#king of the surf guitar

[spockeye-fierce]

RULES: When you get this you have to put 5 songs you actually listen to, then tag 10 people!!

I tagged myself from @warpcoreejector

Tagging @thebejeweledwatercat @twinkboimler @jimmysdragonsuit13 @hc1701 @in-sufficientdata @queer-geordie-nerd @departmentq @sopranoentravesti @david-watts @numberoneobservationbarbarian

[sunuism]

i had the craziest sunu dream omg 🤨

[rockandrollpicsandthings]

Dick Dale, the king of surf guitar, pictured here in 1964

[olafsings]

May 4, 1937: Dick Dale was born Richard Anthony Monsour in Boston, Massachusetts. He was known as "The King of the Surf Guitar."

[dustedmagazine]

The Anomalys — Down the Hole (Slovenly)

Once a band comes out of hibernation, there’s no telling what they’ll do. The Anomalys, a rough-cut garage band out of Amsterdam, re-emerged in 2022 after a 12-year hiatus, older perhaps but not noticeably wiser, cranking ferocious, block-simple punk rock out of the standard rock line-up.

The band draws members of King Khan’s European circle of acquaintances—Remi Pablo on furious, rapturous drums and French punk guitarist Looch Vibrato of MAGNETIX and Louder Than Death. The band leader, known as BONE, plays another guitar. There is no bass, though someone’s making heavy use of the fat strings on his guitar.

This is the sort of music best honed live, and the Anomalys have spent the last two years playing a shit-ton of shows. “Anxiety,” an early single, rolls maniacally forward like a freight train with blown brakes coming down a hill. The energy is high, but it’s funneled through a narrow channel, a repeated surf riff that juts upwards like a question, then answers itself plummeting down. The drums meanwhile go off like firecrackers on a string, stuttering a beat in between regular crackling explosions. There are no vocals on this cut, it doesn’t need them. Two and a half minute of frenzy crashes into a wall.

“Despair” is the other single, and if you’re sensing a downer theme, take heart. It gallops and hurtles and pulls up sharp in raging, head-bashing spasms, running as fast and hard as a rock song can go. The band may have been paralyzed with dread and jitters when they conceived these tracks, but you’ll receive them as a double jolt of adrenaline.

The Anomalys begs comparisons with brute force punkers like Gino and the Goons and, though they’re less goofy, Personal and the Pizzas, but though they’re not in the subtlety game, they’re not sloppy either. “Coke Head” hitches a screaming guitar riff to pounding, annihilating drums, and it’s as tight as it is on fire. You can hear it in the sudden stops, blinding bits of white space in a blitzed out barrage of noise. They’re as clean as a white-out blot, everybody pulling up at once.

I reviewed Glitch a couple of years ago, noting that, “The sound is loud and primitive, sped up like a locomotive with its back cars on fire,” and that, at least, hasn’t changed. Down the Hole is better though, tightly held together even as it careens most wildly. Glitch woke up the beast, but Down the Hole sets it free to rampage.

Jennifer Kelly

[bandomstuck]

You are the GREEN DAY bandom. You’re AWESOME AS FUCK and you take pride in your BROKEN GUITAR COLLECTION and many ALBUMS. You are the KING OF PUNK ROCK and are ready to battle and defend your position to anyone who says otherwise. Your hobbies include SETTING THINGS ON FIRE, DEFACING GOVERNMENT PROPERTY, dressing up as a PLANT MONSTER, DANCING TERRIBLY, SURFING, WALKING AFTER DARK, and creating/being involved with all kinds of SHENANIGANS. You even dabble in the BROADWAY side of things thanks to the musical adaptation of AMERICAN IDIOT. Also, you’re missing a tooth thanks to Woodstock ‘94, and while you look fairly young, you’re PRETTY GOD DAMN OLD. Being old is whatever, though, because no matter what you’ll always be HAVING A BLAST.

Your chumhandle is prostheticJinx.

What will you do now?

==> Walk a Lonely Road [==> Start Bouncing Off The Wall]

(ref sheet)

[dollarbin]

Nickel Bin #12:

The Roches' Losing True

Ah yeah, Dollar Binners, it's Roches time. We celebrated the beginning of this already silly year with Maggie, Terre and Suzzy's epic monster track, The Hammond Song: five minutes of bizarre and perfectly harmonic storytelling swirling around Robert Fripp's equally bizarre and perfect guitar effusions.

