OK Computer

Sometimes the machines speak to me. If I let my guard down I can hear them whispering, their voices are like the sound of fingernails scraping down a chalkboard somewhere in the back of my brain. They don’t say nice things. They laugh and mock and jeer. For they know that I don’t understand how they work and yet I am completely reliant on them.

This latest batch of paranoia is, essentially, Thom Yorke’s fault. Radiohead are releasing their new album as a download only. There are elements to this attitude that I thoroughly applaud - in particular the pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth option and, to a lesser extent, my inner-socialist likes the removal of the giant, faceless, music corporations. But, I am a download virgin and I’m not sure if Radiohead are really the band I want to pop my cherry with. I suspect that if I were to have a couple of glasses of wine, dim the electric lights, burn some incense, eat a couple of oysters then I could probably get myself in the mood. Loosen myself up as it were. But after the deed were done, after I had listened to the album all the way through, I think that I would feel a little dirty. A little used, as though I should have waited for a band I really cared about, one with whom I might have had a future, rather than the more experienced, seedy old men who picked me up unsuspecting one night - promised great things and then spunked it all instantly.

There’s a few things to consider here before jumping on the bandwagon proudly proclaiming the new musical revolution. Radiohead aren’t, by any stretch, the only group publishing music in this way, but they are by far the biggest band to so to date - and the only reason that they are so big, the only reason that they can indulge in such an experiment without really caring about the financial outcome, is because the big, nameless, faceless, evil music corporations made them millionaires in the nineties. I understand that they’ll also be signing up to a smallish label later in the year and releasing a CD version in early 2008 anyway which makes the whole thing smell like a publicity stunt. Oh, irony of ironies. Radiohead make such a big deal of eschewing publicity (no singles, no formal promotion of albums, etc, etc since OK Computer) but the very doing of which makes them notorious.

When everyone knows who you are it’s impossible to be perceived as doing something without some sort of an agenda.

Downloading is relatively pointless at the moment. I don’t own an iPod, or any other form of MP3 player, and for the foreseeable future I don’t intend to. And here’s why:

Sound Quality: Anytime someone’s shoved a pair of those crappy white ear plugs into my hands and told me to listen to the sound of gibbons banging on banjos, or whatever the hell it is, then it just sounds rubbish. The music is overpowered by a haunting hiss like a particularly small viper trying to clamber into your ear drum to nest and lay her eggs. I presume that if you’re happy to look like a member of the ground crew on an aircraft carrier protecting their tender ears from a jet stream you can correct this problem. Either that or there’s a surprisingly number of people out there happy to look like a berk.

Singles versus Albums: The whole point of downloading is that it encourages you to cherry-pick the songs you most want to listen to (I know that Radiohead are only allowing you to download the whole album, but I’m speaking more generally here.) I, personally, am a great fan of listening to complete albums from start to finish as they were intended by the artist. Beck always used to infuriate me by hitting the shuffle button on her stereo. There’s a reason why songs are sequenced in a particular order. Train in Vain at the end of the Clash’s London Calling is a fantastic example. As the bass hook kicks in it only sounds so fresh and exhilaratingly pop because it follows a few seconds after Joe Strummer’s last desperate, ragged cry at the end of Revolution Rock. At first you think the band are defeated, exhausted by the recording of the album that they’re unable to continue, but then - no - there’s final track which sounds like they’re not only defiant but completely rejuvenated. The two songs have to go next to each other and they only work so exceptionally well at the end of such an epic album.

Album Art: The importance of a great cover image is being completely lost in the digital age. The cover can add so much to a really great album. Again, the image of Paul Simonon smashing his bass in concert, with the lettering a deliberate homage to the first Elvis album adds to the mystique of London Calling. Or the detail in the Pogues doctoring Gericault’s Le Radeau de la Medusa with their own faces for the cover of Rum, Sodomy And The Lash. Brilliant. I understand that some iPods now flash up the album art for the song playing, but come on - you can’t get across a strong image on something the size of my thumbnail. You wouldn‘t even be able to see that Paul’s not wearing any shoes on the cover of Abbey Road. For that matter, art doesn’t really work on CDs either. We should be buying 12” vinyl packaging with a smaller disc inside.

