“Hamlet merges with Radiohead for new stage show”
My least fave Radiohead album gets a mashup with Billy S.
Spoiler alert! Everybody dies.
Get thee to a nunnery
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
I quite like it, for me it’s certainly better than Pablo Honey and King of Limbs, maybe A Moon Shaped Pool also.
Coincidentally, coming up here is a silent cinematic presentation of Nosferatu and the accompanying music is from Kid A and Amnesiac. Interesting
I stopped listening after six albums. I sometimes hear In Rainbows on the wireless and my ears perk up, but not enough to listen to the whole thing.
I did buy the 2CD+DVD box cheap, and I prefer the b-side tracks.
Six? I had trouble getting past 3 (3 perfectly formed, highly re-listenable albums).
Kid A had moments, but never truly loved it.
But … like a nerdy completist, I kept buying them.
I’m wondering if I really should try harder and go down a Radiohead Shaped Rabbithole
I started with the Drill EP and Pablo Honey was alright. The Bends is probably my favourite.
I saw them at their South Park (not that one) festival, and I ‘got’ Kid A and Amnesiac after seeing them do it live.
I rarely play the sixth one, though. Can’t think of the last time I did.
Kid A is their greatest album (possibly)
I prefer Amnesiac, from the same recording sessions. Nothing as good as Pyramid Song on Kid A. Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness of Album Years podcast agree that it is the better album.
I agree about Pyramid Song, it is magnificent, but I think most of the rest sounds like what it was. Leftovers. Don’t really care what Steven Wilson and the other guy think. It’s still a very good album, but I probably rate it about 5th or 6th.
I think Kid A works as a piece, they have more memorable songs on other albums., but the whole thing is perfect for me.
I rated Pyramid Song no. 6 in a list I did for the Hoffman forum. Am sure you all want to see it:
1 Paranoid Android
2 Fake Plastic Trees
3 Street Spirit (Fade Out)
4 Karma Police
5 Exit Music (for a Film)
6 Pyramid Song
7 Just
8 Lucky
9 Subterranean Homesick Alien
10 There There
11 How to Disappear Completely
12 No Surprises
13 My Iron Lung
14 The Tourist
15 Morning Bell
16 Creep
17 Let Down
18 Idioteque
19 High and Dry
20 Everything in Its Right Place
21 Black Star
22 Bones
23 The Bends
24 Sail to the Moon
25 Airbag
26 2 + 2 = 5
27 Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was
28 True Love Waits
29 The Numbers
30 Nude
31 Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
32 Burn the Witch
33 Planet Telex
34 Optimistic
35 Treefingers
36 Knives Out
37 (Nice Dream)
38 In Limbo
39 15 Step
40 Kid A
You’re obviously going to provoke an onslaught of “how could you leave out…?” so I’ll start the ball rolling.
What about Jigsaw Falling Into Place? It’s my favourite Radiohead song by a mile. I find it exhilarating every time I hear it.
House Of Cards, All I Need, Ful Stop, Present Tense, I Might Be Wrong all top notch. I think you have too many overrated softer ballads like Morning Bell, High And Dry, Sail To The Moon. Too mournful and dreary. Give the band a bad name.
Well they are all in my longer list. A band with an extraordinary number of great songs.
Morning Bell is a hard song
I didn’t like them much at first apart from the odd song on the big albums and, having come late to the party, my favourite albums are probably In Rainbows and A Moon Shaped Pool. Horses for courses I suppose.
It sounds like a rather fascinating project. I’m all in favour of pushing the Bard’s envelope.
Would I pay 60 quid or so to see it? Probably not.
It’s good I think, but pretty bleak. I prefer some of the earlier more accessible stuff – Midsummer Nights Dream, or Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, for example.
I’m looking forward to Shed Seven vs Christopher Marlowe at York Fibbers.
I like all of their albums, they are an amazing band, with a vast catalog. Even the side projects are mostly great. Hail to the Thief gets a lot of negativity, maybe we just got too much of a good thing.
Mixing it with Hamlet, I mean, why not..? Seems to fit when you listen to it in that light. I’d be up for seeing it.
“Get thee to a nunnery”
‘nunnery’ was an Elizabethan euphemism for a brothel.
I remember our English teacher at school telling us that when we were doing “Hamlet” for A level.
Yeah but Hamlet is set in the 13th Century so when he tells Ophelia to go to a nunnery, he probably means a nunnery.
In the film of The Lion in Winter there is a Christmas Tree, people in the 60s would have understood the reference despite it being an anachronism for the 12th century.
16th century theatregoers would have understood the nunnery reference.
I think it more likely the intended meaning was of the time it was written and performed. Theatregoers then were mostly not well-educated people.
As it was a slang term for a brothel I’m quite sure even if it went over the heads of some, plenty others would have got the reference.
Ultimately we’ll never know.
‘Do you think i meant country matters?’. Our English teacher never explained that one to us…
I love that this line has been delivered in the all the grand theatres of the world for over 400 years before the Sex Pistols thought they’d come up with it
And the rest.
OPHELIA
I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
OPHELIA
What is, my lord?
HAMLET
Nothing.