The Apple Of Rock
Josh Tyrangiel’s 2003 Radiohead profile for Time is unforgettable right from the punch-drunk-lovely opening line: “Rock is used to front men like Bono (who wants to throw his arms around the world) and Mick Jagger (who wants to throw his legs around the world).” He uses words like “presentist” and talks about the casual scattering of Radiohead discs as being essential for a certain kind of household, even though that was already falling into the past.
Thom Yorke’s ironic discomfort with “lifestyle music” is left untouched. The band was at the full measure of its intractable anti-globalization thing, which is almost quaint now.
I had an account management teacher who was as hooked on Dr. Pepper as he was on Apple products. He moved in the sweat of brands, through recounts of all his Apple machines, sipping can after can of Dr. Pepper like Tom Wilkinson in Recount. Then I remember looking over during a lecture and from another boy’s MacBook screen a zip file for In Rainbows swam into focus. It was October 2007, duh.
This is the easiest of connections; I don’t even have my thinking cap on. Apple is the most valuable technology brand in the world. Their products are sold to People Of Wal-Mart but the aesthetic still shimmers diamond-hard, like faith beyond reason. When the first iPhone came out the cast of the Apple store applauded every buyer.
Radiohead is the most valuable band in the world. Their music references the phone book but sounds like nobody else. They’ve turned hard sell/soft sell into their own loud-quiet-loud solution. Their intelligence burns even at street level; the more they refuse to dumb it down the less they alienate even dumb people.
Some rough correspondence:
OK Computer = 1st PowerBook (drastically ergonomic; targeted at the professional market; received numerous meaningless awards.)
Kid A = 1st iPod (reflective of older surfaces; intolerant of the status quo; absolutely world-changing)
In Rainbows = 1st iPhone (somehow both highly secretive and focus-grouped; obsessed with integration, ego and exclusivity; moderately stunt-pilotlike.)
The King Of Limbs = ????? I’m not super-prepared to review it but so far it’s dark and dubby and sounds a little like looping a sample while juggling two records, live beatmaking in other words. Which I know nothing about but it seems damn near impossible.
If you’re a Radiohead addict there’s little cachet in it anymore. Tell a girl your favorite band is Radiohead and you’ll get the frozen stare of an Eskimo you’re selling ice to. You can’t even scatter discs anymore because you probably trundled them all down to Amoeba like everyone else.
But when you entertain you can play the new record through your MacBook speakers and everyone will feel a little cooler, even though they are no less commodified.
You don’t need obscure Dutch media theory to determine that at a certain point, no matter how big certain brands get, they will never lose their ring of specificity. Moreover, certain brands, and bands, can so glammer the market that a mere 10 percent share is nothing short of ubiquitous.
Apple is that good, Radiohead is, and not much else.
