#and then I just get suck drawing atom and his siblings over and over and over

[turbonicflaws]

I watched the Mario movie

[zahroreadsthings]

Collection of not the life it seems screenshots I desperately need to delete from my phone to make a smidge of space if you see this no you didnt ❤

'I'm the unlucky one,' Mikey confessed.

'Unlucky!' spluttered Frank. 'Dude - you took an electric heater into the shower once, that's not unlucky!'

-

[...] idolized his big brother and would follow him wherever he went, eve: attempting to literally run before he could walk when he saw what his older sibling could do. The bond between them was formed strong and early.

-

[...] and so Ray tried to emulate his playing. He took lessons, and even enrolled in a typing course in order to improve his dexterity on the guitar, but he became a technically excellent musician mostly by dint [...]

-

Mikey was not much of a bassist and had recently failed an auditior to play in another Eyeball band, Pencey Prep, who featured a guitarist called Frank lero.

-

[...] laid down about fourteen different guitar parts - most of them at the same time - and somebody said, "Have you guys thought about adding another guitar player, so you can do this stuff live?" I can't remember who answered, but they said, "The only guy we've ever considered is currently too high to get off the couch."

'I just lay there and pretended I hadn't heard because it made me so goddamned nervous that they were going to ask me to play some guitar on the track. I was so fucked up I couldn't even think about doing that. But that was the first time I thought it might be possible for me to play in my favourite band - and it scared the shit out of me.'

-

'As far as the music's concerned that record has a lot to do with Ray,' says Benson. 'He came up with a lot of that stuff; he's like the musical director. Ray dictates a lot of what happens musically in the band. Frankie takes a lot of his cues from Ray. The best thing about the bass player is that he offers stability to Gerard and he's a great guy too."

-

[...] female voices as he sought to bring Mother War to life, but felt his efforts weren't quite working. He had been warming up for his voca ltakes by attempting an over-the-top impression of the Broadway singer Judy Garland, and so when Cavallo and his engineer Doug McKean asked what he was striving for on 'Mama', he said it needed her daughter Liza Minnelli to guest on it. He was not being entirely serious.

So he was surprised to see Cavallo pick up a phone, have a short conversation, then say, 'l love Liza Minnelli' after ending the call.

-

Gerard would pull his headphones on - headphones, tellingly, that he had started calling his 'shut-the-fuck-ups'.

-

When not being used for concerts, Madison Square Garden plays host to the New York Knicks basketball team and the New York Rangers ice hockey team - rivals to Frank's beloved New Jersey Devils. 'I remember telling the guys in the band that, when we played "Not Okay", instead of saying "trust me" I was going to say "Rangers suck". They said, "Erm, no. Don't do that. Please don't do that."When we played the song, I realized I was never going to get th opportunity again so I did it! I felt like the guy in the movie driving the atom bomb into the mothership! Saying "Fuck you Rangers" to a sold-out Madison Square Garden crowd was something I always wanted to do.'

-

No other rock band was drawing on art, drama and storylines in such a way. It was why Gerard was determined that everything should be right - including the specifics of the marketing campaign.

To ensure that happened, he had walked into the Warner Bros office with a flipchart under his arm and a presentation in his head.

-

Though proud of the band's legacy and his part in it, Frank remains distraught that they did not survive. When he thinks about the end, he tries as hard as he can to be sanguine about it. It's just that he wishes he didn't have to be. He still wishes things could be different.

'You know, even The Beatles broke up,' he sighs. 'I don't think it was ever on the cards for us to do it for ever.'

However, he then says one last thing.

'But that doesn't mean I don't wish we could have.'

[projectalbum]

177. “Hail to the Thief,” 178. “In Rainbows,” 179. “King of Limbs,” 180. “A Moon Shaped Pool” by Radiohead

Here we are. At that point where I have to defend my previous assertion that Hail to the Thief (#177) is closer to my heart than the widely-beloved Kid A. And here we go…

There are 14 tracks, far more than any other Radiohead album, and I only dislike one of them. And it’s not “We Suck Young Blood” (it’s “The Gloaming”). Like, “Blood” is a creepy, chain-rattling chiller with deliberately cracked vocals and that cool little jazzy breakdown between the verses. “The Gloaming” is like a ghost taking a nap.

