Unborn Chicken Voices In My Head.
- my tribute to the crackpots that are collectively Radiohead.

One can measure the state of his mental health through the kind of music he currently listens to regularly. In my opinion, when one listens to a lot of Radiohead (esp. OK Computer and Amnesiac), that is a damning indication of a mental state at the brink of decline into psychopathic obscurity and cold frigidity. Rather perversely, the statement just made is not a castigation of the band. Instead, it is a glowing reference to the brilliance and intensity of its music.

The paradox is that listening to Radiohead can be therapeutic. However, as I can only imagine, Radiohead is akin to mind-influencing substances. Both bring you to the highest echelons of euphoria and surround you with an aura of triumphant invincibility. Then without warning, it sinks you into an abyss of obscurity and vulnerablity of the highest order. In both the presence and absence of the music, you could very possibly end up finding yourself sitting in the corner of a dark and empty room staring coldly at people who are not there. You know you're even more fucked when you find yourself sitting in the corner of a dark room full of people, and you stare at them with the same coldness and detachment, while imagining them to be the same obscure images you were acquainted with in the empty room.

And in loosing yourself within the music, you find not a watershed, but a cogwash of poppycock your concious mind has been trying in all its existence to repress and erase - as it emerges, unsuccessfully. You go through life fashioning yourself as a strong, confident person so sure of himself. Then cometh the weak core, like an univited guest. The one who laughs the loudest is the loneliest. The funniest guy is the most twisted of the lot. With the music as catalyst, the very cognitive mechanisms that has allowed you to skip past life's obstacles and challenges easily now works against you by releasing a psychic network of conondrums and puzzles in a cerebral orgy of almost heathen perversity. You over-analyse things. Suddenly, within all your adult sure-ness, the oddball obese child who was scared shitless of all things around him and had problems adjusting to his surroundings finds his way out of your subconcious and into your concious mind, then finally and most terrifyingly, to your voice box. You undergo a fleeting flashback and involuntarily utter words and complete sentences you once spoke in the distant past and thought you had completely forgotten. Hidden within these words are cries for help and pleas for clemency. You freak out. You panic. Paranoia sets in. You imagine a machiavellian plot against you unfolding before your eyes. You sit there without feeling. Staring, pondering, waiting for the knife to finally be plunged in, the coup de grace of this torture and torment.

Then as the dust settles, it hits you like a diamond into the forehead. The current issues you are undergoing are actually miscellanous. They are merely a subtext to the larger collective. You then develop awareness that the task is actually more daunting than you thought. The music is more than a mind fuck. It is a mind gang-bang. And at the end of the whole experience, you feel like a whore for perversely and secretly liking it.

With a name fit for a poet or writer (then again, he is both), it is no wonder that Thomas Edward Yorke and his band of Oxfordites can spew such beautiful words and music. The thing with Radiohead's music is that it grips you by the balls and demands your attention. It gives you more than just sensory pleasure. Despite, yet also because of, the fact that their lyrics are mostly disjointed and obscure, it makes your mind work and create channels towards an infinite number of scenarios and possibilities, unlike your run of the mill "i love her, but she doesnt love me, and now I'm heartbroken" or "I have loads of bling blings, fast cars and women" songs. It is as much an intellectual as it is a musical experience. But in as many ways that their music makes you develop cognitive comprehension of yourself and surroundings, it also has a sneaky way of exposing the disturbed person in you. When you find complete relation and marvel at words like "so knives out / catch the mouse / don't look down / shove it in your mouth", "yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon" and "i'll take a quiet life / a handshake of carbon monoxide", you know that you are a seriously disturbed person. These crackpots are dark without even trying. Fuck off Marilyn Manson!

In any tribute to Radiohead, there would be a vast ammount of material to cover. However, due to the fact that my energy and attention span does not come in equal abundance, I have chosen one particular song to analyse, line by line. I hope that it at least comes close to encapsulating what Radiohead means to me. There are many interpretations to the lyrics and music to Paranoid Android. To each his own, and the following narrative is my interpretation.


Paranoid Android.

The song opens with a catchy and almost 'cha-cha' like beat - a misleading prelude to the theme of the song. The listener catches glimpse of this fact as he gets a peek in to the mental torment the narrator in the song is undergoing, as Thom breaks into the opening line:


Please could you stop the noise, I'm trying to get some rest
From all the unborn chicken voices in my head


Then in a voice half mocking and half pleading, Thom wails:


What's that...?
What's that...?


Thom the scrawny and vertically-challenged geek with a face only a mother could love then recklessly exposes his inner pent-up emotions. The wierdo-geek in the song, largely ignored and unloved, foretells his ascendency into prominence and issues a chilling warning to his enemies:


When I am king, you will be first against the wall
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all


And again, but now in total and confident mockery:


What's that...?
What's that...?


