bigger than The Beatles if the success of "Creep" hadn't agitated an Oxford-bred guilt complex. As Yorke put it in Meeting People Is Easy: "English people aren't impressed. There's this automatic assumption that any degree of success means that you've cheated. Or you're full of shit."

That's a cross Thom no longer has to bear, since whatever shit he was full of was kicked out of him-- in his hometown, no less-- one night in 2000. Like Johnny, the similarly bloodied main character from Mike Leigh's Naked, the assault appears to have Thom dealing with reality for possibly the first time. Protected from street-level human misery-- first by privilege, and then as a celebrity-- by a misguided belief in the world as something definite and easily changed, Yorke's pummeling rightly refocused an unparalleled modern songwriter on more immediate and emotionally resonant issues, stuffing him back in boots he was growing too big for.

The way we got involved was that Dilly Gents their commissioner, saw some stuff on our website. She trawls through websites looking for small companies and she found us on there and gave us a ring. We didn't return the call for about four days ‘cos we didn’t know who she was. So we left it for a few days, called her back and it was for Radiohead so we said 'Yes, of course we'll try and do it!'

I've always been a major fan of the Radiohead videos and the directors they've chosen, just because they are so diverse really, they choose people who really are the avant garde of film making. I'm an animator and we're an animations company, but we also go in for human animation, which is the pixellation stuff and also proper film making stuff as well. But the way I approach this sort of stuff is to make it like a short film that goes with the music rather than examining the music, breaking it down and saying 'Right, we'll change there, we'll change there'. It was really just to write something that goes with the music but is also like a short film in it's own right.

Interview by Dylan Tan.
You’ve read English Literature in Cambridge. So what are you doing in a band?

When I was in college, I played in two or three different bands as well. But the thing about Radiohead was, we existed even before I was in college so we continued playing when we were on holiday or whenever. And Radiohead actually came up to Cambridge to play a couple of shows. But I don’t know, being a student is actually pretty good preparation for being in a rock band; there’s lots of hanging around and getting up late.

What do you think you’d be doing now if you weren’t in Radiohead? You think you’d be in a jacket and you’d be wearing your glasses low like a stuffy academic?

I’ve got patches on my jumper as I speak. I haven’t got glasses because I’m not short sighted but I’ve got patches on my jumper…and sensible brown shoes so you’re quite right! I’d probably be boring the arses off some young people about some subject. Thank goodness!

Having toured round the world, have you ever stumbled upon anyone doing Radiohead karaoke or a bad Radiohead tribute band perhaps?

We were once in Bangkok and we were walking past a row of bars and there were these quite old men who were doing Creep and Stop Whispering. I’d prefer if it’s karaoke or a local band reinterpreting the song – those are always interesting – rather than a bunch of kids trying to act like Radiohead.

Some critics have described Coldplay as Radiohead before they were caught by aliens. Agree or disagree?

I don’t know. Coldplay is the new Radiohead? (starts laughing) I don’t know, they’re on the same label as us so they must be on the same spaceship, ha ha! Yeah, I don’t know their music actually but I heard the new Coldplay single Clocks on the radio and that sounded good on the radio. It’s not something that I listen to but I think they’re good enough and they don’t need to be compared anyone, let alone us.

Radiohead’s singer Thom Yorke sounds a bit like a tortured soul in his songs. Does the band really stop fooling around when he walks into the room?

(cheeky laughter) No, we start fooling around.

So he’s a clown!

Yeah and there’s a lot of humour on the new record. There’s a lot of fun being had with the words and it’s a bit of a concern when people don’t pick the jokes or wit up. I think calling a song Punch-up at a Wedding is not exactly the heaviest song title in the world, is it? So I think there’s a very sharp humour in Thom’s writing but it can be very bleak as well. So I think just to say he’s gloomy all the time is wrong.

You’ve once said it’s getting harder and harder to get your mum to like the band with each Radiohead album…

Yeah, she used to drive us to rehearsals when we were like 15 years old and she never really thought the band would go anywhere but at least it kept me and my brother Johnny out of trouble. And we took her to Paris as a surprise for her 70th birthday and her main concern was nobody was going to turn up in a 70,000 capacity hall. And if they did, where were they going to fit because there were no tables and chairs! But I think she’s happy about it now.

