Review Summary: What you say when Computer asks - How Was it for You, Baby?
First, a little history…
The day – 1988 AD. The place – Taedong, a small agrarian province to the East of Pyongyang, North Korea. An unassuming librarian named Rosa Parks tries to use a water fountain, only to be stopped by local germophobe and overall nincompoop, Kim Jong-Un. A bored professionally-outraged Jewish woman named Ayn Rand, who happens to be nearby bumming cigarettes, documents the event in her diary, later to become The Fountainhead. The backlash that ensues from the violation of Parks’ civil right causes North Korea to be voted ‘Third Worst Korea’ at the Peoples’ Choice Awards.
Rosa Parks’ later career as a juggler in a travelling circus would be immortalized in the documentary series, Parks and Recreation.
Rosa Parks would eventually leave North Korea, as it was a very dry winter and she was sick as *** of being zapped by light-switches. So she escaped to Paraguay, the Free World! There she met artful vagrant Tilda Swinton, and the two entered into a civil union together. A few years later, Louis CK donated some sperm to them and the couple made offspring. Their genetic cocktail proved to be a musical treasure trove. Their first son, Michael Gira would go on to write ballet masterpiece, Swan-lake. Their middle daughter Bjork would become prime minister of ABBA. And their third son, Thom Yorke would become an Englishman.
Meanwhile, across the world…
Joseph Goebbels fled from Nazi Germany after it stopped being Nazi Germany and became Yahtzee Germany. He came to San Francisco, where he played that nifty name game where you take your favourite colour and what you call your erect pecker, and became Johnny Greenwood.
Radiohead was formed when Yorke and Greenwood met at a Radioshack in Western Idaho, where they both stocked shelves. Their first album, Pablo Honey, would later be referred to by Yorke as ‘the only good thing I ever did.’ The album became a hit on the back of Radiohead covering TLC classic Creep.
After their initial success, the band realized they needed a guy to drum drums. Since drummers are meant to keep time, Greenwood thought of egg timers, and subsequently eggs. So the band put out an ad for a bald drummer, and local Mumford and Sons drop-out Phillip Selway answered it. The relationship was initially rocky, as Selway was bald the way bald eagles are bald, in that he wasn’t bald at all. But eventually, he would become bald. That’s when the magic happened.
Though neither wore condoms, OK Computer would become their Magnum Opus. Once the AIDS epidemic happened, Yorke insisted on condoms, but Greenwood would just shut off the bedroom lights and crinkle a plastic bag by the bed and pretend he was all strapped-up. That’s how Kid A happened. Kid B was planned though.
OK Computer was written about a very difficult day for Yorke and Greenwood. It was the day Stephen Hawking retired from the NBA to become RoboCop. The album deals with our addiction to technology and vigilante justice. It came with a Parental Advisory sticker, because Selway kept ***ing up the beat and muttering ‘Gosh Darn It!’ during recording. His wonky drumming became an art movement known as avant-garde. Greenwood later wrote the score to Judy Blume's book about female puberty, There Will be Blood.
OK Computer covers a wide variety of potent topics of social discourse. Yorke comments on the most pressing issues of today, like salmonella (Exit Music), Pakistani cops (Karma Police), Kim Kardashian’s ass (Airbag), and his own addiction to scratch cards (Lucky). When the album first came out, it shattered all perceptions of what art school grads were truly capable of, causing what can only be described as a diarrhea-like flow of terrible bands, which at the time, left many a Starbucks without a barista. That’s why you can buy this CD in every Starbucks now.
This collector’s edition comes with a used DVD copy of Home Alone 3, a half-ounce of heroin, and an imitation fart gun from the Despicable Me franchise, so it’s definitely worth it.
In conclusion, OK Computer is more than OK. It’s downright peachy-keen, with some parts even being dandy. And you can have it for free, because Pay-what-you-can is really Don’t-pay-nothing-dummy in the land of Internet. Thanks, Stephen Hawking!
