87. Fake Plastic Trees
46. Karma Police
30. Paranoid Android
25. Street Spirit (fade out)

What are some records you love, but could never play at a party?

That’s a good question because I play so much across the board. Maybe Fiona Apple ‘Love Ridden’. That’s just the most beautiful break-up ballad ever. Maybe ‘Paranoid Android’ by Radiohead. I have played that at a party, but only once. For me to play something once, may as well not have played it.

A while back someone told Radiohead they could have their own television station. In anticipation, the band solicited short films from fans via their website and set about creating their own material while recording Hail to the Thief. The material never made it to television, but was broadcast via the internet on radiohead.tv and was just released on the band's third DVD, The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of all Time.

The 24 short films on the 110-minute DVD illustrate Radiohead's music with dark, bold strokes through primitive animation, claymation, and manipulation of inanimate objects. Their themes parallel the music of Radiohead: Kafka-esque living, melancholy, and chaos (there's even a warning that the excessive blinking and flashing throughout the DVD may induce epileptic seizures). Though, if at all possible, the films may be darker than Radiohead's music -- they are certainly scarier. There are fang-brandishing monkeys, crows with glowing eyes who are murdered en masse, possessed baby-dolls singing about "freak juice," and levitating humans who spin around in the Karate Kid stance. It may sound like a big mess, but each film is surprisingly accomplished for amateurs and fits well with the soundtrack.

Organisers have announced that new Radiohead compositions from Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood will make up a part of the programme for next year’s Ether Festival at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The band also appear on a new compilation album featuring selections by The Flaming Lips.

New music from members of Radiohead will receive their debut performance as part of London’s Ether Festival in March 2005. The material is to be performed by the London Sinfonietta at the London Royal Festival Hall on March 27 and 28.

Organisers say the events will feature two evenings of experimentation, collaboration and cross-genre juxtaposition. Radiohead TV, the material currently featured on the band's DVD ‘The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth Of All Time’, will also be shown on the night, featuring video, animations and unreleased tracks.

A statement from the Sinfonietta explained, Following the phenomenal success of its sold-out concerts in 2003 and 2004, the London Sinfonietta returns to Ether 2005 for an evening of experimentation and collaboration. In a new departure for Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, the Royal Festival Hall is filled with traditional Arabic song and the eerie sound of multiple ondes martenots.

The London Sinfonietta performed Jonny Greenwood's composition 'Smear' in Leeds and Bruges earlier this year. Greenwood is also currently the Composer in Residence for the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Other bands confirmed for Ether Festival 2005 include Dizzee Rascal plus Tony Allen (March 15) and Matmos (19). Tickets are available now from the Royal Festival Hall’s website by clicking here.

1. Band Aid 20 - 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'
2. Ronan Keating feat. Yusuf Islam - 'Father And Son'
3. Kylie Minogue - 'I Believe In You'
4. Ice Cube feat Mack 10 & Ms Toi - 'You Can Do It'
5. Merrion/McCall/Kensit - 'I Got You Babe/Soda Pop'
6. Destiny's Child - 'Lose My Breath'
7. Lemar - 'If There's Any Justice'
8. Green Day - 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams'
9. Girls Aloud - I'll Stand By You (Polydor)
10. Morrissey - 'I Have Forgiven Jesus'

Not that it’s any surprise at all, but according to new sales figures it looks like Band Aid 20’s re-recording of Do They Know It's Christmas? will be the Christmas Number 1 single.

According to HMV the track is currently outselling its nearest rivals (Kylie Minogue's I Believe In You and Ronan Keating and Cat Stevens Father And Son) by five to one, and sold more than 55,000 copies on Sunday and Monday (Devember 13).

This takes the overall sales figures to a little over 600,000 copies since the release on November 29, and means the song has now overtaken Eamon's I Don't Want You Back as the UK's biggest-selling single of the year.

If it continues to sell at this pace, it may well become the UK’s first million-selling single since Will Young's debut single Evergreen from back in 2002.

Coldplay’s Chris Martin, who features on the track, recently defended the song and lambasted those who have criticised the musical worth of the track, and insisted that people should still buy the single, even if they don't like it.

I've encountered a lot of cynicism about Band Aid. People say, 'That song's rubbish,' or ‘The words are rubbish.' It's not about the song, it's about the famine images you see in the videos, he explained on Jonathan Dimbleby's political show.

The overall experience of the DVD is overwhelming, scary and downright trippy. Diehard Radiohead fans will love it, while casual listeners will probably lose their patience. Stick with it though because like Radiohead's music it is a cohesive, well-constructed package and something you'll understand more with each experience. The short films are inspired and the Radiohead footage alone justifies purchase, even if it is hard to get your hands on.

You can only buy the DVD through Radiohead's archaic website, which means those of you outside the UK will pay a hefty fee for shipping and those of you in the US will get killed on the exchange rate. The damage for shipment to the US is around $30. You can watch the trailer and order the DVD here.

