So the hot music news of the weekend revolves around a leaked mp3 that may or may not be an advance for a new Radiohead extended play release that may or may not be available for public consumption on Monday. They're speculating on Stereogum, they're pontificating on Pitchfork. Heck, the buzz on this has been so large it woke up grandpa at the old folk's home and he dutifully told his floormates at Rolling Stone. Whether or not there is an actual Radiohead release at the end of this Rainbow (pun intended) is not the point of this blog, at least not the main part of it. Instead, let's take a step back and dissect exactly what the discovery and overanalysis of a single mp3 floating in cyberspace means.
Firstly, I think any doubts that Thom Yorke and co. are NOT the band of this generation can be quelled. Let's assume all this research is somewhat accurate and this track is indeed a cyberteaser for a Radiohead EP. Honestly, when was the last time a large audience got excited about a freaking EP? (My guesstimate would be around 1992-3 when Nine Inch Nails released their Broken Ep... people were jonesing hard for some new NIN and The Downward Spiral would not see release until 1994. I recall it doing really well, and you still see it here and there when used CD shopping.) EPs are habitually the redheaded stepchild of the music industry -- sometimes they fulfilled an artists's record contract, sometimes they are halfhearted attempts to keep a band's buzz, most of the time they were too much money for too little content. You name it and it's been used to fill up an EP: live tracks, band interviews, dub versions, remixes, versions of songs in a different language, etc etc. If Radiohead can get the masses excitedly expecting an EP, clearly they're a tail wagging a pretty damn big dog. Nickelback, purely in terms of raw sales, are like 10 times bigger than Radiohead... but if they tried a stunt like this, it would get 1/10th the publicity, if that. Love them or hate them, Radiohead get people excited about music.
Now, let's do some thinking here. Obviously, this leaked track has been the music news of the weekend, or the month (well, not counting Les Paul's death, but we'll say good news to qualify.) Radiohead don't really seem to be the type of guys who crave constant press attention, and that's probably why stunts like these (if this is, indeed a stunt) are right down their alley. U2 as an example wouldn't use this as a promotional tactic; they'd have a press conference involving robots and firecrackers and maybe Bono wearing a spacesuit. Now think about your run-of-the-mill aspiring band who have hope, dreams and a MySpace page to boot. Like a kajillion bands in this day and age, let's imagine this hypothetical band's two biggest influences are U2 and Radiohead, and so they want to try to appeal to the listeners of those two heavy hitters. Chances are they don't have the budget or the cache to do a U2-style press conference. But leaking a track anonymously and putting "Radiohead" in the ASCII code? Just like
Anyone Can Play Guitar, anyone can reasonably do that. Based on this weekend's wild speculation, you can get thousands, if not millions, of people to check out your song if it sounds enough like Thom Yorke and co.Now if you're dismissing this out of hand and claiming that no band would have the gumption to try to piggyback off another band's existence, there is historical precedent for such a thing. In the 70s, a struggling Canadian band named Klaatu made slightly proggy, Beatlesque '70s rock. One single newspaper article made a passing reference to the contents sounding like something The Beatles would made if they had re-united, and a Pandora's Box of hype, speculation and notable silence from the band itself ensued. Time passed, people eventually discovered Klaatu were NOT Paul, John, George or even Ringo, and they went back to obscurity. But during that time, Klaatu sold a fair amount of records, simply based on people thinking the Klaatu might or might not be the Fab Four, secretly back on good terms. Sound familiar?
Whether a band would go to such unseeming depths to get people to check out their stuff is a interesting topic to consider. (Your run-of-the-mill record company, on the other hand, would do it in a heartbeat. In fact, they're probably checking with their lawyers to find loopholes as I type this.) What do you think? Is Radiohead, by taking part in secret leakings and other tactics, simply creating a new way to sell music? Or are they opening the floodgates for lesser bands to try similar tactics to get a step ahead? (Let's not forget the flood of bands who released material from 2008 on with the "Name Your Own Price" online gimmick. I am not saying Radiohead were BY NO MEANS the first band to try that tactic, but their success with the "online tip jar" really and truly legitimised such a practice.) I guess in less than 24 hours, we may know if we hit a Wall of Ice...
{UPDATE: Monday came around and the track in question ("These Are My Twisted Words") did end up being a Radiohead song. The "Wall of Ice" EP however, was nowhere to be found. The band simply put the song up on its site for free, with another song dedicated to last surviving WWI vet Harry Parch, available for a small donation.}
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