There unscheduled final show turned out to be Monday, April 26. After the show, guitarist Johnny Greenwood sat down with Undercover's Tim Cashmere for a Radiohead rav.

Johnny Greenwood: One doesn't want to be arse-ing around before the show. Now it's after the show I can say any old rubbish.

Tim Cashmere: That's true. It doesn't matter and if anyone pulls you up on it later just go "Ah! It was after the show."

JG: I was all sweaty, I was confused…

TC: Anyway, let's talk about 'Hail to the Thief'. It's quite a full-on listen. How planned out is an album like this?

JG: Well every album is only a collection of songs from the era in which they were written and recorded. There is a strange moment when you have a pile of multi-track tapes of about twenty songs or fifteen songs or whatever and then a week later you've got them in an order and it's suddenly an album. It sort of comes as a surprise and I think people don't really realise how disparate these songs really are until suddenly they're all glued together. You kind of don't set out to make an album, you just get a bunch of songs and start recording and it's only afterwards you start thinking "Is there meant to be a message here?" and before you know it, you do what you're trying to do now. That is after the fact trying to make sense of it. That's the thing we try and do as well and we try and do it too. I'm not belittling what you're saying, but it comes as a trip to us as well if there's something running through it or a thread or whatever.

TC: It's almost a little misleading the way you've set out the album where each track has an alternate title. Where did the idea for that come from?

JG: I think Thom is just very keen on having long titles and he felt like inflicting that on everybody. Also they reveal another side to the song you know? It's like what the song is really about or just showing a different side to it.

TC: …and you're back with producer Nigel Godrich. That's becoming quite the collaboration.

JG: Yes that's true. He's our age and he just kind of grew up with us so when we're recording songs we're working and when we're not recording songs we're talking about the home computers we had in the eighties and reminiscing and playing computer games together. He's one of us, it's not like he's an overseer in the traditional sense of a producer who is usually older than you. And he's getting a good tally of records behind him.

All anyone can talk about this week is the Coachella Festival. Coachella this, Coachella that. And with good reason: with live acts like Pixies, Cure, Radiohead, Ash and a host of others, it’s the best music lineup in the States, perhaps ever. But is there a chance one of the headliners will bow out?

Radiohead had to cancel their final gig before Coachella, the last show on their Australian tour, after Thom Yorke developed throat problems. Going on stage meant risking permanent damage to his voice, so the band called the show off. What does this mean for this weekend’s endeavor in the desert? Hopefully nothing, but here’s to Thom’s voice healing in time for all the sweating drunks to revel in his magic on Saturday night.

1. Radiohead – Glastonbury (28 June 1997)
2. Nirvana – Reading Festival (30 August 1992)
3. Oasis – Knebworth (10-11 August 1996)
4. Coldplay – V2003, Weston Park, Staffs (17 August 2003)
5. Brian Wilson – Royal Festival Hall (26 February 2004)

The News is giving two lucky readers the chance to win some latest release DVDs.

Up for grabs is Meeting people is easy: A film by grant gee about radiohead and Blue Guilty, Live from Wembley.

To be in the running, simply tick the DVD you would like to win and attach your name and contact details (not for publication) to this story.

Send your entries to Exposure DVD Giveaway, P.O. BOX 204, Shepparton, 3632.

You can enter as many times as you like provided you include an original copy of this article with every entry.

- Gavin Friday/Maurice Seezer 'In America'
- Dan Jones 'Max'
- Jonny Greenwood 'Bodysong'

Noel Gallagher, who for a few minutes in the '90s mattered to a lot of people, once derided Radiohead for being fit only for moping and whining, and generally not the kind of lads with whom he would want to sink a pint/do a line/pillage a village.

We'll get to that in a second. But an equally egregious comment from the Mancunian intellect was that no one had ever bought a record because of a bass part, implying bass players were about as vital as tits on a bull.

Gallagher should apologise to Radiohead's Colin Greenwood. And we should thank, if not bow down before, Mr Greenwood ourselves.

Greenwood lacks the mad scientist flair of his guitarist/machine-playing brother, Jonny, who creates the most incredible sounds from a corner of the stage that could be a Dr Who set: stacks of ancient wood-and-wires equipment that look like it's held together with sticky tape and gum. He doesn't have the tall good looks of guitarist Ed O'Brien or the intense presence of singer Thom Yorke. Often half-turned from the audience, he stands at the back of the stage beside the equally attention-shunning - though always smartly dressed - drummer, Gentleman Phil Selway. You could ignore him completely if you chose but Colin Greenwood is the centrepiece, the fulcrum of Radiohead live.