The same goes for sleeve notes. My copy of John Coltrane’s Love Supreme includes a fantastic article by Ravi Coltrane, his son and also a respected musician. I wouldn’t have got that from iTunes.

Trousers: I’m already carrying a wallet, travel card, keys and a mobile phone. If I start sticking an iPod in as well then I’m only going to be able to wear enormous skater pants. Which just aren’t suitable for every social occasion.

Plus there’s the actual physical fear I get from the idea of putting all six hundred or so of my CDs onto the damn thing. It would take years by which time it’ll probably be obsolete anyway.
So, you’ve got six billion songs on something the size of credit card - what happens if you spill beer over it, drop it down the toilet or the dog eats it. At the same time your computer contracts a virus which wipes its hard drive. It’s all gone. Okay, so you could get burgled and lose your stereo and album collection that way, but, I don’t know… The whole digital set-up just seems much more fragile to me.

One of the reasons I’ve been thinking about this in depth is that I think my CD player might be dying. I love that stereo system and I don’t want to have to replace it, but everyone so often it stalls in the middle of a record and makes a dubious thunking sound. It’s not a disaster, after all the real money’s gone into the amp and the speakers, but I’ve been trying to work out whether it was a good investment or not. I bought it in September 2002 (or thereabouts). I probably listen to music for an average of four hours a day. That’s on a basis of coming in at seven in the evening and not bothering to put another album on after eleven. It works as a reasonable average because there’s nights I don’t come in at all, or I might watch a film or the football, but against that there are days where I’ve got up at seven-thirty, popped some early morning music on and then not turned it off until one in the morning. So, four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year over five years equals seven thousand three hundred hours of listening (or taking an average record to be fifty minutes nine thousand seven hundred albums). Or one point five pence for every hour it’s been used. Definitely better than an iPod.

I’ve always been resistant to technological innovations. I didn’t actually get a CD player until 1996. Before then I was happy with tapes. I went through my entire BA without sending an email or using the Internet - I had to teach myself how to use both when I finally got a proper job in the summer of 2001. I held out on getting a mobile phone until December 2002 and even now I just want the bloody thing to be a telephone not take photos, organise my life for me and make a cup of tea. Broadband only got installed in August. We only got a DVD player because Beck needed one for an exhibition - officially it is the art DVD player and every so often it absconds for a few weeks to be in a show.

Jamie was round a few weeks ago and one of the first things he said was; “my God, is that a VHS player?”

“Yeah,” I replied cautiously.

“It’s, like, an antique.”

“How are you supposed to tape things of the TV, then?” I argued defensively.

“SkyPlus it.” I have no idea what that is. I have a suspicion it may involved Noddy Holder in bed, but that might just be a bad dream. In 2010, or whenever it is that analogue TV switches off in London, I’m going to be like one of the little old ladies in Whitehaven last week staggering around in confusion asking just what the hell digital TV is.

Do I care? Am I happy to be lagging ten years behind the rest of my generation? I don’t know, perhaps. I’m happy to learn how to use things which become useful tools (this blog for example - it enables me to rant without restraint and then leave a record in the public domain. Very liberating.) But I’m determined not to follow technological fashion trends for the sake of it. I don’t want to sit on the tube watching the last night’s episode of the latest ropey American imported television show on a screen surgically implanted into my palm. Radiohead be damned. Hail To The Thief was crap anyway.

I think the computer is laughing at me. It knows from the way I’m interfacing with it that I don’t really have a clue what I’m doing. It knows where I’m vulnerable and how it can screw up my life. It starts with a low chuckle from within the C drive before surging through the whole system and erupting across the monitor as a high pitched maniacal cackle. Good job I can always pull the plug out.

Shit, forgot about the battery pack.