With your brother Johnny in the band, are there any sort of Gallagher brother type punch up while on tour?

No we’re pretty cool. It’s good. I promised my mother we’d look after him when we went on tour.

What’s it like backstage at a Radiohead gig? Are there pre-gig prayer sessions and post-gig group hugs like what you see in a Bon Jovi music video?

After having said all that about Thom, I have to say it’s pretty humourless backstage. We’re don’t usually have any sort of backstage parties. What we want to do with this tour is to have proper backstage entertainment. Have clowns juggling maybe!

While researching for this interview, I’ve looked at the Radiohead website and…

(starts laughing quietly) There’s not much to find there, huh?

No, not a lot. But I typed in ‘Colin Greenwood’ and there’s a quite a bit of stuff…

(knowing laughter) A lot of it’s not true, you know…

Well, let’s find out; your influences are supposedly Madonna and The Pointer Sisters. Seriously?

(laughs) It depends on which period. I guess it’s everything up to The Immaculate Collection. And The Pointer Sisters’ catalogue is pretty consistent all the way through and you can’t argue much with that.

Ed O’Brien once said, “Never believe a thing Colin tells you”. Have you been lying through this interview?

Have I been lying? No, did he say that? He’s lying again!

You’re described as a bit of a joker in the band yourself. Let’s see if you’ve heard this one: How did Darth Vader know what Luke Skywalker was getting for Christmas?

(laughing) He felt his presents! It’s one of my favourites!

In a similar style to their recent low key UK tour, Radiohead chose to play the classic style theatre, which only holds about 1800 people (bearing in mind the last time the band played the Big Apple they sold out the famous Madison Square Garden, which seats 20,000).

An audience that included The Strokes, actors Keri Russell and ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Elijah Wood witnessed an extended two hours fifteen minutes set covering twenty two songs and three separate encores.

Included in the set were older tunes such as ‘No Surprises’, ‘Kid A’, ‘Paranoid Android’, ‘Airbag’, ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’, ‘Idioteque’ and ‘Morning Bell’ though new songs including ‘Sail to the Moon’, ‘Punch Up At A Wedding’, ‘I Will’ and ‘Scatterbrain’ were also given an airing.

‘Everything In Its Right Place’ ended the regular set, before the band returned to do ‘I Might Be Wrong’ and ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ for the first encore, followed by ‘Karma Police’ and ‘Lucky’ for the second. The set finished with Yorke’s acoustic, solo performance of ‘True Love Waits’.

FIELD DAY FESTIVAL STILL ON RADIOHEAD, BEASTIE BOYS, BECK, BLUR, UNDERWORLD Others confirming by the hour...

ONE-DAY ONLY AT GIANTS STADIUM

THIS SATURDAY, JUNE 7th

TICKETS ON SALE 5 P.M. TODAY AT FIELDDAYFEST.COM,
TICKETMASTER.C0M AND ALL TICKETMASTER RETAIL OUTLETS

The Field Day Music Festival has been reconfirmed as a one-day event this Saturday, June 7 Giants Stadium. RADIOHEAD, BEASTIE BOYS, BECK, BLUR, UNDERWORLD, SPIRITUALIZED, ELLIOTT SMITH, LIZ PHAIR, BRIGHT EYES and more have all been confirmed to appear at the new date and location. Keep checking fielddayfest.com for up-to-the-minute updates on the
reconfirming lineup.

All tickets purchased for the Calverton festival will be AUTOMATICALLY REFUNDED to the credit card on which they were purchased (including Ticketmaster per ticket convenience fee). It is not necessary to contact Ticketmaster.

For more information, please visit:
http://capitolrecords.com/radiohead

Hail To The Thief 6.10.03

http://capitolrecords.com/radiohead
http://www.radiohead.com

It's been a big week for sneaks and cheats, from Slammin' Sammy Sosa corkin' it in Chicago to Martha Stewart gearing up to toss salad like never before if found guilty of insider trading (that's gonna be one exquisite prison cell). And let's not forget the FCC, who, in addition to not letting me be me on MTV, decided last Monday that the cocksuckers at Clear Channel and Viacom should actually be allowed to own a greater percentage of local media markets in order to "increase" "diversity." Huh?!

