The Zimmermann Note

The special place that this album has with me is that it was the first album that both my wife and I could embrace at the same time. I also feel that looking back at my list that it still might be a little too low and should be higher on the list.

To suggest that was not an important part of our relationship would be an understatement. When we started dating, I was concerned that our music interests were too disparate and so the commonality of Radiohead was important. Since that time we have crossed paths like two men crossing streams in a urinal. There have been bands like Tame Impala, The National, Animal Collective, Caribou, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin to name a few.

I remember the moments during the wedding ceremony that ‘Reckoner’ was played, and they are moments you carry with you for the rest of your life. As for the theme of the song, Thom Yorke has stated the premise of ‘Reckoner’ was having an almost transcendental dream only to wake up and wished that you hadn’t and well I have not woken up yet.

Only a couple months ago, I was putting together a video montage of my sons important moments captured on video. His birth, his first steps, rolling over, laughing, .etc, and the backing track for some of the video was “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, a song that for me asks the question whether I should chase after something beautiful or remain safe and maybe as a parent my perception of the song had changed.

There is one song on the album, however, that I can state with confidence that my wife has an intense dislike and that is the song ‘Videotape’. When we have watched events such as Newtown and Boston occur, she points to this song as reminding her of those tragic moments. For me, I agree 100% and see this song as that emotional reminder to horrific events.

Musically, ‘In Rainbows’ felt much warmer which I would imagine is a bit more of a departure from their more recent albums. While albums like Kid A and Amnesiac, prior to this approached unique musical directions, ‘In Rainbows’ is a bit more conventional musically but unconventional lyrically, from a Radiohead standpoint by dealing with being human. While there is a “Fear Factor” to the lyrics, the music still finds ways to demonstrate that humanlike quality of beauty, versus other albums which were more overtly political, dark, cold and foreboding.

The big news with this album was Radiohead’s decision to let fans choose what they wanted the price to be, a huge gamble that paid off in the end for the band. Outside of the publicity that they received, what aided a band like Radiohead was the fact that the album was not being reviewed prior to the release which meant that everyone critics and fans were getting the music at the same time. It created an interesting dilemma for the fact that a review of an album should not be made in haste. There were some news outlets that probably pushed a review early just to get that review out.

In retrospect, they picked the perfect album to pull this off with because it was critically acclaimed. They were big enough that the fanatics were definitely going to be purchasing said album at release and they created an interesting experiment to identify how you sell music.