Head Full Of Radio
A long time fan of Radiohead and his friend who's only familiar with "Creep" review every song in the band's discography. Will this podcast turn the Creep into a fan?
Head Full Of Radio
Kid A Blips (CTV)
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The three gentlemen sit down and watch all of the commercials, first attempting to review them ALL but it's too overwhelming so we just EXPERIENCE it.
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SPEAKER_03Welcome to Headphone Radio, where a longtime radiohead fan goes through the whole recorded discography, alongside its friend who's only familiar with the song creep. Will we agree on the song? Can I convert him into a fan? Let's find out.
SPEAKER_02Raw, roll up, roll.
SPEAKER_04Welcome everyone to episode 116. This is a special episode. We are going through the Kid A blips. Nico and Chase have no idea what the heck that means. Yeah, I literally don't know what that is. After OK Computer, Radiohead had had enough. Um based on the Meeting People Is Easy documentary that Nico and I watched a few weeks ago, right, Nico? So true. Yeah. Uh the band had had enough. Uh they all decided to take some time. Uh Tom uh especially had difficulty with how big the band got because of OK Computer. So they went off grid from about 1998 to 2000 or so. Um there was a Ed, the guitar player, had an online diary that he would update every now and again. Um, but they were pretty silent. And then all of these blips started, they were they're basically commercials. But they would st they would play on MTV and much music and music stations around the world. Um and it was the first it was the end of a period of long silence from the band. So what these things are doing is basically telling you what's coming, but you don't know what the fuck they are. Now, um Hello Nico and Chase. I forgot to say that.
SPEAKER_02Hello? Hello.
SPEAKER_04We haven't seen you in a couple of weeks, Chase. It's been uh a while.
SPEAKER_05Do you know what I've been doing the past couple of weeks? What's that? I've been getting really into soups. Soups! I've been a big soup person. I've done some broccoli cheddar soup. I've done some uh French onion soup. Wow. Soups are are my new thing.
SPEAKER_04Do you know there's a place in Winnipeg or just outside of my city where uh they do a it's it's like a day of soups and music, and everyone brings out their soups, and uh other people bring out spoons and you walk around and eat some everyone's soup and decide which one the best one is. Sounds like you better come up here for that. Honestly. Oh am I gonna say no to soup? Yeah, it's called soup stock. Nico, what's your favorite soup?
SPEAKER_02What is my favorite soup? I'm gonna be like blasphemous and say like a Chinese like uh crab and sweet corn.
SPEAKER_03Chase, what's your favorite soup?
SPEAKER_05Uh currently I am a uh broccoli cheddar person. Uh yeah. Simple, easy, and extraordinarily tasty. Uh for me it's it's broccoli cheddar.
SPEAKER_04Can you put um uh beer cheese soup on your menu?
SPEAKER_02I've never I do not like the sound of beer cheese. That makes me feel violently unfortunately.
SPEAKER_04It's actually quite lovely.
SPEAKER_05Well, maybe, I don't know.
SPEAKER_04I'd have to try it. It's I know I'm sorry it sounds terrible, uh Nico, but it's like bacon, vegetables, seasonings, butter, flour, broth, sauces, cheese, and beer.
SPEAKER_05Oh, well, you lost me at the end there. Could I do all of that without the beer? Of course, yeah. It's it's not a lot.
SPEAKER_04It depends on how much I'm looking at this recipe, which is one that I used recently. My grandma has been making it for years. I think I had uh beer cheese soup before I was legally able to actually drink.
SPEAKER_05Well, for me, like I I haven't had a look of alcohol in years, so it's like Yeah, that's probably not good for you then. So just cheese soup with that. I could have cheese soup, I could do that. Alcohol-free beer cheese soup. Yeah, you know, give me a uh virgin uh beer cheese soup.
SPEAKER_04I'll work on that. So we're gonna get to the blips. I'm gonna try and uh I don't know. Um if anyone's listening to this and is like, well, they didn't do all of them. There are a lot of them. There are there's another set of these for the next album, Amnesiac. Um if you look online on YouTube, there's a Radiohead Kid A blips and it's 11 minutes. That's the one we're watching. Again, I don't know how many there actually are, but we're gonna do this 11-minute version. I don't want to search too hard. I support you in that. So I'm gonna do thanks. Some of these are like two or three seconds, so I'm gonna pause them and we'll talk a little bit, or we could just keep going. So here is the first one, which looks kind of like a basketball um court.