From Scissor Sisters to the vegetarian's chicken that started to smoke, the green valley at Worthy Farm has hosted more startling events than most in the past 35 years. Through hippies, hedonists and the extraordinary experiences of ordinary festivalgoers, the surreal highs and muddy lows of Glastonbury are to be documented by an ambitious new film, which has finally received funding for a cinema release.

The film's makers revealed yesterday that financial support from the BBC and the media giant Emap would enable a full release in 2006 and gave festival footsoldiers a final chance to submit long-forgotten home videos of their own strange days and nights in the field in Somerset. Six-hundred hours of footage has already been collected.

There is always one more moment of blinding genius on a forgotten VHS tape lying in someone's garage, said director Julien Temple, who was also behind The Great Rock 'n'Roll Swindle, his 1980 film about the Sex Pistols.

It is these "Glastonbury moments", as much as acclaimed performances by the likes of David Bowie, Radiohead and the Smiths, that will form the heart of the film. Temple and his crew have shot hours of footage at the last four festivals - and will film there again in 2005 - but the key is ordinary peoples' video diaries, from the working-class boys in Barnsley to the family from Notting Hill Gate who bring their nanny.

It's doubtful there's ever been a piece written about the band called Muse that hasn't compared it to British forebear Radiohead.

That may be exaggeration, but not by much. Even before the trio from the sleepy coastal town of Teignmouth, Devon, emerged with its 1999 debut, "Showbiz," the litany of "Radiohead clone" putdowns started stacking up. Only the missing-in-action Remy Zero has garnered such scoffing, though that outfit has been spared constant haranguing.

To be honest, I think it's something that's spreading around the press a bit, affable Muse frontman Matthew Bellamy responded, speaking like a speed-chugging Hugh Grant. It's just been passed down like some kind of Chinese whisper from some review in the (British music publication) NME from about seven years ago. I don't think anyone at our gigs or who has bought our albums would think that.

It isn't just that Muse keeps the spirit of "The Bends" and "OK Computer" alive with grand epics of its own, matching its attraction to the apocalyptic while adding traces of Queen-y bombast, industrial synth sheen and classical flourishes --- the piece "Butterflies & Hurricanes," for instance, opens with an homage to Rachmaninoff.

More so, it's that Bellamy's soaring, high-pitched, prone-to-dramatics voice, though perhaps equally influenced by the late Jeff Buckley's, is a dead ringer for Thom Yorke's.

I've always found it very difficult to see the comparison myself, Bellamy remarked good-naturedly. Maybe in the early days it made sense, because we chose to work with John Leckie, and he produced (Radiohead's) early albums. And maybe vocally --- that kind of emotional thing we both have or whatever. But that's about as far as it goes with me. Musically, and in terms of what we stand for, we couldn't be further apart.

Rock? Electronica? Who cares! To those with ears to hear, Radiohead’s Kid A is just good music. After creating one of modern rock’s greatest albums with OK Computer, the band altered their sound dramatically for their next release, masterfully incorporating minimalist and apparently nonsense lyrics, a cacophonous din of electronic sounds, occasional eight-piece horn sections (!) and very little guitar to conjure a frighteningly inhuman world of the not-too-distant present. The results are breathtaking, and they stand up as a powerful work from a band at the top of their game, no matter how much the rules of that game had changed.

But if you are reading this, you probably know all of that. On this record, one of the most interesting and talented string quartets around, The Tallywood Strings, pays tribute to the impressive substance of Radiohead’s compositions and puts every string in its right place. Violins shriek and wail, the viola moans, and the cello shudders out a twisted bassline. When it ends, the world may be as inhuman as before, but the talents of Mssrs. Greenwood, Greenwood, Selway, O’Brien, and Yorke will have been proven once again. The String Quartet Tribute to Kid A is the stuff of brilliance.

1. The Polyphonic Spree, "It's the Sun"
2. The Flaming Lips, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part 1"
3. Damien Rice, "The Blower's Daughter"
4. Jem, "Flying High"
5. Paul Weller, "Amongst Butterflies"
6. Radiohead, "Go to Sleep"
7. My Morning Jacket, "One Big Holiday"
8. Kinky, "Mirando De Lado"
9. Interpol, "Untitled"
10. Franz Ferdinand, "Take Me Out"
11. Sarah McLachlan, "Answer"
12. Iron & Wine, "Superman"
13. Steve Earle, "Jerusalem"

1. Band Aid 20 - ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’
2. Ice Cube featuring Mack 10 & Ms Toi - ‘You Can Do It’
3. Destiny’s Child - ‘Lose My Breath’
4. Girls Aloud - ‘I’ll Stand By You’
5. Green Day - ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’
6. Natasha Bedingfield - ‘Unwritten’
7. Lemar - ‘If There’s Any Justice’
8. Babyshambles - ‘Killamangiro’
9. Nelly & Christina Aguilera - ‘Tilt Ya Head Back’
10. Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell - ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’