Even stranger, my favorite songs are all in a little clump in the last third. Right after the aforementioned downers, this suite of winners begins with “There, There,” the lead single. Featuring one of the loveliest, slightly gritty guitar lines in the catalogue and a chorus lyric (“Just ‘cause you feel it, doesn’t mean it’s there”) that stings, if not like a knife in the heart, than maybe like a sharpened icicle in the lower abdomen. “I Will” is one second shy of 2 minutes, but there is beauty in the utter simplicity of gently-strummed electric guitar and three-part Yorke harmony. It’s the soundtrack to staring into a dying fire. And it transitions right into “A Punchup At a Wedding,” slinky and pissed-off at once, sitting next to “You and Whose Army?” as the straight-up coolest piano numbers. One of these days, mark my words, I will master it, because it’s just fairly repetitive chords. But the distinct rhythm of the pounding on the keys has always slightly eluded me.

The escalating tension of this killer suite boils over in crunchy, foreboding synth and aggressive drums on “Myxomatosis.” “I— don’t— know— why I— feel so— tongue… tied” is, I believe, the exact cadence of the chorus, and I can identify with those moments when the churning chemical processes make articulate expression impossible.

15 years on, Thief remains hard for people to pin down. Though there are a few “angry” songs, the material is not explicitly about political leaders or Blair or Bush. That title pun was read as a pissy, middle finger salute as on-the-nose as a Banksy, despite any statements made by the band members to downplay that interpretation. Unlike the albums that made their name, this collection of songs lacks an over-arching thematic focus, which may still hurt its legacy. But I will continue to argue passionately for the music’s inherent strength. The follow-up, released four years later, requires no such defense.

In Rainbows (#178) was my introduction to Radiohead. It has and will probably fulfill that same purpose for a lot of others. From 2007-2010, I was in college, majoring in film production and spending a lot of time in a windowless room filled with iMacs. I give you the range of years, because I’m not positive just how fresh the surprise late-’07 digital release of that album was when my friend Seth handed me the thumb drive in that iMac editing lab. College is a time to experiment with new experiences, you see, and I really only followed that credo when it came to dadaist TV comedies and ponderous rock bands. So in that sterile environment, when I should have been working, I put in earbuds instead.

“15 Step” began with clapboard beats played through a glitchy hard drive. Thom lamented another repeat of the vicious cycle. Then Jonny’s guitar came in, soft and inviting as your pillow, bolstered by Colin Greenwood’s nimble bass. A sample of schoolyard cheers, and then we stepped off the sheer drop. The rest of the album was what I saw as I fell and hit the ocean’s surface, a sort of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” if the man dreamt of the noose tightening anyway. “Nude” is the haughty confirmation of the protagonist’s fear in “There, There”— “Don’t get any big ideas, they’re not gonna happen” is the lilting, falsetto admonishment. It shares DNA with R.E.M.’s “Tongue” from 1994’s Monster, to the point of sibling rivalry. But Michael Stipe’s feminine protagonist on that tune feels like an amusing pose in comparison.

To continue both the R.E.M. connection and the falling man’s dilemma, the split title of “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” acknowledges the rapid, repeating guitar technique that that band’s Peter Buck made a staple, but here it sounds like water rushing overhead. I’m sinking deeper, but I’ve determined that the way out is through. By the time the clacking boneyard beat and flickering piano of “Videotape” laid the album to rest back in that college computer lab, I felt like I’d been through something. That some synaptic pathways had been rewired by a piece of art in that way that becomes neurologically harder and harder to achieve again as the years go by. The hypnotic draw of this series of songs is impossible to shake even after an ensuing near-decade of revisitation.

By the time The King of Limbs (#179) leaked onto the web in 2011, Radiohead had been taking over my brain one used CD purchase at a time. As I collected the discography, marveling at OK Computer and puzzling at Pablo Honey, the security blanket melodies and instrumentation of In Rainbows wriggled in ever deeper. So the murky production, polyrhythmic grooves, and murmured vocals of Limbs were not immediately arresting. “It’s a grower,” I gently warned people when handing them a burned CD-R. Meaning over multiple listens, not over the course of the album: at 8 tracks and 37 minutes, it’s as fleet as a couple of their EPs.