Whereas the change Radiohead effected after OK Computer was generally seen as ditching guitars and dramatics in favour of twitching electronics and angularity, on stage it is clear that those are superficial assumptions. As we see them now, Radiohead haven't sacrificed an ounce of power.

They haven't lost the ability to pin you to your seat in the step-up of There There (it didn't get louder but bigger - like a rush of blood to the head) or the Nirvana-like thrashing change in My Iron Lung. And there's nothing quite like the innards-gripping synth bass in Climbing Up the Walls, or the bordering-on-manic guitar solo at the climax of Go to Sleep.

ziss is mellborne
theres a teeni boy band stageing a glamorous entrance to our hotel by hiring some teenage girls to scream endlessly in irritating fashion for the camera as they arrive on a poxy bit of red carpet in a borrowed range rover with stupid quiffs. they keep taking it again and again. i feel so old i might go and complain..or maybe ask for their autograph
can i have some of that cheese on toast?

thm

Radiohead, performing in Melbourne next week, is one of the world's biggest rock acts and one of the most provocative - probably because singer Thom Yorke is such a difficult customer. Andrew Mueller joins the band on tour.
'Welcome aboard," says Thom Yorke. "Coffee? Instant OK? I think there's a cafetiere here somewhere, but I'm not sure where ..." He rummages noisily in a drawer in the kitchen at the back of the bus.

Radiohead has just taken delivery of this imposing jet-black vehicle, which will be their home for a couple of weeks of European festivals. Today we're doing London to Paris with a passenger list of singer Thom Yorke, Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien, producer Nigel Godrich, tour manager Hilda, a crew member whose name I don't catch, and me. I'm assuming there's a driver as well.

The downstairs area of the bus, where we are now, contains the kitchen, the toilet, four blue-and-gold leather seats around a table, a sofa-cum-bed, a vast television hooked up to a PlayStation and DVD player, and a stereo. Upstairs there's a lounge, eight bunks, two more vast televisions, at least one more stereo, and, up the back, a separate room with a double bed and a mirrored wall.

"Maybe I should take that," says O'Brien. "I have trouble fitting into bunks." This seems fair enough. O'Brien is 198 cm tall, and tour bus bunks are, generally, less roomy than a jockey's coffin. "Exactly," he nods. "Made for short arses."

Where I End And You Begin is not realy stolen but it realy is for a big part the same as Theme For Great Cities from Simple Minds, not the vocals of course, but realy the music.

You cant ignore it is not realy there own creation. Still its one of my favorit songs, thank you Simple Minds for the idea and thank you Radiohead to make from this little peace of music an amazing song.

ON the face of it, one wouldn't expect to find much in common between British indie rockers Radiohead - who shot to fame 10 years ago with the hit Creep - and temperamental diva Mariah Carey.

But that's where Sydney comes in. When the Oxford quintet was last touring Australia, they were locked out of their dressing room by the at-times troubled crooner.

Carey was playing at the Sydney Entertainment Centre the night after Radiohead - but had procured the dressing room ahead of time and wouldn't allow them in.

She could have been in there, said bass guitarist Colin Greenwood, and that would have been good - if she was locked in.

But a repeat of the Carey disaster is not likely for the band, who have just touched down for their third Australian tour. They will play in Sydney this weekend and Melbourne early next week.

Almost a year after the release of their latest album, Hail to the Thief, all five band members are new fathers. Lead singer Thom Yorke's first child was born in 2001, and other band members quickly followed suit.

Already well-versed in Australian cuisine, Greenwood sees his dawning maturity in terms of a fine old Margaret River cheese.

Yes, we're maturing, like old cheeses, left on a shelf where someone comes along and takes a pole out to see how mouldy you've got.

