The Mo and The Ro

So let’s get indie rock here for a moment folks. In fact, let’s get our indie rock fight on.

In the blue corner, Matthew Friedberger of Fiery Furances.

In the red corner, Radiohead.

Seems Matt misunderstood the topic of the song Harry Patch (In Memory Of) and went on a bit of a sarcasm tangent. (For those of you not Radiohead fans, or WWI fans, Harry Patch was the last surviving British WWI veteran, who died earlier this year)

It appears instead Matt was under the impression Radiohead had wrote a song about a relatively obscure composer by the name of Harry Partch (I say obscure, by who knows, maybe you have heard of him….I hadn’t)

Quoted for truth from my fav (he says somewhat sarcastically himself) Pitchfork.com:

“‘Oh, please listen to our new song about Harry Patch’. Fuck you! You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That’s a put-on. That’s a branding technique, and Radiohead have their brand that they’re popular and intelligent, so they have a song about Harry Patch.”

Wait, it gets better…

“How’s the song? Is it 48 notes to the octave? What does it have to do with Harry Patch? Oh, my wife says I am being very rude. She doesn’t like me insulting Radiohead. She’s afraid they will send their lackeys through the computer to sabotage us. But they needn’t worry — we are a band that sabotages ourselves.”

I get it! Experimental obscure composer, 48 notes…this is high brow sarcasm here people, thank God wikipedia exists to help me make sense of the players.

Dude, I’m all about sarcasm – you should hear me at work – just gets the facts straight before you get quoted in the press. What was clever now looks a touch stupid.

I give it a C+ for effort. More research needed next time though.

As of now, the world awaits a 104 note, 8 minute epic response from Radiohead to Matthew Friedberger.