A Reminder

Played 40 times

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Like every Radiohead album, I highly anticipated the release of Amnesiac. I mean the nervously-walking-around-in-circles-the-last-days-leading-up, pacing-back-and-forth, over-analyzing-the-list-of-tracks-that-made-it-on, how-they-would-sound-and-if-I-would-become-obsessed-again-or-only-just-‘really like them’-kind of anticipation.

It came out ten years ago yesterday, hence this post.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘whoa’. But it was Radiohead and already nearly a decade of my political, economic, and geo-social development that I can partially attribute to them (but mostly my parents and a few amazing professors).

Released only eight months earlier, I was not even full from my daily dose of Kid A on repeat. I mean, it was too soon to firmly ask the question then but some people were quietly thinking, “How are these Oxford homeys even going to come close to following-up that album with something awesome again?”

I wasn’t one of these people.

Now imagine being abroad, fucking far from the ease of knowing US record release dates and purchase locations. Traveling between continents, having to guess between international time zones and dates when you’d be able to pick up your copy…in CD format of course. 

My Sony Discman was getting hungry. I was motherfucking starving.

I had been in South Africa the month leading up to Amnesiac’s release. On a research trip to analyze ‘Post-Apartheid Nation Building’, my head hurt and my mind was blown after we had interviewed, studied and analyzed activists and victims of a nation I only started to get to know. (I moved there a year later). I was only focused on the depths of that research during the entire trip. But upon our departure, I was hungry for the new politically infused-Radiohead that awaited me.

On the way home, the only time I didn’t dwell on the fact that I’d soon be listening to what was sure to be a badass album, was when I was in the cockpit of the 747, flying back to Amsterdam over North Africa. (This was three months before 9/11. I met a stranger on the plane who flew this route often. A Dutch descendant living in South Africa who knew the pilot and pulled some strings. That on it’s own was amazing and beautiful experience. Separate post coming later).

Upon our descent into Amsterdam, after 11+ hours of flying, I remembered my mission upon landing for our layover there. I was not about to wait 35 more hours until I got to the States to find my first copy.

Hell naw.

Exited the aircraft. Dropped my backpack sans wallet with our research group. And bolted to the information desk.

“I’ve got 35 hours but where can I buy a new CD *now*?” 

Got my location, ran to the general music/media/magazine store at the airport and what did I see?

Goddamn right.

Bought. Owned. Stared at the plastic case. Unsleeved it. Read everything as I walked back to the group only to quickly pause and say I’d be back in some hours.

Found a quiet bench by myself facing the runway. Popped it in carefully (no scratches, please!) and played it on repeat more times than you or I can count.

It might be an underdog but it’s another beautiful political, economic, philosophical reminder that they care about another world they could easily forget due to their faculties and success. I told this to Thom four times before this moment. But it seemed truer even then.

Two months later my Mom flew her and I to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio to see Radiohead live together for the first time, on the Amnesiac tour. When Thom played a piano-solo version of ‘Like Spinning Plates’, we both cried a bit together.

I told her that track was about Patrice Lumumba and Mobutu in the Congo. But she already knew because I had told her before on the plane ride over.

:)

“We ride tonight.

We ride tonight.

Ghost horses.

Ghost horses.

Ghost horses.”