Losing True, from the sisters' third record, Keep on Doing, is the natural sequel to The Hammond Song. And, unlike the Roches' coveted first record, Keep on Doing is a certified Dollar Bin mainstay: it's relatively easy to track down alongside mid to late late seventies Carole King albums (which are optional to your collection) and the essential to us all 70's titles from the Lord and Lady of the Dollar Bin, Gordon Lightfoot and Linda Ronstadt.

Take a listen.

There's no better surf to be had than on this swell of voices. The sisters curl and churn around one another, cradling us in warmth and bold sun sparkle.

We already know that they skipped town, risking everything, to go down Hammond, and, as promised, they never came back. Losing True tells us what happened next. They, or maybe it's just the iconically elfin and yet deep throated Maggie, who wrote both songs, wound up with the wrong guy. But now they're ready to ditch Loudon Wainwright, who seemingly had a thing going with every female singer-songwriter of that era, like a dead skunk in the middle of the road, and reunite with one another in jubilant song.

Happily, they invite Fripp to the reunion. He'd sat out their underwhelming and poorly produced sophomore record but he's back on Losing True with his signature, other-worldly harmonics and blatant skills. Fripp knows better than to upstage the ladies and it's a shame we don't have 16 more sequels to The Hammond Song to keep on spinning on a suddenly sweet weekday.

Cheers Everyone...

[peppermint-flavored-chaos]

list of songs that belong in a marauders band au

because i made this really rad playlist and i want to share it

specifically when sirius is the lead singer, james is on guitar, remus on bass, and peter on drums: 

don’t try suicide by queen

i think i’m going to kill myself by elton john

sex on fire by kings of leon

killer queen by queen

pumped up kicks by foster the people

stayin’ alive by bee gees

build a bitch by bella poarch

parents by yungblud

therefore i am by billie eilish

middle finger by bohnes

hey look ma, i made it by panic! at the disco

teeth by 5 seconds of summer

maniac by conan gray

teenagers by my chemical romance

teen idle by marina

rat by penelope scott

why’d you only call me when you’re high by arctic monkeys

numb little bug by em beihold

devil town by cavetown

twisted by missio

i am not a woman, i’m a god by halsey

check yes, juliet by we the kings

freaks by surf curse

life’s a bit by noahfinnce

songs i can’t listen to by neon trees

choke by i don’t know how but they found me

arms tonite by mother mother

i miss having sex but at least i don’t wanna die anymore by waterparks

bubblegum bitch by marina

anyways add more i want more music in my life

[tfc2211]

Play ▶ Retro Obscuro No. 139 - Christmas

The Belmonts - Wintertime The Surf Boys - Stuck In The Chimney Francis Smith - Solar System Simon, Santa's Supersonic Son Santo And Johnny - Twistin' Bells Sylvia Reid - Christmas Rock And Roll Babs Gonzales - Teenage Santa Claus Gisele Mackenzie - Too Fat For The Chimney Jim Easter And The Artistic's - White Christmas The Copycats Featuring Kimo & Sabbe - The Abominable Snow-Man Ed McCurdy And The Boomers With Joe Cribari - Red Hair And Green Eyes The Debonaires - Crazy Santa Claus Gary Ramey With Floyd And The Little Soul Sisters - Moon-Y Min-I Men Visit Santa Claus (Part 1) Walter Stone "The Cry Baby" And The Tradewinds - Christmas Time Again Judy And The Duets - Christmas With The Beatles Mie Nakao - Jingle Bells The Cavaliers - Santa's Soul Gus Colletti - Santa Is A Superman Doye O'Dell - I'm Pickin' Fights For Christmas Johnny Preston - (I Want A) Rock And Roll Guitar Fred Bergin And His Music - Deck The Halls Janette Eden - You Turn Me On (And I Light Up) The Wilder Brothers - I Wanna Goat For Christmas Jack Ware - What Did Santa Claus Used To Be? The Martels - Rockin' Santa Claus The Lollipops - Mister Santa Idle Few - A Letter To Santa Yasunori Nakajima And The Latin Rhythm Kings - Winter Wonderland Bobby The Poet - White Christmas (3 O'Clock Weather Report) Judy Jamison - The Santa Claus Twist Gus De Wert Trio And Jeannie Jay - Space Age Santa Claus Jeri Kelly - Poor Ole' Santa Claus The Splendors - Winter Time The Teardrops - Hey Gingerbread Little Rita Faye - I Fell Out Of A Christmas Tree Jim Backus - Why Don't You Go Home For Christmas Jimmy Allen, Tommy Bartella - When Santa Comes Over The Brooklyn Bridge Donna And The Dees - I Know There's A Santa Claus The Pixies Three - Cold Cold Winter Bet E. Martin - Mrs. Santa Claus The Surfers - Here Comes Santa Claus In A Red Canoe The Sherwoods - Cold And Frosty Morning The Qualities & Sun Ra - It's Christmas Time

