Beck (who shows up for about 10 seconds), St. Vincent, Liars and Sergio Dias have managed to take this beautiful ballad and update it into something that’s arguably as touching as the original. They replaced the tacky 80s keyboards with tasteful violins, removed any signs of electric guitar, and even traded the sax solo for a violin solo, which somehow works. There’s still 4 songs left for the ensemble to cover, and we can hardly wait.

For those slow on the uptake, Beck pulled together a group of his musician friends to record their own version of Kick by INXS, and so far the results have been great. Previous weeks have seen the patchwork batch release New Sensation, Guns In The Sky and Devil Inside.  

This week we have Need You Tonight, arguably the best interpretation from the classic ’80s album thus far.

St. Vincent’s Annie Clark handles vocal duties on this one, her milk-drop voice delicately floating through the instrumentation (with a little help from Liars’ Angus Andrews).

I normally detest ’80s-related anything, but if I can get down with Hot Tub Time Machine, I can get down with this.

Previously, the Record Club parties have covered such gems as the Velvet Underground’s first album and Skip Spence’s Oar. Kick marks the first time  they’ve fully embraced ’80s cheesepop, and from what we’ve seen so far, things are looking promising…

Check out the first track on the album, Guns In The Sky:

The concept of Beck playing captain to a patchwork quilt of musicians covering the entirety of such an iconic ’80s album is a thrilling one for anyone who was a kid during the time, for anyone who actually remembers the short-lived sex-taboo power behind Devil Inside, the ridiculously celebratory New Sensation and, of course, the melodramatic sexual immersion of Never Tear Us Apart. If you’ve seen an Electric Six show in the past couple years, you’ve likely borne witness to their hilariously deadpan cover of the track.

Whatever your affiliation with the ’80s, this project is bound to produce some very interesting sounds. Perhaps the surviving members of INXS could’ve saved themselves the humiliation of that ill-fated reality show to find a replacement singer and gone with Beck instead. More on this as it develops.

Over the span over seven albums and two millennia, they’ve become an airtight, utterly telepathic band, seamlessly tearing through a setlist spanning their entire careers to an enraptured crowd, without having to resort to masturbatory, dated hits unreflective of their current sound (that means you, Creep). The gig was broadcast live around the world from the band’s official website, and featured a diverse careering-spanning setlist. But this was no buoyant, high energy affair; after the first batch of songs (including a fantastic and much more colorful Optimistic), the band downshifted into a set of slow, downtempo numbers that left us all wanting a bit more fire. 

Opening act The Liars, a beat-heavy New York noise-rock outfit, could be interesting if their singer were as heavily invested in being on key and melodically creative as he is in his own ego. The guy’s a self-absorbed prick, and everything about his contribution to the band is dreadful. This is just the kind of band that hipster critics and indie-rock scouts compare to Sonic Youth and swear to high hell are bursting with misunderstood genius (I’m serious- look ‘em up), but let me tell you- I’ve seen enough shitty bands (and amazing ones) to know that there’s nothing fucking genius about the Liars. They are to Sonic Youth what Ex-Lax is to a candy bar, and their frontman is an asshole who can’t sing. 

After that pathetic fiasco we watched the sunset from our seats in the Bowl, where you can see the palm-lined beaches hugging the ocean in the distance. It’s a beautiful venue setting, nestled into a little canyon in a surprisingly suburban neighborhood. There was a house party at the top of the hill, overlooking the stage. Imagine that- Radiohead playing in your backyard.

The band’s video and lighting presentation was impressive- an assortment of columns resembling appendages of a massive pipe organ surrounded the band, serving as a fragmented luminescent canvas for a mesmerizing light show that resembled everything from a canopy of fire to twinkling Christmas lights to binary code falling like rain in the Matrix (appropriately timed for the It should be raining… line in The Gloaming). At the rear of the stage was a rectangular video display spanning the stage’s entire width, with alternating sections of the screen broadcasting each bandmember with abstract angles in the camerawork. As a finishing touch, two Tibetan flags were also draped on the backs of keyboards, an interesting contrast to the LED icicles forming a cave around the band.