01 - Technology (Subterranean Homesick Alien)
02 - Automobiles (Killer Cars)
03 - The media (Myxomatosis)
04 - Insincerity (Fake Plastic Trees)
05 - Personal responsibilty (Just)
06 - Death, aging, suburban living (Street Spirt [Fade Out>)
07 - Not dying in a plane crash (Lucky)
08 - Not dying in a car crash (Airbag)
09 - Tony Blair (You and Whose Army?)
10 - Having sex, watching films, getting the mail (Motion Picture
Soundtrack)
11 - Hypocrites who spy on him while he casually chats with a friend, although it's entirely possible that the friend is, in fact, the same hypocrite who spies on him (Life in a Glasshouse)
12 - The coming Ice Age (Idioteque)
13 - Divorce (Morning Bell)
14 - Himself (Creep)

.: Radiohead: A Very Radiohead Christmas
.: Radiohead: Big Ugly Headed Thom Yorke Likes the Black Chicks, Oh Yeah
.: Radiohead: A Tribute to Radiohead
.: Radiohead: The Best of Radiohead, Vol. 47
.: Radiohead: The Tool Remixes
.: Radiohead: Kid A+
.: Radiohead: The Discography (Remixed by P-Diddy and RZA)
.: Radiohead: Turboslut 3D
.: Radiohead: Thom Gets a New Face
.: Radiohead: President Bush, More Like President Push (Him Off a Cliff)
.: Radiohead: George Michael's Sex Machine
.: Radiohead: Let's Talk About Sex Baby
.: Radiohead: Let's Get a Little More Radiohead Up In This Piece, Son
.: Tool: The Radiohead Remixes

From the UK, Simon Pummell's Bodysong is an 83-minute compilation of thousands of beautiful and grotesque images, with a soundtrack by Radiohead member Johnny Greenwood. It's meditative and confronting at times - some really harsh images, but it's also a really great music doco, Gadd says.

Radiohead
Their music may be out there, but the ’Head are, pretty much to a man, college-educated, crossword-loving family types. Bassist Colin Greenwood once unwisely revealed that instead of trashing hotel rooms, Radiohead actually tidy them up before checking out.

A nationally-known pianist will celebrate his 48th birthday on Saturday in Sioux City with hundreds in attendance.

Oh, really?

No, O'Riley.

Christopher O'Riley's name may be familiar to many in Siouxland, although they may not be able to put their finger on exactly how they know it.

They may recall his last visit to Sioux City on Oct. 12, 1996 when he performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concert No. 3 in D minor, op 30 at Eppley Auditorium on the Morningside College campus with the Sioux City Symphony.

They may recognize his name as the host of the nationally-distributed "From the Top" radio program, O'Riley can be heard at noon every Saturday on public radio station KWIT-FM 90.3 showcasing some of the nation's greatest young talent.

Both the previous performance and his radio program provide a hint of O'Riley's own formidable talent as a concert pianist - talent that will be on full display at 8 p.m., Saturday as he performs Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 in concert with the Sioux City Symphony.

It's my favorite piano concerto, but one of the most difficult pieces I play, O'Riley admitted in a phone interview. The piece allows the pianist to do greater activity and portray greater emotion.

Although O'Riley will have 24 hours to celebrate almost a half-century on this earth, he will only have about 30 minutes to capture the four-movement monument that Sergei Prokofiev dedicated to the memory of his dear friend, Max Schmidhott, whose suicide at a very young age deeply affected the composer. The G-minor concerto was introduced in 1913 and revised in 1923.

Unlike other classical composers whose pieces have become familiar through popular songs or commercial use, Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 2 won't have the audience humming bars from the piece prior to the concert. However, O'Riley felt the concerto captured a number of interesting melodies.

I think Prokofiev has many similarities to Mozart as a melodist, he mused. There are one or two movements that run through the piece that are actually very singable.

Musically, things may have been quiet in the Radiohead camp while the band busy themselves in the studio recording new material, but the band’s website www.radiohead.com has been given a whole new refit (and is even more confusing than ever).

Radiohead’s award winning websites have always been some of the more confusing and unnerving examples of online representation, but the new www.radiohead.com takes things to a whole new level.

The band’s message board and W.A.S.T.E. online merchandising shop are still operative, but after a Christmas themed opening screen, an introductory page providing links to the numerous other Radiohead sites that have existed and “an enormous Ziggurat in hyperspace” thinsg get strange.

The user is faced with a series of questions, akin to a seemingly random psychological profiling test, asking questions such as ‘Do you have trouble getting up in the morning’, ‘Are you friendly and open?” or “Are you thin?”

This then leads to bewildering page of links, each one a single word, forming a screen full of Thom Yorke-esque magnetic ‘fridge poetry’. Each of these then leads to various pages of new artwork by longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood, plus scribbles, doodles and snippets of lyrics, poetry and an alarming ‘Threat Level’ meter.