[luv4fandoms]

Invisible String story profiles

Lizzie is me/an OC and Ari is @arianamhm

Neteyam

-Is the point guard for the Pandora U basketball team

-Has already been scouted but isn't sure if that's what he wants to do with his life.

-Is a straight A student and has been almost his whole life.

-Can also play guitar

-Secretly loves to write love songs, but will only preform for family and close friends.

-Made Lo'ak take the video he secretly recorded of him off of his TikTok as soon as he found out...even if it had over a million likes already

-His own TikTok is videos of his games, his family, and him playing the guitar.

Lo'ak

-Is the shooting guard for the Pandora U basketball team

-Struggles with classes, not because he's stupid but because it doesn't hold his interest.

-Takes extra classes in things like art and music to make up points he gets taken off in his normal classes.

-Can play the drums and loves to meet up with friends when there is a "spray meet", pretty much a graffiti meetup where a bunch of people get together and spraypaint an area, these meetups are actually legal.

-Has quite the following on TikTok for his basketball and dance videos

Kiri

-Passes her classes without even trying honestly

-Is an art major

-Has been called an old soul since she was little and because of that is often a counselor for younger students

-Is spiritual and loves to go shopping for new crystals and herbs.

-Is all over witchtok, as both a watcher and creator

Ao'nung

-Captain of the Pandora U swim team

-Was born in Hawaii but he and his family moved when he was 15.

-Though he doesn't seem like the type to be studious, he is a straight A student.

-His father expects a lot of him, including taking over the family business

-Probably misses Hawaii more than Tsireya and Roxto

-Joined TikTok after Roxto told him how many views and likes the videos he had taken of the swim team got. He really only posts videos of him practicing. Other than that he reposts a lot of videos of Hawaii and Hawaiian culture.

Tsireya

-Is the captain of the girl's Pandora U swim team

-Misses Hawaii but also enjoys the shopping more now. About lost it the first time her, Ari and Kiri visited a five floor mall.

-Is also a straight A student.

-Unbenownst to Ao'nung, Tsireya and Roxto went on a couple of dates but ultimately decided they were better off as friends.

-Low-key has a crush on Lo'ak

-Purchased one of those silicone mermaid tails and is known as the Reef Auli'i on TikTok by many. Mainly does shout-outs to children who comment and tell her how much they love her and how they always knew mermaids were real.

-She also does videos of traditional Hawaiian dances

Roxto

-Is also on the Pandora U swim team

-Along with Ao'nung, Neteyam, and Lo'ak, is one of the most popular boys in school.

-Much prefers to be at the pool or at the beach surfing than anywhere else, but will cruise the town with his friends also.

-Has had a crush on Kiri since he first met her

-Even though most of the guys on the swim team are labeled as "players". Everyone knows Roxto is a hopeless romantic sweetheart.

-The king of surf videos, his TikTok is mainly videos of the waves he catches. But he does also join in Lo'ak's dance videos

Spider

-Grew up with the Sully kids as their adopted brother

-His mother died soon after he was born and his father was a military man who went MIA for many years. Jake Sully and his father served together and did not get along at all due to his father's lack of morals.

-After living with his father for a year once he returned he decided to move back to attend Pandora U with the Sully's

-Loves the outdoors and would much prefer to be outside in nature

-Would love to either be a photographer or work with animals.

-Has had a crush on Kiri since they were little.

-Is also an art major

-Does a lot of videos with the others for tiktoks, but for ones he makes he tends to make nature or animals based videos. Compilation videos of different shots of different flowers or deep in the woods, deer he comes across, or other wildlife.