SPEAKER_05You know, it it reminds me um this is like gonna be a probably a deep cut given the the audience, but um if anybody has ever seen anything um from the YouTube slash media channel called Secret Base, they do like sports-related um stories, and like one of their series is Chart Party, where they just kind of make uh sports-related stories that are kind of math focused and go into like the statistics, and like they do all these cool animations and illustrations um with charts, hence the name. Oh, cool. And this rel reminds me a lot of you know something that would be there. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Like with trajectories and things like that. Yeah, absolutely. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_04I'm just assuming this is like right out of uh an old Atari or Coleco. Alright, here we go. Huh. There's the first one. Okay. Thoughts? What would you think if you knew that was Radiohead and all that's all you heard?
SPEAKER_02Um, it kind of makes me think of like a June sandworm.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I can see that.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02But I don't think of Radiohead and those two things as being the same.
SPEAKER_04Well, here comes the next one.
SPEAKER_05Before we continue. Oh, sorry, I'll rewind that. You're good. Can I mention something very embarrassing? Sure. Um I just now realized that that is in fact the Radiohead logo. These bears? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04These bears um don't come up until this time frame. They're I the they're kind of around during OK Computer or after the album comes out. But that's so it's about n uh I want to say about 98 or so. I could be wrong on that, but yeah. This is they do use these bears a lot.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, I've seen this logo a thousand times, and I had never in my head attributed it to Radiohead until today. Well, that's fantastic. Have you seen this before, Nico?
SPEAKER_02I definitely have, but I think I also wouldn't have just like been like, oh, that's the Radiohead logo.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I had a shirt with one of them on it.
SPEAKER_05I also had a shirt with one of these on that I wore in high school.
SPEAKER_04Wow. And I had one, I think when I no, I was at just out of high school and I was trying to be a skinny, cool dude. Alright, here's the next one. Here we go.
SPEAKER_05Oh. That one like seems like like most of these. Remind me of like the adult swim, like they just have. Okay, here's the next one. This one might be my favorite so far.
SPEAKER_00I like that one. There you go.
SPEAKER_02I don't know why, it reminds me of that music video where they're all there's the people on the floor and they're all gathering round.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02I guess so. But I'm very confused. Alright, just keep going.
SPEAKER_05Thoughts?
SPEAKER_04That one reminds me of the kid A album cover. It it it very much is the kid A album cover.
SPEAKER_05Oh, is it just straight up the Kid A album cover?
SPEAKER_04Kinda, or it's that in that universe. And the reason, by the way, for everyone listening and Nico, um uh I bought you both vinyl as a thank you for being on this podcast. And I got Nico a copy of Okay Computer, and Chase has a copy of Kid A. So yes, good on you for recognizing that. That is in that universe. Okay. I'm glad that I regret that. What were you gonna say there, Nico?
SPEAKER_02Uh regretfully, my like stream was like very much buffering, so I could hear it fine, but visually I did not really see what was happening.
SPEAKER_04Well, that's even better that that Chase got to the forefront on that one. Okay, here's the next one. And that was that one. Oh, here's the here's the next one already. Sorry I didn't pause.
SPEAKER_00No.
SPEAKER_05Oh, I don't like that. Oh. I'm gonna be honest, I've been like vibing out the last couple of these. This has been fun.
SPEAKER_04I'm gonna, you know what? I think I'm gonna play the rest of it, and then you guys can tell me to pause whenever you want to talk about one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but just scream stop!
SPEAKER_04And here we go.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's our friends again.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Now this seems like something I can make.
SPEAKER_02So are these radio heads? Is that what they're called? No. Because they're giving me the vibe of the they're just dancing to the music. So they're giving me those things. Look, there's that.
SPEAKER_05Alright, so this is just a thing that it's red. Yeah. This now feels like a TV show that I would watch at three in the morning on a school. Yes, it's very much giving that.
SPEAKER_02Which I kind of like it. A lot of like just overarching monsters sort of vibes. Oh. Yeah. We're gonna have some interesting dreams tonight.
SPEAKER_00I like this one.