Opener “Bloom” is like the score to a Biblical epic as listened to through a glass pressed to a hotel room wall, all muted horns and a vocal that sweeps like sun rays. “Morning Mr. Magpie” and “Little by Little” are statements of Limbs’ groove-focused identity, and melody-wise tend to blend into each other with little resistance. Where the guitar on Rainbows was a hand to guide you, here it’s another rhythm component, along with the doubled-up drum kit: as the band took the songs on the road, they enlisted Clive Deamer to join long-time drummer Philip Selway. Four hands were better than two to create the beds these compositions required.

“Feral” jettisons pop song structure completely as a cut-up chord collage dashed against unstoppable train drums.  “Lotus Flower” is 2/3rds floor-rattling bass, 2/3rds hand-claps, and 2/3rds crystalline falsetto: as mathematically impossible as Yorke’s dance moves in the video. The album closes out with three pastorally pretty and almost terminally mellow numbers: the deep embedded roots of “Codex,” the treetop birdsong of “Give Up the Ghost,” the late Sunday morning wakeup of “Separator.” The melodies are sweet invitations, but I can understand if they sound, in their final produced form, like rock n’roll Ambien. The live arrangements, like those recorded for the “From The Basement” special, are generally thought to breathe extra life into the tunes. The recent Hans Zimmer/Radiohead reimagining of “Bloom” for “Blue Planet 2” makes that song’s cinematic ambitions more readily apparent, as well. But I’ve got a soft spot for any and all versions, and don’t feel any sting of disappointment that TKOL wasn’t In Rainbows Part 2.

The 4-5 year gaps between records has proven an energizing practice for the band’s members as they explore their own projects. Jonny Greenwood created an impressive body of work as Paul Thomas Anderson’s film composer of choice, Yorke (with producer Nigel Godrich in tow) collaborated with Flea on Atoms For Peace and indulged DJ-focused electronica on the self-released Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Where Rainbows had drawn inspiration for its sonic approach from the close-miked intimacy of Yorke’s solo record The Eraser (more on that next time), 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool (#180) has Greenwood’s stellar orchestral composition work threaded throughout. 

Any hazy production cobwebs from TKOL are swept aside by the Bernard Hermann stabbing strings and depth charge bass line of “Burn the Witch,” the true paranoid opus of our surveillance state age. “Red crosses on wooden doors, and if you float, you burn,” Yorke hums and coos, deliberately juxtaposing his trademark vibrating falsetto against the dire warnings. “We Know Where You Live,” stated the cryptic postcards sent to fans, and it was true, because we’ve offered our whereabouts freely to whoever will listen. “Daydreaming” follows its own somnambulant trajectory, with piano that ambles along until periodically the notes catch a long wind, to paraphrase the Feist song, swirling like cel-painted animated leaves. The video closes the gap between Jonny’s prestige film work and his longest-running gig with P.T. Anderson helming a low-key gorgeous M.C. Escher puzzle of Thom moving purposefully through an endless series of doors, spaces, environments.

Before the album dropped, I saw a live clip of Yorke debuting “Desert Island Disk,” just he and his acoustic guitar. The studio version does little to distract from that simple backbone: it’s a sweet, dexterous garden party riff bolstered with gentle drumming and subtle synth washes. “Glass Eyes,” the shortest, most melancholy track, has taken hold like an itch in the mind. Watery electric piano and Yorke’s murmured phone message verses slip through like a dream you struggle to remember the details of, until suddenly the exact angle of a cold gray street corner sparks a complete deja vu, and the heart-rending string section swells.

I’ve taken to playing “The Numbers” at inappropriate volumes, lately. Symphonic rock is nothing new, but it’s rare to hear such a mid-tempo acoustic groove be so suddenly opened up by falling stomach cello courtesy of London Contemporary Orchestra. “We call upon the people / The people have this power / The numbers don’t decide / The system is a lie” is the undeniable political exhortation, and the strings are the wielded tools of revolution: if “Burn The Witch” was a warning against mob rule, “The Numbers” is a rallying cry for positive upheaval.