Ari

-Has known the Sully kids the longest (besides Spider)

-Went to middle and highschool with them before going to Pandora U as well. Highschool was when she met the Hawaiian transfer students.

-Vibes the most with Lo'ak, and that often leads to trouble for both of them

-Is a good student even when she doesn't nessasaily want to be at school

-Low-key a lot of people in school steer clear of making her mad because she is grade A scary when she's mad.

-Is the queen of dance Tiktoks and is often seen in Lo'aks videos along with Roxto

-Loves to go shopping with the girls

-Low-key has a crush on both Lo'ak and Neteyam

Lizzie

-Moved only a couple of months ago, so she's still a very new student to Pandora U and the area.

-Instantly clicked with Kiri since they are both art majors and old souls

-Got quickly brought into the friends group after she met Ari who introduced her to everyone

-Would much rather be outside painting, drawing, or crocheting then in a crowded mall

-That being said, she will still go shopping with the girls when they ask

-Won't ever mention it but she does find all of the boys attractive in their own ways, but she sees them all as good friends

-But she does have a crush on Ao'nung

-Runs her own Etsy shop where she sells her crafts.

-Her TikTok is mainly artsy stuff, does a lot of diy/the process of videos. Or transition videos from supplies to product to show off things she's selling. She also does nature compilation videos that have a very cottagecore/whimsigoth/goblincore vibe

© to @luv4fandoms tumblr; do not repost or steal

[okiedokie2216]

memorable moments in ql (2023):) (part one because there's just too many)

this is a few days late but here's a list of memorable moments from the first half of the year (part two)

patpran making a (brief) (long-awaited) comeback

tiwson helping with opening por's drink because his leg was injured

"i don't like you" king said LYINGLY

"i want to eat you" tiw???

"i want to watch you swim"/"if i scold you nobody will hear it" lmao neung

seeing mark pakin like multiple times a week

uea's cat ears my beloved

palmneung's CHEMISTRY dammit🙆🏾‍♀️ not to mention the Thirst

winteam's 15(?) minute confession with guitar and and singing😭 poor babies

jihyun joining a surf club- despite not knowing how to swim- because of a man (good for him lmao)

"all i care about are my rocks and maybe like 3 people"

palm's tattoo BEING NEUNGDIAO'S NAME and his bar NAMED AFTER NEUNGDIAO

palm asking to be scolded by neung

jaewon choosing the wetsuit that zips from the back whilst the ones that zip from the front are blatantly there so he can construct intricate rituals etc etc etc

neungdiao poisoning himself with alcohol because of palm ??

explicit nc scenes in a gmmtv show (good for them)

"is this how couples kiss" jhakdjdsjakd palm

[somethingvinyl]

Studio Tan is the first of the so-called ugly cover albums. Zappa delivered 4 albums at once to Warner/Discreet to try to get him out of his contract with Herb Cohen, but they didn’t take them at first, and a legal battle ensued that kept Zappa from releasing the music he wanted to in 1977 and ‘78. This came out in ‘78, as it became clear that they weren’t going to get anything else out of him and needed to release what they had if they wanted to profit from it. So Studio Tan came out over FZ’s objections, with cover art he never saw and even a track name misspelled. Zappa hated the way these albums were released—probably why he later delegitimized them by claiming Läther was the original intention. But the music is obviously his. It’s odds and ends of unreleased material more than an album of singular vision, but that just puts it in the same category as Apostrophe.

Side 1 is a single silly rock opera, The Adventures of Greggary Peccary. Much like Billy the Mountain, I find it tiresome and have made it all the way through it maybe twice. But side 2 is incredible start to finish, one of the best in his discography—Let Me Take You to the Beach is a peppy bit of parody surf music (my 8-year-old LOVES it) that is, shockingly, built off the rhythm track of a Hot Rats outtake! Revised Music for Guitar and Low Budget Orchestra is a revamped version of what he wrote for Jean-Luc Ponty on the King Kong album, and it’s still got a heck of a lot of electric violin despite the title change. But the star is RDNZL (his custom license plate of his nickname for his wife, “Redunzel,” because the tended to repeat herself—learned that factoid from Dweezil at a ZPZ show). It was a staple of his live show for the Ruth Underwood years: excellent live versions appear on Roxy by Proxy and The Helsinki Concert. This studio version was recorded by that same core band and it’s outstanding, one of his absolute best compositions. So though this is a lesser album in the oeuvre and does indeed have a hideous cover, this is still one I wouldn’t want to live without.