SPEAKER_02I feel like it's gonna turn and I'm scared. Okay, good. I was pretty sure it's a good one.
SPEAKER_04Look, there's Tom dancing away.
SPEAKER_05I like how he drank the potion that makes you invisible. That was weird.
SPEAKER_02Again, he just looks so different again.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Oh, IRL radio pen. Oh no. Hey, you know what? That's to be expected. Geese. Geese are crazy aggressive. Thanks. This is like an interrogation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04See, this is that's the kid A cover, yeah.
SPEAKER_02It kind of looks something like ice cream.
SPEAKER_04I mean, I guess, yeah. I don't want to know what's happening in the red if that's ice cream. Oh, yeah, maybe not. Yeah. And those little drips or dots going past it. I'm getting blurred witch vibes on this one.
SPEAKER_05Do you see what it says at the top? Accept no responsibility for sperm. Can we go back? I wanna read the rest of it. No, we're going on what shot.
SPEAKER_04Look, it's w the first time we actually see them performing.
SPEAKER_05Like, I know that he has a neck, but this like thing makes it look like he just does not. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05It's it's all neck.
SPEAKER_01It looks so hunched back as well. This could not be on the bag.
SPEAKER_04This one's pretty long too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh, this is funky. I like this one.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_04These have all been very cool. Yeah. The art is really neat. Ah.
SPEAKER_02So they test specimens. Oh.
SPEAKER_04These were all made by s uh Stanley Donwood, who does basically a lot of their art from OK computer and onwards. So he where did they like release these? They were on MTV or much music. Uh in so they would be in the middle of commercial breaks. You'd just see one of those. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So it is very uh reminiscent of the like Adult Swim uh a random min-ad.
SPEAKER_04Oh dead air. Yes, uh, I could see that. But could you imagine like watching something at 10 o'clock at night and then this fucking thing comes on?
SPEAKER_05You know, yes. Like that's crazy. But it also like it it makes me wonder if like this was some of the inspiration that Adult Swim got. Oh, maybe. This was around 2000 uh 2001-ish. Which would be way before Adult Swim was doing any of that stuff. 2000. That actually made I kind of want to look into that now. This is like very, you know, this feels like very, you know, when I'm thinking about the adult swim stuff, because like I got a lot of the you can see inspiration from this. This one's nice. To me, after eating uh too many hot dogs or too many hot dogs.
SPEAKER_04To me, it was giving more support, so I don't know. And I thought it was nice, so who knows? Oh. Wow. I've never looked at that game that way.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, did you know that in like professional foosball you can't make the guys do a 360? That's weird. Huh. Is that Tom? That's Tom's face.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He's like in World War II.
SPEAKER_02Oh, don't go on the lips. Don't go on the lips, please. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Well, you don't lick your own blood when you bleed? Um prefer not to just come out of my nose. It tastes like iron though. Yeah, but it's not iron. That's fair.
SPEAKER_02Lots of red poles going on.
SPEAKER_04Look, he must have beaten that other guy up from that time they were fighting.
SPEAKER_02That guy's got some big leg spam.
SPEAKER_04Now he's sneaking away. He kind of just looks like he has to poop.
SPEAKER_02He does. He looks like he has already shot himself.
SPEAKER_05Right now he's Yeah, that actually does look more like the post-poop walk.
SPEAKER_04I'd really like two. Uh-oh, what's it gonna be?
SPEAKER_00Help.
SPEAKER_04Help. You bear.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_02Are they aliens? Is that what's going on? Is that what the A stands for? Alien.
SPEAKER_04Hunch back Tom.
SPEAKER_02That cover is does not look right.
SPEAKER_03This one's pretty.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Any other season.
SPEAKER_04It's a nuclear winter. It's true.
SPEAKER_02I don't know why I keep expecting jump scares when they're gone beyond the same length.
SPEAKER_00What? Okay.
SPEAKER_04That's a weird face to make. Ah There's the spirit.
SPEAKER_05There's the spur.
SPEAKER_04Oh my. This is like what bad dreams are made of.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That guy's arms is coming out of his head.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Oh fuck. I wouldn't want to see that one at three in the morning. Right.
SPEAKER_02Oh. I thought my brain's getting squished. Oh, he's back.
unknownOh.
SPEAKER_04So what do you guys think of all those um blips?