“True Love Waits,” and there’s no better evidence for that sentiment than the official release of this song from the era of “The Bends.” Live performances and bootlegs through the years featured variations on acoustic guitar or Rhodes piano. Repeated attempts in the studio every few years yielded nothing wholly satisfying. In its final version, closing the album, reverb-laden grand piano and Yorke’s ghostly yearning is joined by glittering ice crystal notes that steadily accumulate. In my head I see the scene from A.I. in which the artificial boy, David, patiently and gratefully beholds the Blue Fairy, as his systems freeze into a thousand years of sleep. Melancholy become manifest.

In the next entry, I’ll jump out of alphabetical order to revisit two of Thom Yorke’s extracurricular activities.

[dahlialittlejames]

Testing Time: Prose Edition

Warning: There’s some death mentions, follows roughly the same flow as the song which actually made writing it all the easier. Just sharing since I’m sort of proud of how I went about this, plus I figured context could be fun

“Mo, can you help me with something?” Nick’s digging around the boxes lined at the wall of his kitchen, prodding them the best he can but still in need of hands that won’t damage what he’s looking for. Alan sets down his coffee and his newspaper. Got to get his news where he can, even if the radio’s turning out to be a decent source of it.

“Sure thing,” he says, and hops up to look. Boxes of clothes they can’t part with yet, Nick’s guitar and uke cases collecting dust, and big box Nick hadn’t labeled among the rest. Nick points it out and Alan hefts it onto the table. “What’s even in here?”

“Just open it,” Nick says. “I think it’s gonna help with the colors.”

“Why’s that?” Alan says, but tears through the tape to the contents. Inside are Christmas cookie tins with hastily scribbled dates on the sides and a Polaroid camera, and some beaten notebooks in Nick’s handwriting but some in others’ too.

“It’s, uh, my memory box,” Nick explains. “There’s some pictures of me from this last year, for reference.” He prods open the cupboard over his pot, juggling some bottles of his mix to the table. His hand plunges through the glass as Alan picks up a tin dingier than the others.

There’s mismatched photos inside, and notes. It’s unlabeled but Alan recognizes the one on top with a grin. He and Nick, in cap and gown and standing there like two men who shared a jail cell. Nick’s got a grin to rival the world he’s about to plunge into, Alan with enough fear to be sensible but still smiling. Both of them have long hair tucked under their caps.

“That hair is terrible,” he says, brow cocked. “Thank God I cut it before I met Mary-Anne.”

“This is college, right?” Nick asks. He pokes his head over Alan’s shoulder, face darkening to orange. “Dang. Can’t believe I made it.”

Alan chuckles. Eyes the two young men staring back like they never left, since they never really did. Alan’s steeped back in his old fear, and Nick’s back to relying on him in his own way. It was more like waking him and treating hangovers back then, not hiding a living blob in a lab, but it sort of feels the same in retrospect.

“Didn’t think it’d ever be like this again,” Nick mutters. He’s smiling but a little guilty, too.

Alan flicks through more photos. More graduation pictures, and then to his own parents huddled together but looking off at the proceedings in hushed pride. It sends a flutter through him now. His hand goes to his face, making sure he’s not tearing up but he’s just huffs.

“There’s the classic Mortimer couple, eh?” Nick says. How many times he’d passed out on their couch or hid there for the nights, he’d never actually sat down to calculate. “How’re they doing, anyway? Still in Visalia?”

Alan shakes his head. Maybe he is tearing up, but he smudges it away. “No. They’re, um.”

Nick catches the tone. “Ouch. I’m so sorry. They look so young here.”

“Before we sucked her youth away.” There’s already lines on the woman’s face. Alan just smiles. He doesn’t have many pictures of them. “Can I keep this?”

“Sure. They’re your parents, but- I mean, how long ago was it?”

“This last year,” Alan says.

“You could’ve called, I guess. What about-”

“Died right after she did. Never liked being apart.”

“Yeah.” Nick jerks his head toward the rest of the box. “Maybe some more recent stuff. I mean, I could look like younger me but I don’t really wanna. Look at that nerd, who wants to be him again?”