[uncleardyn]

8, 16, 21, 23 :D

8. three songs that remind you most of summer and vacation Cheeseburger In Paradise - Jimmy Buffett jimmy buffett is forever the king of beach bum music. every song of his a summer song Brown Eyed Girl - Reel Big Fish brown eyed girl is a summer vacation song to me and ska is a genre is associate with summer so uh. Yeah. Skeet Surfing - Maurice Jarre/Nick Rivers skeet surfing 👍

16. three favourite songs for sex nice try idiot i dont know what sex is White Noiz - Akira Yamaoka the silent hill 2 soundtrack stays on during sex but unironically CHEMICAL BREW - LudoWic babe where are you going Air - Daniel Deluxe babe come back

21. three songs of your childhood Be Careful, It's My Heart - Bing Crosby my dad used to sing this to me before i went to sleep when i was little Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen i have a VERY vivid memory of my dad sitting me in front the computer and making me watch the music video when i was like 7 What Is a Shooting Star? - They Might Be Giants the here comes science album was MY SHIT when i was like. 10.

23. three songs that never fail to get you pumped up Devil Trigger - Casey Edwards i would like to thank nero bc i mean. cmon. devil trigger is so good. Zero - Keiki Kobayashi the spanish guitar stirs something deep in my soul Beast Of Gévaudan - Powerwolf frankly we could put any powerwolf song here but something about beast of gevaudan's chorus really gets me going

thanks nox. i hope u enjoy my sex selections. love u <3

[antifascistblackmetalnetwork]

Necrosferatul - Candelabrum Necrosferatulum (full album, 2023)

What if vampires were class-conscious creatures that were fed from the blood of aristocrats and kings? This one person project from Austria assumes this alternate reality and creates it through the course of their two albums, the second of each we are presenting today. After the eloquently titled and very promising "Ancient Bloodlines Mean Nothing" debut, "Candelabrum Necrosferatulum" comes to further define Necrosferatulum's peculiar and original approach in vampyric black metal, not just in the thematics, but also in the sound itself. While the debut was a classic raw, lo-fi, dungeon-laden yet still beautiful recording, the sophomore album cleans up the sound a bit and allows more dynamics and color. And the unique characteristic of the band, the clean, surf-inspired (!) and 60's psychedelia parts are present again of course. How could they not be? Weird broken keyboards, church organs, chorus-like guitars, eerie wind and other sound effects are used heftily in conjunction with the metal instrumentation to invoke a romantic and absurd atmosphere, no doubt inspired by these crazy french vampires in the dusk of the previous millenium, as also the antics and originality of contemporary Grime Stone Records artists. The album is full of well performed and composed ideas, and boring moments are almost nowhere to be found. You can't miss this record of you're interested in weird and original black metal!

[belovedindierock]

Rolling Stone #1155, April 26th 2012

Radiohead Reconnect

How the most experimental band in music learned to rock again

by David Fricke

Thom Yorke walks into the catering room backstage at the American Airlines Arena in Miami wearing a dark T-shirt, tight red jeans and a crooked smile. "I'm feeling quietly excited – and quietly nervous," Radiohead's frontman says as he pours himself a cup of coffee. Yorke flew in from Britain late yesterday – his eyelids are still heavy with jet lag – and he is due onstage shortly for Radiohead's final rehearsal before the launch of their most extensive tour since 2008: 58 shows over 10 months in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. They open here tomorrow night.

"Everything – the production, the new lights, the set list – is still a work in progress," Yorke says. "But it's finally getting started." Soon he can be heard warming up his voice behind a closed door, practicing scales in a high, precise warble, holding notes in long, clean aaaahs.

Radiohead are not only beginning a tour; they are unveiling a rebirth. The band is ending one of the most challenging and confounding eras in its career: nearly three years of public silence and private chaos during which Radiohead struggled with reinvention and their future. They made some of their most beautiful music on their least popular album, last year's The King of Limbs, but didn't promote it and stayed off the road, uncertain how or if they could be a performing band again.

"We're still flailing around," Yorke admits, sitting in one of the band's dressing rooms. He recalls the early practice sessions for this tour. "I was freaking out, going, 'Oh, no, it's not enough time. I want to do all these new things.'"

