max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#644: radiohead - no surprises (1997)

this may not be the official best video of the 90s, but, gosh, it’s my best video of my 1990s. i was a wee sleepaway camper at laurel south when i walked into a room of counselors watching a vhs of 7 television commercials, radiohead’s compilation of videos from the bends and ok computer, and even though i’d grown up in love with mtv, especially daisy fuentes, i’d never seen something so perfect. a head, singing about a heart filling up like a landfill, in a fishbowl filling up with water! slowly drowning? holding his breath for the final silence? opening his misshapen eyes for his final bellyache? and saved at the last moment by his chorus! i’ll take no surprises, please.

#642: gram parsons and emmylou harris - streets of baltimore (live, 1973)

first came a bookstore-bathroom run in with ultra rare hipster runoff graffiti. and this afternoon, in the middle of a very stressful observer deadline, i got to have an actual back and forth with pitchfork founder ryan schreiber, who, let’s face it, is a true indie-and-internet god. if you’re interested, and who could blame you if you’re not, it was a gentlemanly twitter disagreement over his site’s top-videos-of-the-90s list, which ends with aphex twin’s dementedly dark come to daddy.

not the decade’s single best video, i said.

agree to disagree, he proposed.

and what, he wanted to know, would i have chosen?

no surprises, wow and flutter, c.r.e.a.m., or even windowlicker, i said.

the finale came with his excellent point that anthony kiedis’ ocean rap should have been number one. and just like that our conversation had ended! the irony is that i started the day by spending 90 minutes compiling my list of the top 10 videos of grainy live versions of beautiful country rock songs about major maryland metropolitan areas. this one ended up on top, and it goes out to you-know-who.

#568: radiohead - motion picture soundtrack (2001, live at canal+)

the radiohead lyric that goes “the whole building is about to collapse anytime now” isn’t actually a radiohead lyric, it’s a line from an email that a goldman sachs banker named fabrice tourre sent as he was putting together a purposefully rotten multibillion-dollar investment for goldman’s own clients. “only potential survivor,” he continues, “the fabulous fab, standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstruosities!!!”

one nice thing about today’s two extraordinary chunks of goldman sachs news—the more important one is about the s.e.c.’s astounding allegations of fraud, the more charming is about its bankers’ dissatisfaction with goldman’s $2.1 billion new tower—is that it proves that the world is exactly how radiohead has always said it was. back in high school, when i listened to amnesiac more than any other album on earth except for kid a, but adored ok computer more than both combined, radiohead’s lesson was that the world is filled with ugly fraud, vulgar ambition and manipulative ruthlessness. which more or less turns out to be true.

referring to a new yorker article about the beautiful mural in the new goldman tower, a letter to the magazine quoted meridel le sueur’s thoughts on corporate-sponsored art: “they just want you to perfume the sewers. they need artists to bring perfume to the terrible stench of their death.” ms. le sueur died the year before ok computer came out.

#530: radiohead - nude (2008)

february glowers bring out radiohead’s powers before april showers bring may flowers.

#503: orchestral manoeuvres in the dark - genetic engineering (1983)

surely if radiohead made the best album of the 1990s and the best album of the 2000s (ok computer and kid a) then radiohead’s probably going to make the best album of the 2010s. and i predict, based on a close study of the victorian fin de siecle, brian eno’s oblique strategies, rhett davies’ discography, the genealogical history of the greenwood brothers, and phrenological curvature of phil selway’s skull, that it will sound like the more danceable songs on orchestral manoeuvres in the dark’s underrated album dazzle ships. it’s available here—see for yourself.

#454: radiohead - kid a (live, 2003)

with today’s conclusion of pitchfork’s top 200 albums of the 2000s countdown, the most haunting of all radiohead issues—kid a versus amnesiac—was finally put to rest. everything is in its right place: amnesiac (which has its intelligent supporters, but does not reach the same mind-tickling, soul-floating heights) clocked in at no. 34, while its sister album was named the decade’s no. 1 album. which it is!

remember when you were in third grade and were delighted by the trick ending of aerosmith’s amazing video, which revealed that alicia silverstone had been in charge of the virtual reality machine the whole time? that’s what it’s like, every single time, to listen to kid a in its entirety. it’s gigglingly good. it’s cold music that makes your head go warm. music with gravity to make you float! and the singing’s pretty, too.

but then here’s the thing: if radiohead’s ok computer was the best album of the 1990s, and radiohead’s kid a was the best album of the 2000s, then what happens when our children’s children start arguing over which was greater?

#430: radiohead - the national anthem (2000)

the new york observer’s very own leon neyfahk, who might be one of the smartest people i’ve ever met, and certainly one of the lankiest, once mentioned to me that he thought antony and the johnson’s painfully beautiful cover of beyoncé’s crazy in love was lousy. he was wrong! sure, antony’s cover doesn’t have the original’s sizzle or swagger or sweatiness or sexiness, but it’s full of ecstacy and torment, and what else can you ask for from a pop song?

leon became even more wrong today, cosmically wrong, when he wrote on twitter that it is “the most tedious thing,” and “more boring” than a bad song on pink floyd’s ummagumma. then he had to go and say it is “more boring than treefingers,” which is an easy target—that’s the murky, dreamy, eno-esque song on radiohead’s kid a. speaking of which, only last week leon casually said that he not only prefers radiohead’s amnesiac to kid a (which, hello, is insane), but then went ahead and gave the national anthem as an example of kid a’s weaknesses.

that is where he crossed the line.

not liking the national anthem is not liking waterfalls, heavyweight boxing, trampolines, the smell of blood and getting to second base for the first time. it is a song that pounds and throbs and thuds and wallops, and it’s pretty. (and this video, made for an mtv contest, is a classic too.)

so leon, if you’re reading this, please open your ears and heart to antony’s beyoncé song and the national anthem. treefingers isn’t bad either.

#179: radiohead - life in a glass house (2001)

too much radiohead is like too much beatles or hershey’s chocolate or lobster or simpsons, so every year i go on a months-long radiohead diet. this may, june and july there was no thom yorke, no ok computer, not even johnny greenwood’s there will be blood soundtrack.

but now it’s august, which means i get to hum merrily along to chipper little lyrics like: “once again packed like frozen food and battery hens/think of all the starving millions.” fun times are here again!

#21: neil young - don’t let it bring you down (1971)

it’s primary day, so i’ve been trying to find a super appropriate get-out-the-vote, times-they-are-a-changin’ song. radiohead’s electioneering has the right idea, but it isn’t exactly the best track on “ok computer.” besides, it’s tuesday, which means i need something from the 70s—too early for public enemy, too late for pete seeger.

but high-voiced, long-haired neil young makes good songs for election day. and even though he has more activist-y songs then don’t let it bring you down, somehow this tune’s picture of burning castles, dead men, sinking moons, red sirens, scraped skies, cold winds and morning papers feels more political than whining about impeachment.

his after the goldrush-era performance here on the bbc is enough to make you want to change the world. and another thing! he likes obama.