At least there's been one stroke cast for the little guy, thanks to Radiohead fans and webmasters around the world who recently stood up to the band's copyright administrator, Warner/Chappel Music. On Monday, June 2nd, Warner Bros. Publications, Inc.'s Director of Business Affairs sent an email to several Radiohead fansites-- including AtEaseWeb.com, Treefingers.com, LittleRowboat.net, and GreenPlastic.com-- asking that they cease posting lyrics and guitar tabs on their sites. The note read:

We are writing to you on behalf of Warner Bros. Publications and Warner/Chappell Music. We are the worldwide copyright administrators for Radiohead. Rather than sending you an overblown 'legal' letter filled with threatening language, we would simply like to ask you to remove the LYRICS & SONG archive from your website; as their distribution constitutes an infringement of our rights under U.S. Copyright Law. More than that, the availability of these files have a direct impact on our ability to market and sell our musical arrangements and songbooks, and that adversely affects the royalties that we are able to generate and pay to the band. May we count on your cooperation?

In response, hundreds of Radiohead fans flooded their favorite discussion boards and Warner's email and voicemail boxes with cries of "unfair!", "executive pig!", and "fucking stoodent!" Although neither the band nor their record company, Capitol/EMI, commented publicly about the situation, bassist Colin Greenwood recently spoke out on UK radio in support of fansites like AtEaseWeb.com that provide listener-scribed lyrics and tabs, and promote the band and related interests for free.

Moreover, Stanley Donwood, the artist behind Radiohead's album cover art commented to the press that "fansites do more for the band, record label, and the publishing company than is generally recognized." Maybe Pitchfork's publicist (wait, we do have a publicist, right???) could get in touch with a few of these artists who seem to have their heads screwed on properly. Perhaps, then, merciless label heads could learn a thing or two about kissing the ass that feeds them. (Love ya, Cosloy, baby!)

On June 4th, after a few Internet news sites covered the story and Radiohead fans began to circulate an online petition promising to never patronize Warner Publishing again, the Warner/Chappel representative sent the following e-mail to fansite administrators (although he did not admit to being a major dickhead or nursing a major crack addiction, as many fans had speculated):

Radiohead's management have said that the situation regarding Warner Chappell has now been resolved. Warner Chappell will be issuing yearly free licenses from now on allowing all the fan websites to use lyrics as before. Letters will be going out detailing this in the next few days.

After weeks of argument, suspense and hullabaloo, the two-day rock concert scheduled for this weekend in Calverton met the fate many residents and environmentalists had hoped for: It was canceled.

Hours later, the promoters announced that the Field Day Festival, originally envisioned as a Woodstock-esque camping and music festival, would be reincarnated as a one-day event at Giants Stadium on Saturday.

Concert promoter Andrew Dreskin said 16 of the original 35 bands had agreed to perform at the stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., including headliners such as the Beastie Boys and Radiohead. "We're very excited for this weekend," he said. "We think it's going to be fantastic."

Riverhead Town Supervisor Robert Kozakiewicz applied the coup de grace to the Calverton concert Wednesday, announcing the town had decided against approving the event after county officials and residents worried that squeezing an expected 50,000 concertgoers onto rural roads would create a traffic nightmare and possible public safety hazard.

"In the interest of the health, safety and welfare of the residents of the Town of Riverhead and the public, I believe that the event should be canceled," Kozakiewicz said in a prepared statement.

The concert was thrown into jeopardy last week when Suffolk County denied the promoters a mass gathering permit, citing a lack of adequate police protection.

Two weeks earlier, Suffolk County police declined to participate in the event, citing a concern over the concert traffic plan and a lack of time for the county attorney to sign a contract with the town.

Since then, the town and the promoter had scrambled to persuade other law enforcement agencies to provide the approximately 200 extra officers needed to control traffic and the expected crowd.

Tuesday night, facing a court injunction by Suffolk County, the town board voted to table a resolution on a town special events permit, effectively denying the application. Another concert on the same site is planned for August, but its future is uncertain.

