Spitball Army

In Rainbows, the new Radiohead album, made the “big news” this year, and to recount all of the reasons why would bore me, so here.  As expected, the record made a multitude of Best of 2007 lists, which are tough to avoid this time of year.  Not that I make an effort to avoid them – I have a perverse fascination with lists, anyway, and to deride them would make me a hypocrite when I post mine in a couple of days.

This morning’s New York Times – which I have barely cracked past the Arts & Leisure section – had some more juicy bits of Radiohead info.

• In Rainbows is to be released this coming Tuesday, January 1st, in U.S. stores.  [That’s old news already, from where I stand: my store received its shipment of the CD early and has already sold through its supply.  Breaking street date?  In the current retail environment, you have got to be kidding me!  What are you going to do about it, close down my store?]
• Last week, Nonesuch Records [a record label that can do no wrong, in my opinion] released the Jonny Greenwood-penned soundtrack to the new P.T. Anderson film There Will Be Blood.  Nate Chinen in the Times calls the music “appropriately unsettling.”  The film itself is given a similar assessment by Manohla Dargis, who considers it “a savage moral reckoning of the contemporary American soul.”  [Such a thoughtful and provocative film will most likely not get booked in Birmingham, Alabama.]
• More on Mr. Greenwood: the Radiohead lead guitarist, who also composes music for the classical stage, will have an orchestral piece premiered at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City on January 16th and 17th.  Relatedly, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra – right here in Birmingham – has Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver on its program for April 10th.  [Such a programming accomplishment would have been unheard of in this town prior to the 2006 arrival of the ASO’s current music director, Justin Brown, who doesn’t shrink from adding contemporary music to the schedule, and has – in a very short period of time – inspired the orchestra players to an ecstatic level of performance in practically everything that we haven’t seen here in many years.]
• Oakland-based DJ and producer Amplive has remixed In Rainbows, and is releasing it under the title Rainydayz Remixes. It is scheduled to be unveiled on January 10th as a digital-only release, according to Amplive’s myspace page.  There is a catch, however: it will be available only to those who can either prove that they paid for the download of In Rainbows, or that they have contributed to a Thom Yorke-endorsed charity (I didn’t see any reference to the charity on Amplive’s myspace page). 

And that’s all of the Radiohead news for this hour!