It’s probably better you look at it for yourself by clicking here.

Elsewhere, Amnesty International have a Radiohead skateboard, signed by the band, up for auction on eBay. Bids start at $200 and the auction is open this until April 19.

For an overview of all items auctioned for Amnesty click here.

4/16/04 - 7:15 am, 3:15 pm
4/20/04 - 7:25 am, 1:45 pm
4/21/04 - 4:25 am

More recently, Radiohead's OK Computer joined the above-mentioned elite group of recordings. Clearly the finest rock record of the '90s, the album is ambitious, textured and incredibly well-played. It's also extremely dramatic, occasionally morose, and consistently claustrophobia-inducing. For these reasons, it seems to capture the zeitgeist of a disembodied age.

More importantly, OK Computer is the direct result of a group of musicians following their collective muse, regardless of the cost and seemingly without a care for the commercial potential of such recklessness. That the album was a big success gives one hope; during a time of mass dumbing-down and corprate-mandated homogenization - which, let's face it, many an "artist" has been more than willing to embrace - OK Computer stands as a reminder of rock's potential to both inspire and to harvest unsullied land.

RO = Roland Orzabal & CS = Curt Smith

What did you think when you found out that Radiohead were not best pleased with your performance of Creep?

RO: What can I say? I’m absolutely gutted by that. It destroyed me. I’m never going to cover another Radiohead song again as long as I live. [Starts speaking slowly.> They are such...an amazing.. band that, that.... You know, at the time I covered it he guesses some time in '93/'94>, it was their only hit. I did it as a joke, and I enjoyed singing it, especially because I changed some of the lyrics. But my apologies right now to Thom Yorke. I do appreciate what they have gone on to do... immensely.. even though... even though I don't like them.

Ed O'Brien from Raidiohead said that while they were your support act you treated them "like pigs". What did you do to piss them off so badly?

CS: Don't look at me, because I wasn't part of the band them.

RO: I didn't do anything to them. They were whingeing on and on about the monitors. We played just one show together, and there were loads of bands on the bill- I was headlining, of course. The stage manager, I seem to remember, was getting very angry with them.
CS: Of course, if I had been part of the band then, I would have been much nicer to them.

11: RADIOHEAD
They proved that “prog” needn’t be an insult
An underwhelming first album (Pablo honey), a freak American hit single (Creep) and the longest collective bad hair day on record would have finished many bands. But a bond first forged as On A Friday at Abingdon Boys school- where Thom Yorke was given the name “Salamander” because of his lazy eye- has helped Radiohead go the distance. More importantly they’ve charted an idiosyncratic path of ever more ambitious albums, from OK Computer’s baroque sprawl to Kid A’s prog electronica.

Before Anyone can play Guitar
After Anyone can play guitar, sample vocoder, sheet metal, transistor radios - and still get on David Letterman.
Buy OK Computer

True to published reports, there's an appalling digital glitch on Com Lag, and as of press time, EMI Toshiba's position is that they will not recall this flawed limited edition EP. Our rating disregards the failing, since the butchered track in question-- Four Tet's otherwise palatable downtempo remix of "Scatterbrain"-- is available on the UK "2 + 2 = 5" single, and since the newly released Australian version of Com Lag is said to rectify the situation. But you can't ignore the humor behind 10,000 people shelling out $20 for what's basically a bad burn.

Com Lag splits down the middle, a ten-track collection of demos, remixes and DSP experiments often less deserving of running time than meager Amnesiac leftovers like "Fast Track" and "Trans-Atlantic Drawl". Oddly, one of that era's most ornate B-sides, "Fog", is a highlight here, reprised in solo piano form for a television audience as per Yorke's justly lauded, widely booted sets for the 2002 Bridge School Benefit. Simplicity is this EP's virtue, as its pairing of "Fog" with a one-track, acoustic recording of "Gagging Order" make for Com Lag's most valuable five minutes.

Originally titled "Move Along", "Gagging Order" is a leftover from the aftermath of OK Computer; like many cherished and endlessly auditioned tracks from the unreleased Radiohead archives, the band never got quite got this one right, and opted to punt. The steelwork is clearly influenced by the late John Fahey's self-described "American primitive guitar," and, coupled with primitive watercolor lyrics, lends as emotionally honest a view of Yorke and company since "Exit Music".

