In a past life, Fresh and the Qualifier used to get paid to write about music. For years they toiled through a tag-team article called Counterbalance, going head to head, hashing out the relative merits of new releases for the local Chicken Dinner Newspaper. But that was a long time ago - before the economy crashed, sending their frivolous Arts & Entertainment section down in flames.
After wandering in the wilderness, lost and directionless, Fresh and the Qualifier have returned to take on their most challenging assignment: the Greatest Albums of All-Time. Do these critics' darlings hold up, or are they just hyped up?
After wandering in the wilderness, lost and directionless, Fresh and the Qualifier have returned to take on their most challenging assignment: the Greatest Albums of All-Time. Do these critics' darlings hold up, or are they just hyped up?
And then there was Radiohead. Arguably the biggest band over the past decade, the Oxford quintet made their label a mint, jumped shipped and then printed their own ticket, effectively remaking the music industry's business model in their own image. But before the super stardom, the sold out world tours and the eventual creative and financial independence, Radiohead had to transform themselves from a college radio rock band with a respectable following into the juggernaut that gives even the most stolid record exec nightmares, and it all started with 1997's OK Computer. Is Radiohead's OK Computer the towering dynamo critics say it is or is it just another flash in the Britpop frying pan? Fresh and the the Qualifier debate - next:
Fresh: Before we talk about where we first heard this record or how it made us feel or why our world is a better place because of it or any of that - I'd just like to throw this out there: Radiohead's OK Computer is to the 1990s (and probably the next two decades) what the Beach Boy's Pet Sounds was to the 1960s (and 70s and 80s).
Qualifier: Hmm... sonically daring, aesthetically bold and fetishized beyond its standing by pale mopey geeks? You may be onto something there, Freshy.
Continue reading Counterbalance: OK Computer.
I can still recall with absolute clarity the day I first heard Radiohead's Kid A. In early 2000 there had been some rumblings on the infant Internet about a new Radiohead album. Whispers that Kid A might be wholly different from what had come before. These rumors proved true as I had managed to score some demo songs from Napster about three months prior to the album's release date. The demos were rough, missing the final production that would flesh out the songs, that proverbial bolt of lightning to bring them to life. I was weary of what may come, how could they top OK Computer? Were the boys of Oxford really forsaking their guitars for electronic noise? Was Radiohead on the verge of committing career suicide? 
