Meriam Raouf STAFF WRITER

I didn’t have anything to say this week, then a fella by the name of Thom Yorke had me man up (look a sexist idiom!), pick up the phone, and tell y’all about my recent discovery of weed that won’t kill your brain cells—they call it Radiohead. For most of you noobasauri (plural of noobasaurus) the Head that is Radio is nothing new. Chocolate wasn’t new, but combined with graham crackers and marshmallows and s’mores (do you know how shocked I was when I found out that came from “some more”) became the “shiz” when they first came out. The only thing that could compare was an indoor pool full of Jell-o or the smell of good coffee—and the possibility of making my friends and family smell like that constantly (am I getting greedy?). I have your coffee-smelling world in the form of a small box that played giant plastic CDs in a time before spandex was considered a pantleg material and way before dip n’dots, the ice cream of the future.

I should warn you, because Doc warned Marty: things just aren’t the same until you’ve heard them on a turntable, and they won’t be afterward either. When you give it an un-paused un-scrolled un-multitasked thought, we’ve abandoned the soft reminiscent scratch of the turntable for the fancy rich people sissy machine known as the iPod. Music used to scratch not click, albums used to be released, they didn’t just “come out.” The tortured artist that was “released” is now just a repeat queen who apathetically “comes out” into the world of YouTube and cheaper Russian downloading websites (Napster has cousins).

My dad tells me stories of how the days when a new Pink Floyd or Deep Purple album was released, him and his friends would pool their money and rush to the store to buy the record. Once they had black round piece of goodness in their hands, they would go home and listen to an entire album---no pausing, no scrolling, no Mari Kart. An album was a unified piece of art—no singles. For however long the album was playing, the artist had you. You observed the artwork, you carefully listened to the lyrics, and you really looked at the work of art. With the invention of more “convenient” media, we lost something. The quickie mart is convenient too, but that doesn’t mean that we should buy 30 year old hot dogs just because it’s easier than driving to the whole foods in the next town.

I always knew Radiohead was good, and I have always felt connected to old things (don’t “that’s what she said me” I’ll kick you) but I’ve never experienced that turntable feeling until a few days ago at my best friend’s house (the goggle girl from a previous article—long story short, she wears goggles when on the computer) when I couldn’t bring myself to leave. We both stopped talking and just started staring hypnotically at the turntable as the song was playing. In those few minutes we could have been robbed—nothing else mattered. Afterward I was left with a dip-pitted sadness that simultaneously felt like happiness—the kind of thing you feel after you watch Me and You and Everyone We Know. I’d felt this before, sitting in the car with my brother just sitting listening, but the turntable was the surround sound to my macaroni and cheese movie night.

After coming out of the trance that only Radiohead and Fruity Pebbles can inspire, I was zombied into thinking I should buy a turntable, only discouraged by the fact that with my Polaroid camera, neon clothing, blogging, painting, suspenders and a turntable, I would be giving my brother full ammo to continue calling me a hipster, short of growing a mustache. At that comment my friend said only this:
“Do what you do and let people call it.”

Amen, goggle-sister, Amen.

Radiohead – Paranoid Android (Live at Glastonbury).mp3
Radiohead - Idioteque.mp3
Radiohead - Jigsaw Falling Into Place.mp3