Rumor control, here are the facts: Colbert & the Radiohead Effect

nation, it is no secret that i am a colbert admirer. he grew on me after jon steward’s half hour didn’t quench the thirst of pundit satire anymore. anyway, sometimes, when i travel i don’t always get to see the daily jon&stephen bundle so when i return home i patiently download all that i’ve missed and see it through. i must confess that this process gives a certain larger picture from time to time. so there i was, watching the last five or six reports and the thoughts started flowing in and all over. This is what happened, is my best possible re-rendering.

First, Colbert did Radiohead. This was the first one hour long report ever done, and probably will remain so for a quite a while. It started with Radiohead promoting King of Limbs. Here’s a band, ten years after kid a. god! here is a band that after they did kid a they still continued to do music, for better or worst, for fans and for themselves, for labels and not, rock and not. all true, i told myself, but to think that radiohead is the same band as ten years ago, or some sort of evolved entity of that same nature is just plain wrong.

what happened? they have changed.

music has changed. thom york has changed. jonny did the incomprehensible body song soundtrack in 2003 and then blew us away with the score for there will be blood after four years. That’s change you can believe in! These guys, unlike any of us, have changed by doing, not by talking. each day, little by little they did something a little bit different. each day they reviewed their judgement on everything around them, particularly the hard inhabited subjects like music, style and culture. they questioned everything and they questioned themselves. so after ten years they are lightyears away from kid a. they are the only rock band i can think of that are on the edge of different consecutive generations. rulers of the hipsters. composers of the future. it’s not even funny anymore.

so here they are at colbert. why? because now they are self produced. because they want the american market. because america wants them. neither knows why. besides the marketing genius, keeping in mind all the thoughts of before, the radioheads basicaly promote themselves. they are anti corporations and labels but the whole gig is brought to you by dr pepper. thom and ed talk global warming and how they now ship their gear with only boats and trucks so that no jet fuel. they put issues on the table but also sing and perform and entertain. they are arrogant but also trustworthy. they are serious but funny.

my first conclusion: radiohead, not only is not embarrassed to perform, talk and show up at colbert, but also does it without feeling or showing any compromise. Very aware, very in control.  if you do something you should do it all the fucking way, and there is no place on earth where your creative concept can not fit/mingle/catch breath. radiohead, one of the most elitist intellectual groups in arts and culture right today, made a bridge with mainstream, pothead, tv watching, satire loving, passive, late-night americans. Truth. Word.

Then, Colbert did Black Star. This was starting to get a bit much. Black Star is  Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli. but if you look closely you will see that yasiin is actually mos def. the rapper. so after having radiohead on, colbert brings an underground hip hop project with its last album out in the 90′. in the 90′s! no new song, no new album, no nothing. he brings them on to talk about corporate rap, independent singing and underground culture and music. i don’t know if any of the readers here taste a bit of rap now and then, but any of us imagine a 90′s rap project. we see lots of bling, we see shorty, the slit ass shake, obscene mob scene, all black everything.

then… Black Star come on stage and perform. they have steez and they have swagger. they are impeccably dressed, their moves are slick, the flow is unstoppable. what bling? what? and then it hit me. the radiohead effect. when something changes so much it becomes something different altogether. jay-z, mos def, black keys, kanye, there is a new rap out there that looks, talks and walks differently. they also changed. and with good reason. they cant rap about the same shit they raped in the 90′s. those problems are long gone.

second and final thought: rap was the social music of a struggle. the struggle’s done, or at least it changed. and the fact that it’s music changes fluently with it make so much sense to me that it gives legitimacy to the genre. the blacks have a president and white people are also seen driving ny cabs, so, there, go on, rap about that white boy.

the shows were as follows:

for Radiohead watch Colbert Report on the 26th of September 2011
for Black Star watch Colbert Report on the 5th of October 2011

cypher of thought brought to you by colbert and dr pepper,

represent.