It was a downtempo evening. Thom Yorke and Co. have never seemed so collectively relaxed in all the years that I’ve seen them, and I’m tempted to say that’s a bad thing. Don’t get me wrong- they’re amazing at what they do and have honed themselves to a fine point of perfection, but they’ve gotten quite comfortable in their roles- something that can sap some of the thrill from any performance. Their mood overall seemed to be ragged triumph, with shades of can’t wait to get home. Understandably- they’ve had quite an eventful year.

Radiohead simply operates on a completely different level from most contemporary music heavyweights. Rather than milk the crowd with anthemic radio hits, the band focuses  on hypnotic intensity and nuanced delicacy. It’s certainly not the band I saw tear the sky open at Coachella in 2004, making 60,000 bodies bounce like fucking kangaroos on speed.

But that was four long years ago, when Thom was still a bit pissy and the band had a more aggressive approach in their live performance. They haven’t lost all their bite, however, as evidenced by a blistering Paranoid Android- preceded by Yorke’s warning for participants in California’s plastic surgery craze.

“So this is for anyone who’s had surgery,” he smirked. “You’re gonna be dead soon. Its all going south brotha.” 

The National Anthem was a show highlight, for sure, but the fact that it was sandwiched between two of the softest things the band’s ever done (Morning Bell and Faust Arp) didn’t exactly lend itself to a rising energy. Yorke and guitarist / multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood took to the pensive, gorgeous Faust Arp by themselves, huddled around the mic with two guitars and darkness surrounding them. Yorke’s voice is as unmistakably unique as the band’s electro / post-rock atmospherics, ranging between angelic and a wounded animal with a gravity of passion not to be underestimated. 

Despite the reserved energy, the real fans were fully engaged throughout. In 15 Step, we (the audience) replaced the children’s choir with our own unprovoked “Yeah!” -right on time, too. During a faithful rendition of No Surprises, the line Bring down the government / They don’t… they don’t speak for us elicited a deafening roar of approval. Our excitement got the best of Yorke at times, who broke out his signature dance epileptics on several occasions throughout the night.

Not everybody was as appreciative of the moody texture; as stagehands wheeled out Thom’s upright piano for the longing, mid-suffocation love song All I Need, the crowd thinned out considerably, and the guy next to me shouted “It’s about to get lesbian in here!” before heading down to the beer stand. He later expressed disappointment that they didn’t play Creep- an unrelated detail, I’m sure.

I’m just an insect / trying to get out of the night, Yorke nearly whispered through the soft fuzz, as a swarm of cellphones and digital cameras lit up the crowd like electric fireflies.

For the first encore, Yorke delivered a gripping performance of his Eraser track Cymbal Crash, positioned so that the only way to watch him was on the huge screens. He performed several songs alone at the piano with his back to the crowd, which didn’t strike me as standoffish so much as an attempt to keep the focus on the subtle beauty of the music.

The rave-worthy Idioteque closed the show, serving as the only true sing-along of the night- an intensified climax bringing another Radiohead summer tour to a close. There were no arm-linked bows at the front of the stage, reveling in the well-deserved adoration of fans who’ve seen them through hell and back and followed them devotedly into uncharted territories, both sonically and digitally. The band simply departed one by one with a modest wave and a smile. No grandstanding, no personal glory. 

That’s why I love this band.

Admittedly, things felt a bit incomplete as the lights went up and we shuffled out into the night (I almost knocked over Jack Johnson, of all people, who was coming up the stairs in the wrong direction). Sure, it would’ve been cool to see the guys rock out a little more, but something else felt off. It was only then that I realized that the Santa Barbara Bowl has a 10 PM curfew.

Early bedtimes and rock-out deficiencies aside, however, Radiohead proved once again last night that they’re atmospheric pioneers in a purgatorial electronic landscape, where the running theme is delicate despair with bursts of angelic optimism. Whether they’re pushing industry envelopes, making crazy laser beam videos or simply blowing minds and dropping jaws with their music, this band is undoubtedly among the best of our generation.