But onstage, a little while later, he and the rest of Radiohead – bassist Colin Greenwood; guitarists Ed O'Brien and Colin's younger brother Jonny; drummer Phil Selway and new second drummer Clive Deamer, who has played with the group for the past year – sound exuberant and confident as they push through "Bloom," from The King of Limbs. What sounded on that record like a glassy enigma of loops and ghostly incantation is now rushing water, arranged by the new six-man lineup as a fury of rhythms and murky-treble guitars. "Morning Mr. Magpie" is also harder and faster than the version on Limbs, while "Meeting in the Aisle" – an instrumental from the sessions for 1997's OK Computer – is played with fresh pepper, like Turkish surf music with a trip-hop step.

Radiohead have worked up more than 75 songs for the 2012 shows, including material written during rehearsals this winter at their studio in Oxford. The band will run through a pair of newborns tonight, "Identikit" and "Cut a Hole." Yorke, 43, describes the former as "joyful, slow but with a wonky hip-hop beat." He beams. "That one wormed its way to the head of the class." Colin, who is 42, is excited about another new one, "Full Stop," particularly the part "where Thorn's voice jacks up into this amazing falsetto. The song just takes off."

20 Songs You Can't Believe Are 20 Years Old

In an interview before practice, Yorke credits the addition of Deamer, who came from the British band Portishead, with Radiohead's live renewal. "Having another musician to go back over old stuff was as important as coming up with new songs," says Yorke. He's slumped on a couch, but his voice crackles with restless energy. "Along the way," he says, "you discard songs, because you can only do them in a certain way. To breathe new life into them is a good feeling. You don't have to ask, 'Oh, how does it go again?' It's 'How can we do this properly now?'"

The best example at this rehearsal is the title song from 2000's Kid A. Recorded at the height of Yorke's loathing of guitar-band convention, "Kid A" was barely a song at all – a cloud of whoosh with Yorke singing through a vocoder like a child robot. Tonight, it sounds huge and metallic, a bolt of argumentative double drumming with a striking, classical temper in the piano chords, played by Jonny.

"It was an anti-song," says O'Brien the next day, in an ocean-view lounge at Radiohead's hotel. "Now it's something warmer, particularly the end. Suddenly, it has this sunrise." For a long time, in a lot of the band's music, he admits, "nothing was allowed to be genuinely beautiful. Jonny was always so brilliant about throwing that slashing guitar through things.

"This is very much where we are – and Clive has brought this," says O'Brien, who turns 44 this month. "Didn't they say when the Beatles got Billy Preston everybody was on best behavior?" He laughs. "Having someone break up the energy – that's good. It got people out of old habits.

"You hear it all the time," says O'Brien. "These bands say, 'We're in the best phase of our lives,' and they don't make very good music. I'm reluctant to say that. It's not our best phase. It's another one – and it's a good one. It doesn't feel like a new band. It feels like a band that knows itself."

Yorke isn't so sure – yet. "It's weird not to have any definitive versions recorded," he says of the new songs, "because that's where you make the final decisions. To be rehearsing new stuff, not have it recorded, with a sixth member in the band . . ." He rolls his eyes in mock terror. "It's all very fluid. I'm not really sure what it is."

Jonny, 40, sitting on the sofa next to Yorke, remembers the singer arriving for the first day of practice in Oxford: "He came in and said, 'I had a dream that we had an extra month for rehearsing.' I thought, 'Wouldn't that be great?'"

"We haven't played in front of people yet, so we don't know if it's any good," says Yorke. "We might not even find out tomorrow." He flashes that crooked smile. "Maybe it will take a while."

Radiohead have been a recording band for two decades. This year marks the 20th anniversary of their debut EP, Drill, and the initial release of their seething Top 40 hit "Creep." Since then, Radiohead have enjoyed the weirdest forward motion of any major rock band. Their hit albums, including two American Number Ones, Kid A and 2007's In Rainbows, are slippery and jarring: blends and collisions of violent guitar dynamics, cryptic dance-floor electronics and barbed, elliptical balladry. Radiohead's last "conventional" album, according to their longtime co-producer Nigel Godrich, was their art-rock classic OK Computer. "Essentially, that was a guitar record dabbling in other dimensions," Godrich says. Radiohead have begun every subsequent album the same way. "We start," O'Brien says, "with what we don't want to do next."

