Tek wrote:

Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke (lead vocals, guitar, piano), Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboards, other instruments), Colin Greenwood (bass), Phil Selway (drums, percussion, backing vocals) and Ed O'Brien (guitar, backing vocals).


The members of Radiohead met while attending Abingdon School, an independent school for boys in [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abingdon,_Oxfordshire]Abingdon, Oxfordshire[/url]. Guitarist and singer Thom Yorke and bassist Colin Greenwood were in the same year, guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Phil Selway were one year older and multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood two years younger than his brother Colin.

In 1985, they formed On a Friday, the name referring to the band's usual rehearsal day in the school's music room.Jonny Greenwood was the last to join, having previously been in a band called "Illiterate Hands" with Nigel Powell and Yorke's brother Andy Yorke.The group played their first gig in late 1986 at Oxford's Jericho Tavern .Jonny Greenwood joined as a harmonica and then keyboard player, but soon became the lead guitarist.At one point, the band featured a saxophone section.



Radiohead released their debut album, Pablo Honey, in February 1993. It stalled at number 22 in the UK charts, as "Creep" and its follow-up singles "Anyone Can Play Guitar" and "Stop Whispering" failed to become hits. "Pop Is Dead", a non-album single, also sold poorly. Some critics compared the band's early style to the wave of grunge music popular in the early 1990s, dubbing them "Nirvana-lite", and Pablo Honey failed to make a critical or a commercial splash upon its initial release.Despite shared influences with popular guitar acts, and some notice for Yorke's falsetto voice, Radiohead toured only British universities and clubs.


Radiohead began work on their second album in 1994, hiring veteran Abbey Road Studios producer John Leckie.

While Radiohead were seen as outsiders to the Britpop scene that dominated the media's attention at the time, they were finally successful in their home country with The Bends,as singles "Fake Plastic Trees", "High and Dry", "Just", and "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" made their way to UK chart success; the latter song placed Radiohead in the top five for the first time.


Radiohead released their third album, OK Computer, in June 1997. Largely composed of melodic rock songs, the new record also found the band experimenting with song structures and incorporating some ambient, avant garde and electronic influences, prompting Rolling Stone to call the album a 'stunning art-rock tour de force.'


Radiohead denied being part of the progressive rock genre, but critics in the mid-'90s began to compare their work to Pink Floyd, a band whose early 1970s work influenced Greenwood's guitar parts at the time. Some compared OK Computer thematically to Floyd's best-seller The Dark Side of the Moon (1973),although Thom Yorke said the album's lyrics had been inspired by observing the "speed" of the world in the 1990s. Yorke's lyrics, embodying different characters, had expressed what one magazine called "end-of-the-millennium blues" in contrast to the more personal songs of The Bends.


OK Computer met with great critical acclaim, and Yorke admitted that he was "amazed it got the reaction it did. None of us fucking knew any more whether it was good or bad. What really blew my head off was the fact that people got all the things, all the textures and the sounds and the atmospheres we were trying to create."


In October 2000 Radiohead released their fourth album, Kid A. Rather than being a stylistic sequel to OK Computer, Kid A featured a minimalist and textured style with more diverse instrumentation including the ondes Martenot, programmed electronic beats, strings, and jazz horns.


Kid A received a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and a nomination for Album of the Year in early 2001. It won both praise and criticism in independent music circles for appropriating underground styles of music; some mainstream British critics saw Kid A as a "commercial suicide note", labelling it "intentionally difficult" and longing for a return to the band's earlier style.Radiohead's fans were similarly divided; along with those who were appalled or mystified, there were many who saw the album as the band's best work.



Amnesiac, released in June 2001, comprised additional tracks from the Kid A recording sessions. Radiohead's musical style on these songs was similar to that of Kid A in their fusion of electronic music and jazz influences, though more reliant on the use of guitars. The record was a critical and commercial success worldwide, it topped the UK Albums Chart and reached number two in the US, being nominated for a Grammy Award and the Mercury Music Prize.



After Amnesiac's release, the band embarked on a world tour, visiting North America, Europe and Japan. Meanwhile, "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out", Radiohead's first issued singles since 1998, were modestly successful, and "I Might Be Wrong", initially planned as a third single, expanded into Radiohead's thus far only live record. I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, released in November 2001, featured performances of seven songs from Kid A and Amnesiac along with the acoustic, previously unreleased "True Love Waits".



The band's sixth album, Hail to the Thief, was released in June 2003. Mixing sounds from throughout their career, the album combined guitar-based rock with electronic influences and topical lyrics by Yorke.




Hail to the Thief enjoyed commercial success, debuting at number one in the UK and number three on the Billboard chart and eventually being certified platinum in the UK and gold in the US. The album's singles, "There There", "Go to Sleep" and "2 + 2 = 5", achieved a level of play on modern rock radio. At the 2003 Grammy Awards, Radiohead were again nominated for Best Alternative Album, while producer Godrich and engineer Darrell Thorp received the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammy_Award_for_Best_Engineered_Album,_Non-Classical]Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album[/url].



Radiohead's seventh album, In Rainbows, was released through the band's own website in October 2007 as a digital download for which customers could make whatever payment that they deemed appropriate (pay what you want), including paying nothing at all; the site only advised, "it's up to you"





Radiohead finished recording their eighth album in January 2011. The King of Limbs was announced on Valentine's Day and self-released on 18 February 2011 through the Radiohead website.It was followed by a physical retail release on CD and vinyl formats in March, and a special "newspaper album" edition in May.


The album sold an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 copies through Radiohead's website;the retail edition debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 in the United States, with first-week sales of 69,000 copies.In the United Kingdom, it debuted at number seven on the UK Albums Chart, selling 33,469 copies in its first week.




Right- that's smashing and I truly think I've missed out on a band I'd have loved but I wasn't there at the beginning and am becoming inncreasingly more intolerant of "new" music, mainly because it's shit (and I know they're not new!) But I will go away an try Radiohead again. I just suspect you kind of had to be there.... and btw, Tek, how very date you diss Led Zeppelin 


 

Always had a love/hate relationship with Radiohead.  I recognise how talented they all are and some of their albums are genius.  But they do get on my wick at times at how pretentious they can appear to be and sometimes I just can't listen to Yorke's voice for whatever reason.

Reckoner is a fucking tune

There there not far behind