Setlist

Reckoner
Optimistic
There There
15 Step
All I Need
Nude
Talk Show Host
Arpeggi
The Gloaming
Morning Bell
The National Anthem
Faust Arp
No Surprises
Jigsaw Falling Into Place
The Bends
Karma Police
Bodysnatchers

Encore 1

Cymbal Rush
House of Cards
Paranoid Android
Go Slowly 
Everything In Its Right Place 

Encore 2:

Videotape
Lucky 
Idioteque

soundman07 said:
“Agreed [Bill O'Reilly and Paul Wolfowitz are "Totally Full Of Shit"], but so is Olbermann, and you won’t see him crucified here.”

At this, I gasped. Well not really- that’d be totally gay- but I mean, I definitely don’t want people thinking that we’d ever turn a blind eye to someone being completely full of shit just because we agree with what they say most of the time.
So I immediately did two things. First, I welcomed soundman07 (and anyone out there) to supply us with any evidence of anyone being full of shit so we could give them a fair and equal crucifixion. Then, I started doing some research. Because I didn’t want to wait for someone else to do my detective work for me (in the spirit of true journalism), I set out to find examples of Olbermann lying.

I found a little bit right away.

In 2006, he painted an over-simplified and somewhat colored (even kinda sorta untrue) picture of the Bush administration’s lack of action on a daily briefing about Osama Bin Laden’s nefarious intentions before 9/11. And he didn’t jump to the point that the Clinton administration didn’t do anything when they were similarly alerted. Now, that’s not entirely true either- it wasn’t ignored by the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration- but it’s something that foes of Olbermann have pointed out as a clear example of bias.
Not exactly a clear cut case. And it’s far from current.

Then there was this time where Olbermann got caught “lying” when he said noone called him a liberal (god forbid) when he did 218 consecutive shows about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The truth is that his network did 218 shows about Lewinsky, and while Olbermann was involved in most of them, he did in fact, take some days off. Yes, he said to Craig Ferguson “I did 218 consecutive shows” which is technically untrue. But still, nothing worth crucifying him over; the point he was trying to make was still a completely valid one. He did an assload of shows talking shit about Bill & Monica, so it’s not very fair to say he’s only attacking conservatives.
Also, that was 2 years ago.

Then I discovered Olbermann Watch- a site dedicated to calling bullshit on Keith Olbermann. Wow, finally, the treasure trove I was looking for. I’m not being a smarmy sarcastic tree-hugger here, I really was on a serious hunt for bullshit. That’s what I do.

So I started crawling the site for clear-cut examples of Keith Olbermann lying. I’m assuming the burden of proof and I’ll give Olbermann Watch the benefit of the doubt- I’ll consider all of their allegations valid unless I can prove otherwise. Here goes:

#1) Olbermann claimed that Pastor Hagee is Mccain’s “spiritual advisor,” and Olbermann is implicating the media as the bad guys in Obama’s situation over Pastor Wright.

The first part is, in fact, not true. One might call it a lie. The second part… is kinda vague. Olbermann Watch seems to be speculating on Olbermann’s intentions, and who really knows.

#2) Olbermann claims that Bush “never met with Cindy Sheehan,” yet they met in 2004.

I hunted down the full transcript of the show in question, which Olbermann Watch did not provide. What Olbermann actually said was that “Gold Star mothers like Cindy Sheehan and others for whom where (ph) had met only tragedy and waste, having been denied any chance of making their request [to stop the war] of this president.”
The truth is, there was “minimal coverage” of a meeting between Bush and Sheehan. So she did have a chance of making such a request. It’s not clear whether or not Olbermann knew that truth, and was thusly lying, or if he just didn’t know the little-known facts. But Olbermann Watch is basically right on this one.

#3) On the same show, Olbermann called Brit Hume a “McCain supporter” (alleged lie) and also “doctored” up a quote by Hume regarding something McCain said, to better suit Olbermann’s own “propaganda.” Here’s the quote, with the parts Olbermann ommitted in italics: “I think it’s probably just a blip, but it was a bigger blip than he wanted or needed at the time. I think the overall impression of the trip was this is a man welcomed by, knowledgeable of and comfortable with foreign leaders across a big part of the globe. But the mistake, nonetheless, raises questions not about his knowledgability- we all kinda believe he has that- the question, perhaps, about his age, which is an issue. You know, the feeling was not that he’s a dope, didn’t know his way around, that he might have had a senior moment there, and that’s unfortunate for him.” Olbermann then jumped on the thought of a wartime President having a “senior moment.”