The music reaches a crescendo at this point before falling into a less intense but equally captivating beat. Colin Greenwood takes charge on bass. Thom launces a diatribe at his enemies and sneers at them:


Ambition makes you look preety ugly
Kicking squealing Gucci little piggy.


It is now clear who the slur is directed at - those modish, swanky, upscale types so full of themselves and filled with pride towards their 'cultured-ness' and sense of taste. The same buggers who would step on anyone's head to obtain their material and superficial desires. King Yorke the Ignored then lets fly with his emotions, in a child-like manner that stinks of anger, frustration and the want for absolute revenge:


You don't remember
You don't remember
Why don't you remember my name?


Like an angry child who has just been given a flame thrower as a birthday present, Thom then dreams of a massacare of his enemies:


Off with his head, man
Off with his head, man
Why don't you remember my name


And in adding insult to injury, he spits at the corpses of his fallen enemies:


I guess he does.


The music then peaks into total chaos as Johnny Greenwood's guitar screams into the air. One gets the morbid imagery of heads falling and blood spilling everywhere. Then, just as the listener is getting accustomed to the noise and chaos surrounding him, it stops abruptly and the song breaks into a slow beat with gregorian-like chanting, introducing an air of divinity. The geek realizes that he is turning into his enemies and sees the ugly-ness behind his hate. He realizes the folly behind his scheme for revenge. He drops to his knees, holds his hands up to the air, and declares his repentence and seeks clemency and help from above. For all his deficiencies and failings, he cries out:


Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height... height...


God the almighty and merciful hears the pleas of the repentant. The repentant is then comforted with a promise that God has his own designs and those deserving of retribution will meet it. The repentant is then allowed a peek in to the ultimate fate that awaits all evil-doers:


That's it sir, you're leaving
The crackle of pig skin
The dust and the screaming
The yuppies networking
The panic, the vormit
The panic, the vormit


And a final assuarance to the faithful:


God loves his children
God loves his children, yeah


That is the epic that is Paranoid Android. It is a roller coaster trip that brings you high and low, before throwing you off to a sobering state.

The works and biography of Thomas Edward Yorke provide evidence that he is a genius and a lunatic. One may say that his psychopathy lays waste to his genius. On the contrary, like many other great artists, I believe that he finds the truest form and articulation of his genius through his lunacy.

The voices in your head are your very own.

It's going to be a glorious day.

For a dear friend. In thanks and apologies.


Dorothy Meets the Lost Bohemians

Dorothy of the Sand Lands.
A petit and pretty lass.
Takes an invitation
from Sir Buck of Locksley
to visit the dark side of the garden.

Meets the lost bohemians.
Learns their handshake.
Embraced in welcome as one of them
in the huddle of the psychedelic realm.

Dorothy finds the Bohemians nice.
The Bohemians like her humor and spice.
The madcap laughter began.
And threatened not to end.

Dorothy listens as the Bohemians' bards
sing and play their songs.
Some tunes she likes,
some tunes she doesn't.

Carnival in the air.
A surrealistic affair.
She plays their games
of courtship with the other realm.

And there appeared before Dorothy,
like the Cheshire Cat before Alice,
were the grinning anemic cousins.
The slurring one with wavy locks,
and the lunatic.
Some playful conondrums,
exchanges and cursings.
Slaps on some silly heads.
And the foretelling of a dynasty.

Morning bells.
Weirdos come out to play.
The anemic water retention cousins.
The sleeping, growling tiger.
Jake's buddy (the man with the funny faces who tried to choke himself).
The mute.

As the sun rose higher,
Dororthy and the druid
caught sight of Sir Buck
showing his (lustful) affection
for his soft and fluffy lover.

The time for parting has come.
The adventure ends.
Dorothy leaves the garden
with a chilly parting shot;

You'll be the death of me, Sir Buck.
You'll be the death of me yet.

Sheila

Sheila's got a bike
And she's the girl that I like
But it's unfortunate she has to be a dyke

She likes white pearls
And sixteen year old girls
Kicks her football with a wicked bending curl

Skin that makes you sigh
And a touch that leaves you high
Just for her I'd kill and steal and tell a lie

But dicks don't appeal to her
She'd rather soon they dissapear
Should you have one you'd better not come near

Stabbed me like a spike
Cause she's the girl that I like
But it's unfortunate she has to be a dyke

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Wash my hands.
Scrub them till my skin peels.

If there's soap it's good
with detergent is better.

Wash in rigid rythm
(miss a spot I won't).

When I'm done I dry my hands
then do it over again.

Scare away my kin.
At least my hands are clean.

Syd shaved his eyebrows and all his hair

jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.

Albert sent Syd to the dark side of the moon.

jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.
jumped up and down and brushed his teeth.