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August 10, 2005
the rhinopotamus speaks for the final time
Radiohead - The Thief (Can cover)
When will people give this band the attention they deserve?! Poor English bastards. Anyway, this cover they did of Can's 'The Thief' (from "Delay") was almost played live at the Amnesty International Festival in December '98 but replaced at the last minute with 'Street Spirit' (this was sort of a big deal at the time, if I remember correctly, because in those pre-Can-is-awesome-and-everyone-knows-it-days, people were under the quite mistaken impression that 'The Thief' was going to be a new song, and this, whew, was during the extreme drought of new Radiohead material which itself would not break until the release of Kid A in October 2000- point being that the disappointment among Radiohead fans when they didn't play 'the Thief' was both intense and near-palpable). But hey, Radiohead did eventually play this tune (obviously) in September 2000, in Copenhagen (good things happen in Denmark, viz. that Mt. Eerie live triple-LP). And it was good. Thom says, "this is a song by Can we're gonna do. It's called the Thief. I hope you like it." And he means it.
One thing I was reminded of the other day, having been given the DVD of 'Meeting People is Easy' (my VHS copy has been somehow digested by the piles of junk in the attic of my parents' house), was how many amazing unreleased Radiohead songs have been documented, either live or in a sort of half-existence (e.g. Follow Me Around, Big Boots/Man O'War). Although some of you might remember (or not) that when RH did those webcasts back in the day during the recording sessions for Kid A/Amnesiac, they played a pretty developed version of 'There There', and that song wasn't released for another 3-4 years. So there's always hope- maybe songs like 'Lift' and 'Reckoner' will show up on the inevitable Radiohead box set(s), 10 or 15 years from now.
P.S. If anyone can send me the acoustic versions of Big Ideas, Motion Picture Soundtrack and Man O'War from the '96-'98 era, or that one live version of True Love Waits with the keyboard line in it, I would be extremely grateful. Those songs formed a large chunk of the soundtrack to my freshman year in college = guess who spent a lot of time pining for certain girls and reading lots of Russian poetry (Pushkin) and being sangry [sad + angry] in general? After that I discovered beer and was straight-up ROWDY (was a philsophy major, afterall, it kind of comes with the territory), sort of like the kid in PCU but without the guiding wisdom of Jeremy Piven.
Posted by Kevin at August 10, 2005 12:46 AM
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