Radiohead's Kid A

A few reflections on civilizational crisis

[Dear Substack Reader, greetings from an actually sunny Michigan. Spring, it seems, is right around the corner, and the tundra has dissipated. A couple of folks have asked me for my views on the current war with Iran. Here they are, for what they’re worth:

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The Constitution seems rather clear to me. “Congress shall have power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water” (Article I, Section 8). Further, “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States” (Article II, Section 2). While I admit that not everyone takes the Constitution literally, I would prefer that they did. Regardless, one can look at the debates of the Constitutional Convention, August 17, 1787, to see that while it was expected that the president would repel any invasion and lead war, once declared, it was Congress alone that could declare and, without being directly attacked, instigate it. As Representative Sherman noted on that day, “The Executive should be able to repel and not to commence war.” In Federalist Paper 69, Alexander Hamilton makes the same case. While the Executive could wage war, he could and should not initiate it. James Madison seems to have summed all this up in Federalist 51, when he notes that “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”

At age 58, let me admit my bias. I have opposed every single American military intervention since 1989. While a graduate student at Indiana University, I even (rather pathetically) opposed one of Bill Clinton’s many military adventures by leading a campus protest. Only about 8 protestors showed up. That was the end of my formal rebellion.

I can also state that I was 11 when Iran took American hostages in 1979. I was and remain horrified by that. That year, our local radio station made frequent use of a mock song, “Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran,” imitating “Barbara Ann” by the Beach Boys. I’ve never forgiven the Iranian government, and I consider it to be one of the most evil extant governments over the last half century. Though I wish President Trump had taken his case to Congress first, I do not shed any tears over the collapse of the Iranian government, especially as I see the joyous reaction of Iranians across the globe.

I’m also ashamed by the company I must keep because of my constitutionalist position. Frankly, though, the Democrats cannot under any circumstances lay moral claim to the constitutional argument, no matter how obstreperous they are about it. For eight dreadful and bloody years, they sat by silently while Barack Obama dropped nearly 100,000 bombs without congressional authorization. He also droned hundreds, including innocent civilians and even two American citizens. Obama is nothing short of a blood-thirsty murderer, a true war criminal, and the Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their impotence.

Yet, here we are, Constitution or no Constitution, at war with and in Iran. At this point, whatever my initial wishes, I can only pray for our troops and for the people of Iran. I wish them all well.

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So, there they are. I’m sure we’re all in disagreement about a myriad of things, and my own observations might very well introduce confusions rather than answer. Such is the fog of war.

Below, though, is a piece I wrote responding to Steven Hyden’s excellent history of 9/11 and Kid A, This Isn’t Happening. It strikes me that the current moment is akin to that moment, 25 years ago.

As always, Substack Readers, I wish you nothing but the very best. Yours, Brad]

I had just turned 33 when Radiohead’s Kid A came out on October 2, 2000, and I was in my second full-year of teaching at Hillsdale College. My wife and I had been married for two years, and we were expecting our second child.

Though I purchased it on CD, I pretty much wore it out playing it continuously for a year or so after its release (at least until Amnesiac came out the following late spring). For whatever reason, I especially loved having Kid A on low volume during office hours. It, more often than not, became a conversation piece with my students. And, my students seemed to love the album as much as I did.

Admittedly, I was relatively new to Radiohead. Like everyone else in the early 90s, I had heard “Creep”—Radiohead’s original and the Tears for Fears cover—innumerable times, but it never just grabbed me. It always seemed like a nice alternative pop song, but nothing more. At the time, I was even surprised that someone as innovative as Roland Orzabal played it, considering his original music. . . well, far more original.

In the fall of 1997, I purchased O.K. Computer in a small record shop in Helena, Montana. To say that I was blown away by it would be a total understatement. The album absolutely floored me, and, being a prog rock guy, I thought prog had found its answer to the disappearance of classic Yes and Peter-Gabriel era Genesis. Admittedly, I became more than a little obsessed with Radiohead, purchasing then Pablo Honey, The Bends, My Iron Lung, and Airbag. I had family and friends in Japan at the time, and I was able to get some Japanese releases of Radiohead, too. In other words, I became a full-blown Radiohead obsessive. To this day, I own every release (including several obscure ones) as well as several books by or about Radiohead. I also religiously watched the video, Meeting People is Easy.