Ah Radiohead, those Oxford chaps who dazzle and delight with their ever-evolving genre bouncing laments so abstract that one can’t help but proclaim genius or insanity. On their latest offering, a Japanese tour “EP”, the band showcases a wide array of b-sides that true fans have had for months now.

Com Lag kicks off with a shimmering version of “2+2=5” performed live in London. The only live cut on the disc (and non b-side at that), it showcases the band perfectly in a live setting – where their songs are given new faces. Quickly the disc takes a more sinister tone with the Christian Vogel remix of “Myxomatosis”. Hauntingly detached, the mix finds Yorke’s angelic vocals robotic and choppy. It’s a reminder that the world’s greatest rock band can be sliced into a shadow of their former self and still retain the same brilliance by virtue of their very nature.

Some of the real highlights on this 10 track EP lie in the b-sides. “Paperbag Writer” offers up a groovy bass line on top of chilling strings that would be perfectly suited as a backtrack for Dracula’s house party. “I Am Citizen Insane” is more IDM experimentation from the band while long time concert intro music “Where Bluebirds Fly” features indiscernible lyrics over whirlwind instrumentation. “Gagging Order” is a tender acoustic ballad comfortable in Simon and Garfunkel’s respective living rooms. Yorke sighs as he sings “Move along / there’s nothing left to see / just a body” with his wide-eyed and innocently knowing candor.

The good news then is that there's not a snot-tainted wind instrument in sight. In fact, conversely, this is a sterling set of tunes that, despite being composed almost entirely of b-sides from 'Hail To The Thief', characterises and sums up where Radiohead are now in its mixture of blipping electronica and graceful acoustics.

A live version of '2+2=5' is a blinding start. In 3:34 the only non b-side neatly encapsulates all that's great about the Radiohead live experience in a way that their 'I Might Be Wrong' live album never quite achieved. It's an ample illustration of their position as one of THE great live bands of all time - their ability to surprise and deliver a mighty emotional punch while evoking an intimacy even in the biggest venues remains unsurpassed.

In this version, the line "It's the devil's way now/There is no way out" is so crushingly hopeless that even 50 Cent would find it best to shed a tear. Then the musical fireworks explode and Thom yells frenzied "Pay attention!"s and "Don't question my authority" like he's hauling up the suppressed memory of a demented schoolmaster - a theme last visited on the low key 'Bishop's Robes' in 1996. It's shiversome to say the least. Compare this with the band of Pixies-fixated underachievers who gauchely bellowed about Pop being dead in 1993 and had - it seemed - struck lucky with 'Creep'.

Their only relevant contemporary in terms of size and influence and (former) ability to knock out great B-sides in the UK is Oasis.

However Com Lag reveals they have something more in common than this and the ability to flog tickets for seats that require the Hubble Telescope to see the stage. It contains two crafty references to The Beatles that may be little more than jokes, but are subtly enlightening. 'Paperbag Writer' is obviously a nod to 'Paperback Writer' but its sinister fractured funk couldn't have less in common with the jaunty rocker. Meanwhile 'Wicked Child' paraphrases The Beatles' 'Let It Be' with its opening line "Mother Mary Come To Me". Far from being a maudlin syrupy ballad though, it blossoms into a tainted, eerie missive that features a stubbornly-depressed harmonica wailing and sighing its last in an adjoining room.

Radiohead and jazz? Movie music and matinees? The Minnesota Orchestra's Sommerfest, in its second year under artistic director Andrew Litton, will feature some new forms and formats.

Appearing this year, Litton said, are a bunch of "old friends," among them pianists Andre Watts and Christopher O'Riley. The festival's 25th edition will start with another 24-hour "Day of Music" at Orchestra Hall on July 9.

One of Litton's unconventional programming plans is a late-night event -- 11 p.m. on July 16 -- during which O'Riley will play his transcriptions of works by the rock band Radiohead, selections from a widely discussed CD that he released last year. Earlier that evening, in the regular concert, O'Riley will join the orchestra in a performance of Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1.

Radiohead star Colin Greenwood is to be on the panel for a new poetry competition.

Ten years ago New Generation Poets introduced 20 new young poets to the public. This year the search will take place again.

Funded by Arts Council England and administered by the Poetry Book Society, the promotion will discover who are the most exciting new poets to emerge over the last decade.

The aim of Next Generation Poets is to highlight the achievements of these writers, and to bring new readers to poetry.

Read the rest here.