Alan laughs. It’s another thing that hasn’t changed, not really. Whatever Nick is now, he’s still so insistent on making a joke out of things. Nick peers into the box, colors shifting into the blacks and whites of the mix. It settles into sepia like the photos and Alan digs for another tin from ‘86.

He pops it open to see unfamiliar faces in faded color, sunspotted until they were tucked away. There’s a black man enthused over a table of papers, talking to a white person with close-buzzed blonde hair and a studious look. It’s almost hopeful, whatever the lab coat-swaddled people talk about. Nick’s hand is visible in the shot.

“That’s Robbie Abbot and Les Syle,” Nick says. “They were on my team up in Seattle. And then Frannie Avidan was there, too. Keep looking.”

Alan does and finds Nick with his arm around a woman trying to bat him off. She’s smiling, though, with her eyes shadowed like she’s exhausted but not willing to draw away from the cluttered table. “Frannie?”

“Yeah. She called up her connections to get me in with Holly. They both used to be cosmetic chemists before shit got, uh- bad.”

Alan’s mouth pinches a little. He knows what Nick’s been up to in Seattle, even if Nick never really wrote much to him about it. He wonders how many of the people in these photos are still around, what they were like before… well. The further he goes, the worse off especially Abbot looks. There’s a picture of Nick pecking him on the cheek with Abbot mid-eye roll.

“That was kinda in the end.”

“You were dating?”

“For a minute, I guess. We broke up quick, but it’s not like we fought. We just didn’t fit right, ya know? The fight he didn’t win, though, that was- not great. And then Les was gone- and we lost our grants, and-”

“It’s okay.”

“I know. We tried. Look at me, I’ve got the cure to everything now. Wasn’t even sick or anything…”

It’s another moment Alan misses being able to touch his best friend. Even if it’s just for a pat of reassurance, to ground him, but he just sets the photos aside. He wishes he’d called, or that Nick had called him. All this time apart and they could have supported each other, even if they had others to help them out. They’re together now but it doesn’t quite make it all sting any less.

Nick’s colors blur, smearing together until they’re eaten up and he’s a pale yellow. His face blurs, too, the features disappearing into the goo. Alan reaches again for the unlabeled tin, the one with their time together inside. He wants to see more of what Nick’s been up to since they parted, but not if it means both of them turning to puddles on the floor over it.

There’s a photo at the bottom of it, covered in crumbs but certainly one of the older pictures with all the cracks and tears. It’s a black and white of two little boys, one chubby and grinning so hard his eyes disappear into the smile. He’s like a scruffy cherub, while the thin boy he’s got an arm around shrinks into himself like his polo can hide him. Little Alan Mortimer wringing his hands but smiling and peering above the camera at his parents.

Behind them is a black and white house, hazy but very much the old Mortimer house on Reynolds Street. “I remember this,” he says. There’s paint on the boys’ pants, and some speckles of it on Nick’s face.

Nick looks and his colors brighten. He downs another mix absently, like a glass he can’t stop tossing back. God, Alan hopes it’s not intoxicating him, but he just beams under the mess his face is melting to. “Yeah. You repainted that day.”

“You helped.”

“I knocked over the bucket and the window got splattered.”

Alan snorts. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

Nick laughs. “What, you think you had a secret sibling who did it? That stuff was my kinda gig, anyway, not yours. I still can’t believe your mom and dad let some scamp who broke into the yard come hang around so much.”

“You were filling the hole,” Alan points. His second day in the new house, when Alan sat poolside with a book in his hands. It was non-fiction, something about atoms that would get disproven in a decade, and he was so engrossed he didn’t hear the creaks of the neighbor boy crawling through a gap in the fence.

Alan shrieked and Nick backed away, like he’d pulled a prank too strong even for his standards. “Sorry!” he cried. One of his front teeth were missing, fortunately a late baby one, but he still lisped just a bit until fourteen or so.

“What are you doing in my yard?” Alan asked, almost tripping into the pool. Nick grabbed the book before Alan could drop it. “Ah! Stop!”