There has been substantial outside work in recent years. Selway's first solo effort, Familial, came out in 2010. Yorke is almost done with the first studio album by his band Atoms for Peace. Jonny, a prolific writer for soundtracks and orchestras, just issued an album with Polish composer Krzystof Penderecki. An independent act since the end of their EMI contract in 2003, Radiohead also explore alternative ways of releasing music. In Rainbows was first available as a pay-what-you-choose download. A gorgeous 2009 track, "These Are My Twisted Words," was free.

The King of Limbs arrived as a complete shock: a download with a week's notice and no publicity by the band. A CD followed a month later. But the surprise attack, combined with the music's vexing restraint, backfired. "There were clearly people who were interested in the band's music, but they didn't know Radiohead had released a record," says Bryce Edge, one of the group's managers. To date, The King of Limbs has sold 307,000 copies in the U.S. – Radiohead's first album to fail to go gold here.

But that tally, Edge points out, "doesn't include all of the digital stuff we sold" – an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 copies purchased via Radiohead's website. "The majority of the sales were band-to-fan," says co-manager Chris Hufford. "Financially, it was probably the most successful record they've ever made, or pretty close. In a traditional deal, the record company takes the majority of the money."

Radiohead played only three concerts in 2011, after recruiting Deamer to help re-create the overdubbed tangle of drum loops on The King of Limbs: a surprise set at Britain's Glastonbury Festival and two hot-ticket gigs at New York's Roseland Ballroom. So now the band is going overboard: Its long U.S. itinerary includes festival dates, two at Coachella and one at Bonnaroo. O'Brien says the group has already "talked about the way the gigs might evolve, maybe doing them in three sections – three movements, if you like." Colin is excited about the prospect of studio time along the way. "Maybe we'll do some hit-and-runs," he says, "go in over a weekend somewhere and play."

The band is touring mostly in three-week legs with substantial breaks, in part for family matters. All the group members still reside in the Oxford area except for O'Brien, who lives in London, and all are married except for Yorke, who has been with his partner, Rachel Owen, since they were students at the University of Exeter. The five are busy fathers. Colin, Jonny and Selway have three children each; Yorke and O'Brien have two apiece. "My kids are changing schools in September," Selway, 44, notes. "I wanted to be around for that."

But there is a strong sense in the interviews conducted for this story over the past year – in Oxford, London, New York and finally Miami – of a band anxious to engage the world again after spending too much time too close to home. The first night at Roseland last September was, O'Brien claims, "a great lesson. The sound-check was a fucking nightmare. The monitors were rubbish – we couldn't hear ourselves. We felt underprepared. But you know what? It was all good. Our managers were like, 'Top-five gig!'"

"It was a fucking trip – the best adrenaline buzz I've had in absolutely years," Yorke crows. "It didn't feel like we were treading the old ground, walking over our graves. We were still wandering around in the darkness, stumbling. That was nice."

"It made us feel like a rock band again," Colin says, more thoughtfully, backstage in Miami. "It's fine to be in a band in a nine-to-five way: Get up with the kids, take them to school, do some work, come home. But I see my friends in Oxford who have jobs they work hard at that they don't enjoy, and it frustrates me. We have a job that is a passion. Roseland made us remember how great it could and should be."

Radiohead speak about The King of Limbs like it is unfinished business, an album with a future and an audience still waiting for it. The group is not touring this year "specifically to push that record," Selway says. But, he adds, "people hopefully will connect with it through that."

"It was amazing to just put the record out like that," Yorke says. "But then it didn't feel like it really existed." He mentions a chat he had about the album, a few months after its release, with Phil Costello, a friend of the band and a former executive at their old label, Capitol. "He was like, 'It's gone, just gone.' Really? Fuck.

"But that was the consequence of what we chose to do," Yorke concedes. "You can either get upset about it, or say, 'Well, that's not good enough.'"

It is a warm afternoon in New York, the day before the first Roseland concert, and Yorke – between sips of tea in a downtown hotel lobby – is recalling his Friday nights in college, working as a DJ while he was going for his bachelor's degree in art at Exeter. Radiohead were a part-time operation, writing songs and making demos under their original name, On a Friday, during the members' school breaks.