SPEAKER_05How does that make you feel? I really like that a lot. I'm a very humongous fan of that actually. I really, really big uh uh fan of that all. And again, like I almost want to look at if that inspired um that's an interesting idea.
SPEAKER_04Um this by the way, there were no singles and no interviews or very few interviews and photo shoots for this whole album. So they were one of the first major uh bands to use the internet for promotion, which is where they also put these blips.
SPEAKER_05I mean I wanna be honest, this might be the Um my favorite stuff that's come out of radio head is this, which is like a really weird thing to say because it's not any of the music or any of the things, but oh, but it is the music because every single one of those blips uh has um bits of the album in them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so every single song is actually, I think almost every single song from my memory was in each of those blips.
SPEAKER_05Well, I yeah, I guess a better way of putting it is it's not um full songs. Uh definitely to your point.
SPEAKER_02Um Chase is trying to drag Radiohead and no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_05What I'm saying is I think that like I like experimental weird stuff like this, and I really like that they did that, because it's just I don't know. I think it's cool, and I think it's unique when especially given the time period. Yeah, people try to push stuff in in unique and interesting ways like that. So I'm a very big fan. This is like from an artistic perspective, not a musical perspective. That is my favorite stuff that I've seen from Radiohead so far.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh they were very careful to present this album as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. So there was no uh they had one song um go out to radio, but it didn't get a lot of radio play. But they didn't have any actual singles. So when we do this album, uh I will be asking for your help, Chase. Uh with a couple that have been made, and then um we're gonna be watching them on Saturday Night Live, and the three of us will be going through that. Yeah, they did have some Pardon me?
SPEAKER_02I like Reserve Messenger now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, they did have some sort of like weirdly uh backwards y videos kind of made. They don't really count, but we'll be watching those anyway because what would you grade that then? Uh as an experience is what I'm saying, not for each one. If you were seeing these things for the first time, and you both are, and you imagine yourself watching TV and these are coming on, do you find them an effective way to want to to go like uh to make you want to buy the album? Yes. I mean for me double Tom, easy. Double Tom. Wow. I'll take that. Nico, what do you feel?
SPEAKER_02I think it's very good marketing. Like, I feel like I'd look forward to like, oh, when is the blip gonna come up? Like, what's it gonna be this time? Yeah, and I feel like it was just a very effective way that very much holds up that I think would be really cool, just marketing strategy, even now. Like just having like little Easter eggs. I mean, I'm guessing this isn't like an adult swim where it was like just did you say it was on MTV? Was it like on the commercials or was it just on the internet?
SPEAKER_04It it was on the internet, they were on MTV. I remember seeing them on MuchMusic, the Canadian version of MTV, like late at night. I remember Gotcha. Yeah, they would just go and then disappear.
SPEAKER_02Because I think that's very cool.
SPEAKER_04Especially for not hearing from them for a full two years almost.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, that would I feel like build a lot of hype because it's just kind of like, what is this? Yeah. Um and I'm very excited by you mentioning that like they're kind of doing it as like a cohesive album rather than just because I feel like with that sort of vibe, you could get away with very sort of out there different songs.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_04No, yeah, I haven't. Oh I'm excited for you. Chase did listen to his vinyl, so he's he's interested.
SPEAKER_02Multiple times, multiple times. Very cool. Yeah, I'm I'm really hyped for it now.
SPEAKER_04Just to clear it up, uh Stanley Donwood, the guy that did most of most, if not all, of the blips. Um the bear was made around this time, specifically for marketing and merchandise. So I was wrong in that it came before that. It came for this album. Um, and they originated in stories that he made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the grown-ups who had band who had abandoned them.
SPEAKER_02How young were his poor children?
SPEAKER_04I don't know. It's different telling it than it is for him to draw that out and then show them before bed.
SPEAKER_02I guess so, but I feel like the premise of them being teddy bears that are eating people still probably quite spooky. That's a good point. Are you gonna give us a I'm gonna give it a Johnny? I think it's cool. But I feel like my head is discompopulated enough that I can't mix up some things.
SPEAKER_04I could say Oh dear. And you know, I think the difference between us and you is that you're a lot closer to bedtime than we are.
