Last Flowers

Ed O'Brien - Guitar, Unicorn


Radiohead are in a tremendously enviable position right now. Since about 1995, they’ve been the most consistently impressive musical force to have braved the mainstream since probably The Beatles. While they may not have the ubiquitous cultural clout of the Fab Four, they are undoubtedly the most influential group of artists making music right now.

Think about it. Maybe they don’t sell like your Aguilera’s and J.Lo’s in their prime, maybe they do, I don’t really keep up on record sales. Still, the anticipation that surrounds a Radiohead release is incomparable in this day and age. From hardcore fans to musicians in pretty much every genre (see all the different tribute albums ranging from electronica to reggae to classical), from record company execs and concert promoters to the one guy in the next dorm room who knows how to play just the first half of “Creep” on his Yamaha guitar, people get super excited about a Radiohead release.

This is why, to me at least, they’re as good as the Beatles. Okay, this isn’t the Sixties. Rock ‘n’ Roll is dead, and all the rest. Multimedia reigns supreme and music just doesn’t seem to mean as much to people as it once did. Regardless of all that, any time a band is able to write the kind of songs that can inspire a enormous, not to mention completely rabid, fan base (many people I know, myself included, didn’t bat an eye at the $85 price tag for the disc box), sell loads and loads of records, have the press frothing at their collective mouth, AND create a common ground over which people can communicate about music in spite of often times drastically clashing tastes, you know there’s something really special going on. So, while Radiohead lunch boxes and collectible figurines don’t exist yet, the five lads from Oxford really are a massive band on par with the greats of rock history.

All the same, this position of prominence comes with a huge deal of pressure to perform. After all, the most important band in the world ought to consistently release incredible music, right?

It’s true that the band has set an incredibly high standard for itself, and as a result of this there’s bound to be some disappointment when they don’t meet it. This is especially true today in the age of message boards, file sharing programs, and blogs. Such channels have allowed fans of the band to listen to a lot of the band’s material in its earliest incarnations. Much of the band’s seventh album, In Rainbows, was debuted to audiences in the US and Europe a year before it was released last October, and one song, the angelic “Nude” (formerly called “Big Ideas”) was a song the band first debuted while touring behind their 1997 masterpiece OK Computer.

The concept of bands “road testing” new material is obviously not a new thing, but ever since the Internet popped up, people have had unprecedented access to bootlegs and other scraps of previously unavailable material (manifest in the form of website art and webcasts in Radiohead’s case), which can, in some cases, make them become very attached to original live performances and their arrangements, as opposed to the final versions recorded on official releases.

Having listened to “Disc 2” of Radiohead’s In Rainbows several times now, I think that it’s safe to assume that the band has intended it as a kind of companion EP in the vein of some past releases like the Airbag/How Am I Driving?, I Might Be Wrong, and Com Lag EPs. It’s my belief that “Radiohead Nation,” if you will, was dying for a double album, something in the ilk of The White Album, maybe. With In Rainbows Disc 2, we didn’t really get it. In other words, there’s a reason the double vinyl included in the disc box only bears the ten cuts from the version of the album that became available for download on the band’s website a couple of months ago (it’s no longer available, but latecomers have only to wait ‘til the record “drops” via TBD records New Year’s Day).

So basically, what we’ve got with In Rainbows Disc 2 are a few incredibly awesome B-Sides (“Down is the New Up,” “Bangers & Mash,” “Four Minute Warning”) and a few just plain great ones. Is that such a bad thing? I don’t think so.

Anyway, after all that, I’d like to share an early version of one of my favorite tracks from Disc 2, “Last Flowers Til The Hospital,” a plaintive ballad whose lyrics echo the techno-paranoia of the OK Computer era (“Appliances have gone berserk”). As you might have inferred, I find no fault with the access the Internet grants fans to get a glimpse of their favorite artists’ more obscure moments. Certainly albums should be bought and copyrights must be observed, but I believe the bootleg as it exists in the music world ought to belong to the fans. After all, a rare live recording hardly ever falls into the hands of anyone but the most devoted follower, one who undoubtedly owns every commercially available release anyway. For fans, bootlegs grant candid insight into the creative workings of the groups that influence their lives profoundly, and this, I think, is a pretty wonderful thing.

“Last Flowers (Til Hospital)” – Thom Yorke solo, 2005