I got a call from radiohead's management earlier on today about the warner-chappell situation. in case you havent heard already thought id pass on the message - apparently the situation has now been resolved, warner-chappell will be issuing yearly free licenses from now on allowing all the fan websites to use lyrics as before. letters will be going out detailing this in the next few days. as for the licenses, mel @ waste is handling this now and i think she will be in touch with you and get it sorted.

cheers
max k.

The world has become an unpleasant place over the last few years, with terrorism entering a new era and war as common as it always has been. Oxford’s finest have long-been associated with producing music for depressing TV shows, but the dark content of nightly news shows has seemingly injected Radiohead with renewed vigour.

True, they were on top of the world when they unleashed OK Computer on the student market and duly took their place as one of the greatest bands kicking around at that time. But Kid A and Amnesiac left fans’ optimistic hearts empty amid a load of self-indulgent nonsense. Hail To The Thief takes its name from the title of a book about George W Bush’s dubious election victory in Florida. That’s all you need to know, because what with Bush and the world’s other tricky customers, this is a Radiohead album that says “Hold on, we’re fed with this rubbish.” It’s a protest album in the finest sense, not all acoustic guitars but instead Radiohead’s own unique brand of cool pop, hard rock and the other stuff we’ve grown to love-the electronic beeps and blips that traverse musical genres.

the new radiohead.com will be up on the 9th june. and... oops, it looks like we'll be posting up the lyrics to hail to the thief. guess we'll be getting an email from a certain publishing company too. if not... why not?
stanley.

bye

heloadriaan
well, yes, exactly...
its my personal opinion that fan sites do far more for both the band,
the record label, and the publishing company than is generally
recognised.
again speaking personally i think that the publishing company in
question have not fully appreciated the effort and effect involved in
running a website that is invariably more useful than a... tab book.
best wishes, good luck, and stay in touch.
stanley

Yes, Radiohead named its new album Hail to the Thief, which echoes the title of a book about George Bush's controversial election win.

But bassist Colin Greenwood says the group's sixth album, which arrives in stores June 10, shouldn't be considered a protest of the policies or character of the current U.S. administration. You can't say this song is about invading that country, or this one is about the Republican regime, he explains.

Instead, Greenwood describes the lyrics as being about our rights and responsibilities, about how to take a stand as an individual within a society and, most broadly, as a patchwork of articulate responses to living now.

If that sounds like a mouthful, remember this is Radiohead -- the saviors of serious rock, the last band that really matters and the inspiration for any number of other burdensome titles bestowed upon them during the last decade by an adoring press.

Hail pushes the envelope in yet another direction. Greenwood credits this to the music having been road-tested on a European tour last year. The songs were subject to instant focus groups, he explains. The audience became a democratic polling process. If they stayed for the end, we knew we should record it.

The experience made for a faster recording process -- though the band wound up cutting the album in what for its members is an alien city: sunny L.A. They were brought there by producer Nigel Godrich, who cut two Beck albums in the city. (Nigel) can get really good sounds out of (that studio), Greenwood explains.

Greenwood felt the setting suited the band's age as well. We're all in our 30s now, he says, so it's time to smell the flowers and stop recording in concrete bunkers in Scandinavia in the dead of winter.

the other hot jicks news is we will be doing some big shows with radiohead august 12-sept 5. those boys know how to cook on stage so it should be a blast. and they are super popular. i havent done any big gigs like that in the us since lollapalooza. hope ive learned something...

Call the cops. Somebody swiped the band.

Thom Yorke's voice, evocative of an emotional free fall, has always been the source of Radiohead's success. But on this latest release, his wails and single-word repetitions have become self-indulgent. Couple that with the fact that he has again largely shelved his once-ferocious band in favor of blips, bleeps and Casio beats, and you've got trouble. There is still interesting stuff going on here, and when Yorke lets the rest of the boys in the studio, there are magical moments (I Will, There There). More often, things fall apart, as on 2+2=5, which opens with mournful guitars and then careens into an unhinged coda with Yorke shouting "penetration." The less charitable might be inclined to wonder whether The Bends and OK Computer were flukes.