SPEAKER_02That could be part of it. I I'm conscious that I'm still supposed to be doing some work before bed as well, so that might be playing a factor.
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, and you're gonna want to be getting this out of your head. I'm going for a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner in like an hour, and you're Chase is gonna spend the rest of the evening uh swearing at baseball and eating soup, and you're gonna have to sit there with all of these weird blips in your head.
SPEAKER_05Well, I do have trivia as well. That's another important thing to mention. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a slightly different context, I guess. You're right. Yeah, it's hitting us all differently.
SPEAKER_04What is this trivia? Are you going to trivia?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Uh on Mondays, we typically do trivia, although we have we've missed like three or four weeks. But we're back. Well, I hope some radiohead blip stuff comes up for you. Honestly, I do believe there was a radiohead question like a month ago, which made me feel good about answering. But um that's just a fun thing to do. I I you know it's cool to do trivia. Although I don't know how it's gonna work because the you know, we do it at this uh it's like a brewery, and in the summer they do it outside, and there's like a nice patio and all this stuff. And then in the winter they typically have like a room for it, but they have changed the back room to a speakeasy. So I'm not entirely sure where they're going to do the trivia. Well, we could do it here, you know.
SPEAKER_04I'll sh I'll shoot some trivia so you can remember Radiohead stuff we've covered already.
SPEAKER_05Honestly, I feel like that would be fun. It would be fun to do a little trivia episode, like a Family Feud would not be the right word, like a Jeopardy style thing.
SPEAKER_04Right. Um also uh I mention I mentioned this to Nico, Chase, but uh I have activated a section where people can text the podcast. So uh when you see it on an episode, it'll say send us a text if you're looking at it. I think on Spotify. I know it's on Amazon. I checked already.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you could do it through Spotify.
SPEAKER_04Uh yeah, I think I think it's a link that you follow to send us an actual text through, and it'll come to my email address. So if we get a bunch of those, oh I'll put them all together for uh uh question and answer um episode.
SPEAKER_05And I would assume that would be something that we release.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_04It wouldn't be like we're gonna wait till 2026 to release as soon as I get enough questions, then I'll I'll record it and put it out as soon as possible. That would be cool. I really think this is going. What Chase is saying for you people that are listening is we're recording this on Monday, October 14th.
SPEAKER_05Oh. I honestly thought that we'd be.
SPEAKER_04This isn't coming out until well, I don't know when this is coming out. Two years from now. I'd say February of 2025. Actually, not that far out in the future.
SPEAKER_02That's not as bad as I thought.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for that was a point where it was just ridiculous.
SPEAKER_05There was, I think, a point where it was like two years in the future.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and it uh you know, uh fortunately for my situation at home, it worked out perfectly.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I actually would agree that was very perfect. Yeah, so thank you both for recording them that much. Absolutely. I really, really enjoy doing this. This is like a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_04I appreciate that. Hearing that on episode 116 is quite nice.
SPEAKER_05Um is a big number.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05I can't count that high, so you know, props to you.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, gentlemen.
SPEAKER_05We'll see you again.
SPEAKER_04Chase, we will see you again. Oh, I wanna say in eleven weeks.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Damn, that's quite a long time to do that. Yeah. Are we not getting a score from you, by the way? Oh, yeah, you didn't even give your own score.
SPEAKER_04Okay, I'll say uh uh a Johnny and a half, just to be in between the two again. Nice.
SPEAKER_05I also took a look at the sheet and I have noticed that I typically seem to be giving higher scores than anyone else.
SPEAKER_04But you're coming at this differently than the two of us, right? We've already heard the songs. That's true. I've seen these videos too many times, and Nico is Nico, so who knows how to do it. Yeah, I'm just uh right.
SPEAKER_02There's no rhyme or reason, and now I'm jaded by life, so my scores have gone down.
SPEAKER_04I think Nico judges it basically specifically on where you are in the day and how it's getting you that day.
SPEAKER_02Honestly, very possible.
SPEAKER_05Which to be fair is a very valid way to judge next. Yeah, I agree.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, gentlemen. Um we will see you soon.
SPEAKER_00Bye.
SPEAKER_02The intro and outro music are radio head covers and can be found on Spotify under the band Liflif T E with F as an folks. Also, find us on TikTok and Vimeo under the name F Headfull of Radio.
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