Yet, for whatever reason, I’ve hardly written about the band. I’ve listed Radiohead albums—especially Kid A—as among my favorites, but I’ve never given them the writing space I’ve given to Talk Talk, Rush, Steven Wilson, Big Big Train, Kate Bush, or Tears for Fears.

To be sure, I have no idea how I missed Steven Hyden’s excellent 2020 book, This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s Kid A and the Beginning of the 21^st Century. In fact, crazily, I’d never heard of it until my wife gave it to me for Christmas. Then, I devoured it. A truly great read.

A music journalist, Hyden—ten years younger than yours truly—offers a memoir of growing up with Radiohead and being 23 when Kid A first appeared. As he sees it, though Kid A preceded 9/11 by nearly a year, it perfectly captured the mood of the beginnings of the twenty-first century, a century, thus far, of political polarization, paranoid, and warfare. This, then, is the essence of the book. Throughout This Isn’t Happening, Hyden offers a beautiful essay on the meaning of music, the meaning of life, and the meaning of the world. It’s all terribly subjective, of course, but it’s excellent as such.

As he brilliant sums up in his conclusion:

That’s what I hear now when I listen to Kid A—a desperation to not feel disconnected from one another, our environment, our very own souls or whatever the essence of who we are is. Radiohead diagnosed this malaise at the heart of so many of us at the dawn of the twenty-first century. And then they (perhaps unwittingly) offered themselves up as a remedy, crating music that has provided a common thread in our personal narratives, a rare constant presence amid so much change and disruption. Even as everything else in your life has been turned over since the first time you heard ‘Creep,’ you still have your relationship with this band’s music. Even when Radiohead themselves have felt lost, they’re provided ballast to so many of us for decades. You can hear the common anxieties that bonded so many of us back then in Kid A—about technology, about globalism, about the precarious state of truth and decency in our political lives. Radiohead conveyed these chaotic feelings with free-jazz horn sections and Aphex Twin-inspired glitches and other musical flourishes that might seem outdated now. But, the vibe of this record—the uncertainty, the darkness, the abject fear that things will only grow worse—has felt like a constant in our world ever since.

While I could relate to many of Hyden’s personal experiences, there were also several I couldn’t. On the relatable side, I never once voted for a Bush—the original or Scrub—and I was deeply opposed to the military conflicts after 9/11.

On the unrelatable side, Hyden comes from a much more culturally left-wing position than I do, and I’m also come out of a prog background rather than a pop one. Hyden also references several music groups and movies I’ve never even heard of. I suppose this is just generational defects on my part.

Hyden also makes a convincing case that Kid A is a bold and revolutionary move in Radiohead’s discography. To me, it was always a natural and fascinating evolution from OK Computer, in the way that Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden evolved from The Colour of Spring. After reading This Isn’t Happening, I’m now more on Hyden’s side. Maybe Kid A truly was revolutionary for the band.

I only have one complaint, and it’s a fairly minor one. At times, Hyden is prone to exaggeration. Believe me, it’s part of the charm of the book, too. But, when he makes statements such as 9/11 being “the worst tragedy in American history,” I have to scratch my head. Worst in what way? Numerically? Far more—in fact, 52,000—died at the Battle of Gettysburg. Morally? I would call the internment of Japanese-Americans under Franklin Roosevelt, the enslavement of African-Americans, or the unwarranted decimation of the American Indian far more tragic. Anyway, a minor complaint.

I don’t want to end on a negative note. Again, I highly recommend this book—for anyone interested in music or, frankly, the world itself. One of my favorite parts of This Isn’t Happening was the author hypothetically creating his own version of Kid A/Amnesiac. It was thoughtful and thought-provoking, and I felt like a good friend had just made a mixed tape for me. Thank you, Steven.