“No, here it is!” he says, and passes the book back. Not even holding it over his head to tease him, even if he was a head taller than Alan. “You okay? I didn’t mean to scare you! I saw you move in but then I didn’t wanna scare you then either because you looked busy and I was busy too. You’re new?”

Nick was almost overwhelming. Alan gave a shaky nod, since the last question was all he could really process for now. After moving across states, his head had already been spun so many times. He’d been scared, and scrawny, and the appearance of a kid who looked like he could eat Alan or at least pin him to the ground to take some bites didn’t help.

But all Nick did was ramble. Ask about the book Alan was reading, and if he liked his house, and finally his name. When he answered, Nick said, “Mortimer?”

“Mortimer. Alan Mortimer,” Alan said, as he’d practiced.

“Really?”

“What?” Did he do something wrong? He always wondered if he did. If he sounded foreign, or too young or too grownup, or like his mind was spinning a million ideas that never slowed down until he fell into a lulled silence he had to wrangle himself out of.

“Your name’s Mortimer?”

“No, I just said the last name first. That’s how it works?”

“Guess if you’re Bond, James Bond,” Nick allowed. “Still sounds like that mouse that’s all mean to Mickey, though.”

Alan folded his arms. What a weird kid, coming into his yard and telling him how to say his own name. And using all these weird turns of phrase, to top it off. “My name’s Alan.”

“But you opened up with Mortimer, see? Do you have a nickname? My name’s Nick so I kinda have a nickname built in.” He giggled at his own joke, even if the joke grows stale in later decades and falls out of fashion.

“Uh. I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” Nick said, and Alan moved so he could sit and put his feet in the pool beside him. Nick rubbed his face and thought it over. “Other people are supposed to give you nicknames, though. You make up your own and it’s silly. Can I call you Mo?”

“My name’s Alan,” Alan repeated. But he nodded, not sure why. He’d never had a real nickname before. His parents called him endearments but a nickname was cool. It was something he earned, even if he’d only just met this new, weird boy. “Okay, Nick. What’s your last name?”

“Cervos. I’m not sure what it means but it sounds good, huh?”

“It means something about…” Alan spun his gears, because he knew he’d read about them. Maybe not in books about atoms or animals but the comic books. “Like mechanisms and machines.”

“I heard it meant a kinda deer but that sounds way better!”

“Huh,” Alan said. He set his book aside. “Why did you come over again?” He’d found by then he didn’t quite mind, because Nick seemed safe if not sane.

Nick pointed to a hole in the fence, a gap where the boards were off. Alan’s mother had ranted that they needed it fixed, but the house was such a steal in the first place and maybe it would be good for them to make the house theirs in fixing it.

“There was a hole. My ma says you don’t leave holes unfilled- people could get hurt, and then people sue you and it’s not good for nobody. So I filled it up with me! And then I got kinda nosy. I wanted to see what you were reading. Is that okay?”

Alan nodded again. Not that he followed but he didn’t see why it wasn’t okay. Nick grinned and waved his hands a little, kicking his toes in the pool. Alan did too.

And here they are all these years later, sitting in a breakroom in an abandoned convenience store turned laboratory. And Nick’s not human, but probably still grinning like a doofus because he’s got a friend and so does Alan.

Alan picks up the camera off the table and checks it for film. It’s in proper working order, so he turns it around on he and the goo looming over his shoulder. The flash squints Alan’s eyes just a bit, but when he’s snapped out the photo he’s just left with a dubious, sort of resigned look like he’s expecting the monster man making a face in the background.

But the Nick in the photo looks like the Nick from the ‘86 photos. And the Nick he saw just a few months ago.

He turns and that Nick stares back, floating a foot off the ground. The textures of his shirt, skin, even his hair are perfect and Nick blinks. “You okay, Mo?”

“Nick, look.”

Alan shows him the photo, and Nick beams. The colors drain and the smile on his face just grows and grows. “Holy shit! We did it!”

“You did it.”

“We did it!” Nick says, and almost throws an arm around his friend’s arm before settling for a fist pump. He sees the goo return and laughs a little. “Well, least we tested that. More practice and it’s perfect.”

“Yup,” Alan says, adding the photo to the pile. “I think we’re ready.”