Umm.. No, I think Olbermann got it straight. Hume said McCain had a “senior moment.” That was the gist, any way you slice it.
So is Brit Hume a McCain supporter? Well, probably. Of course he’d never go on record with it, but I’m pretty sure he is. At the end of the day, since noone knows for sure, I’m not sure if it’s a lie so much as a presumption. But that’s just my own personal judgment.

Then I got to a post about the March 19th show. Olbermann Watch triumphantly claimed that Olbermann was “caught in so many lies tonight that it might well be a new Guiness World Record!” By this point, I had gone through so many posts trying my damnedest to find some smoking gun type shit, I decided that this would have to be it for today. If the “#1 Keith Olbermann blog in the world” claimed that this was the gold standard of Keith Olbermann bullshit to study, it would surely determine once and for all if Olbermann was indeed full of shit or not. So here goes:

#4) Clinton is pushing for a re-vote in Michigan, even though the issue is “moot”, and she’s blaming Obama. Olbermann claims that it’s “not in Obama’s power” to determine because the state Senate won’t consider it. This is a lie because Obama needs to give his OK- which he hasn’t done.

I thought we had him here. But actually, it isn’t really Obama holding things up. The responsibility is in the hands of The Michigan Senate, where “top Democrats indicated it lacked the two-thirds supermajority necessary to pass the bill.” Obama clearly voiced his resignations to details in the legislation in question, but with him completely out of the picture, the Senate would still not have this majority. Olbermann’s off the hook and so is Obama.

#5) Olbermann makes the false claim that Sean Hannity called Barack Obama an anti-semite.

Well, he totally did. Not a lie. And Olbermann actually didn’t say that Hannity flat-out called him an anti-semite. He kept the context of the original quote, even while totally trashing the guy.

#6) Olbermann claimed that Fox didn’t cover Iraq today (March 19th).

Here’s the quote, from the transcript, which Olbermann Watch once again failed to provide: “…Fox News coverage of the war, fifth anniversary or otherwise, equally minimal, largely tangential. A lengthy segment today with the banner, ‘Obama Slams Iraq War in Major Speech.’  Better to angle each story along the lines of the war’s critics than the war’s catastrophes.
Yet even with Fox Noise, the shame seems to lie somewhere under the surface.  Once President Bush’s speech this morning was over, it was pretty much ignored.
Fox did have time to squeeze in Senator McCain’s visit with Israeli leaders, as well as dozens of other stories having nothing to do with Iraq, all par for the course.”

So… Olbermann actually clearly acknowledged that Fox covered the Iraq war. All he said was that it was kinda light, and that they covered a lot of stuff that wasn’t related at all. Totally not a lie.

#7) Olbermann claimed that Bill O’Reilly featured a “culture quiz” segment tonight (March 19th).

There are no serious implications to this lie, it’s just something Keith Olbermann said which was not true. He didn’t fabricate an imaginary segment to smear Bill O’Reilly or anything. But anyway, who gives a shit? Besides Olbermann Watch I mean. By the time I got to this one (the fourth of a total of a “world record” setting four), it was obvious to me that while Keith Olbermann is definitely biased, he is not nearly as full of shit as Bill O’Reilly. He doesn’t double check every single fact- that’s asking a hell of a lot of a guy who talks so much- but he gets most of them right.
He’ll talk loud and say some outrageous things, which do pull in the ratings. And at the end of the day, like O’Reilly, he is a television personality and not a journalist. But if he’s a liar, his most dedicated enemies aren’t looking hard enough.

And either way, we’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Five years ago.

In a memo sent to Congress the very same day, Bush declared that his decision to invade Iraq was “to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

With roughly 170,000 coalition troops in Iraq at this very moment, and $341 million a day being spent on a massively unpopular war when experts and analysts are screaming about a devastating recession looming, there’s little question as to why Bush is being labeled “Worst President Ever” by more and more publications every day. Yet still we see that same cocky smirk, that same wave, the same assurances that everything is fine. When confronted with the fact that 70 percent of America doesn’t support this war, Dick Cheney laughs and says “So?” We’re then reminded once again that there’s a supernaturally dangerous, freedom-hating enemy out there, one that will surely chase us onto our own turf, into our very homes with their dynamite vests. That is, if we don’t kill them first.

That all makes a good bedtime story, but I’ve got a quick question. What the fuck happened to finding Bin Laden? Where’s that Mission Accomplished banner? Naturally, we don’t want to ask those kinds of complicated questions, because the answers far exceed the attention spans and carefully cultivated ignorance of fast food America. Bush and Cheney’s financial ties to Big Oil and Saudi royalty are none of our business, and who cares if all but four of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian? This is about freedom and evil, not facts and agendas.

There’s no denying that the Bush administration linked Saddam Hussein to 9/11 in order to sell a war of corporate interest in Iraq that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead, including 4,000 of our own troops. In five years’ time, Bush has offered zero evidence to support the accusations of Saddam’s involvement in or connection to 9/11. Yet still we march on, under blatantly false pretenses, amidst clear evidence of corruption, corporate pandering, lies and smokescreens surrounding virtually every facet of this presidential administration. Do we cut and run, or stick it out? The implications of consequence on either side are frightening.

In an impressive display of idiocy, yapping right-wing pathological liar and laughingstock of the rational world Bill O’Reilly marked today’s anniversary by making the fascinating claim that the United States never actually invaded Iraq. “We didn’t invade Iraq,” he declared on his show last night, contradicting statements he made in reference to the invasion during a January 28th broadcast. “I’ll submit that most folks still have no idea why the Bush administration invaded Iraq,” he said then.

Actually, Mr. No-Spin, we did invade Iraq. Our military forcefully entered the country in order to overthrow their leader. What else would you call it?

Furthermore, sir, you may remember this comment you made on March 6, 2006: “Iraq was invaded to create a friendly country between Iran and Syria, thereby pressuring those nations into a more sensible foreign policy.” Ring any bells?

Don’t be embarrassed, Billy. Bush agrees with at least one of the two stances you took on the “issue.” In a 2006 speech, he discussed the administration’s “two major invasions as a part of the war on terror.”

“We didn’t invade Iraq,” O’Reilly said. “It was a declaration of war. It was a declaration to enforce the first Gulf War Treaty.”

What O’Reilly calls a war treaty, the rest of us refer to as a cease-fire. In an interview with former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix in 2004, the following conversation transpired:

O’REILLY: Do you understand that when you have 17 violations of a treaty, a war treaty, that you basically have to take action?

BLIX: Well, you’re talking about a war treaty. It was a cease-fire. It was not a war treaty.

O’REILLY: Oh, come on. Now don’t play semantics here, sir.

BLIX: Second- all right. I’m trying to be precise. You are imprecise.

Only someone with the wealth of abstract, illogical reasoning of Bill O’Reilly could mix up the words “cease-fire” with “war treaty,” right? That’s about as crazy as saying that the U.S. occupation of Iraq ended four years ago.

Wait, what’s that?

“I’m afraid that the label ‘occupation’ sticks to us even to this day, although the occupation ended in June of 2004,” said Iraq war architect Paul Wolfowitz at the Hudson Institute Monday. Undoubtedly referring to the “official” transfer of power to the Iraqi government in June of 2004, but with roughly 170,000 U.S. troops in Iraq right now, what exactly would Wolfowitz call our presence there?

Known for being the Iraq invasion’s most passionate and compelling advocate, Wolfowitz also interestingly refrained from acknowledging the presence of some 170,000 troops still stationed in the oil-rich Middle Eastern country.

As Mr. Wolfowitz and O’Reilly have most recently shown us, the disinformation machine is very much alive and grinding. The only real mission this administration has accomplished was to convince the world that this country is nothing more than the ugly, spoiled cowboy who does what he wants ’cause he’s got the biggest guns.

Happy anniversary.