"I wasn't particularly good," Yorke says of his spinning, "because people were buying me drinks to get me to play what they wanted to hear. At the end of the night, I couldn't see the records." Yorke remembers mixing electro-dance tracks by a Belgian duo, Cubic 22, and the English trio 808 State with early Seattle grunge. He was especially keen on the way Manchester bands such as Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses were fusing Sixties psychedelia and British rave culture. "Which then stopped," Yorke complains. "Suddenly, guitars were the authentic way to go. We were a part of that."

Since OK Computer, Yorke has persistently fought to increase the distance between his band and customary rock instrumentation and record-making. "I talked about it endlessly while we were doing In Rainbows," he says. "It was a constant frustration that we were actually going the opposite way."

The King of Limbs is Yorke's student-DJ dream come true: rock fundamentals wholly transformed by electronics. The drum, bass and guitar parts are all samples, individually played by the members of Radiohead, then manipulated, looped and layered into tracks shaped by Yorke's reverie-like melodies and haiku-style lyrics. "Lotus Flower," "Codex" and "Give Up the Ghost" hover and throb more like suggestions than songs, exotic murmurs in no hurry to become declarative statements. "I can see why it's alienated people," Yorke says now of the album. "I didn't realize it was its own planet."

"We didn't want to pick up guitars and write chord sequences," Jonny says, sitting in a London cafe near Abbey Road Studios, where Radiohead made part of their second album, 1995's The Bends. "We didn't want to sit in front of a computer either. We wanted a third thing, which involved playing and programming." It was a long hunt: Radiohead worked on The King of Limbs in bursts from May 2009 to January 2011.

Readers' Poll: The 10 Best Radiohead Songs

Tall and shy, constantly sweeping a long curtain of black hair from his face, Jonny is the only member of Radiohead without a college degree; he left his studies in psychology and music at Oxford Polytechnic College when the group got its record deal in 1991. But he is arguably Radiohead's most gifted musician: a classically trained violist who also plays violin, cello and keyboards. Jonny also created the software program used to sample the instruments on The King of Limbs. "I was never happier," he says, "than when I was in my bedroom as a kid, working on rubbishy computer games.

"The brick walls we tended to hit," he adds, going back to the album, "were when we knew something was great, like 'Bloom,' but not finished. We knew the song was nearly something. Then Colin had that bass line, and Thom started singing. Those things suddenly made it a hundred times better. The other stuff was just waiting for the right thing."

"They are unlike any other band in the studio," says Godrich, who has worked on every album since OK Computer. "They could not record 'Bohemian Rhapsody,' because they don't have the attention span. If it's not happening straightaway, Thom gets confused. That's not his way."

Godrich cites one classic Radiohead song that was never finished in the studio, "True Love Waits," a popular concert ballad: "We tried to record it countless times, but it never worked. The irony is you have that shitty live version [on the 2001 mini-album, I Might Be Wrong]. To Thom's credit, he needs to feel a song has validation, that it has a reason to exist as a recording. We could do 'True Love Waits' and make it sound like John Mayer. Nobody wants to do that."

Radiohead did not support Limbs with an extensive tour last year for two reasons. One: "We thought it might not be playable," Jonny says. The other "was partly my fault," Yorke acknowledges. The album "released such a load of weird possibilities." He wanted to go right back into the studio, then decided against "carrying on in the same vein. We couldn't do that, we couldn't play live: 'Aw, shit, now what?'"

Deamer, 51, a veteran jazz and dance-music drummer who has also worked with Robert Plant, was the answer. "I've loved his drumming for ages," Selway says. "He seemed like the natural person to go to." In early 2011, the two started dissecting the new songs and deciding which of the many drum parts they could feasibly perform live. A year later, Selway is on the phone from Oxford after Radiohead's final day of tour rehearsals there: "Everything is wide open," the drummer declares in an ecstatic version of his soft, gentlemanly voice. "Seeing that dynamic between the six of us bearing fruit – we have started something. A lot of bands at this stage don't get that opportunity. Or they miss it when it's there."

But, Yorke says, "There is no way in hell we could have come up with what we're doing now, live, if we hadn't been sitting in front of turntables and samplers, piecing the record together in this method. There is no way it would have turned into this dynamic thing."

Asked which songs on The King of Limbs have changed most in performance, Yorke mentions "Lotus Flower." "With the two drummers it suddenly got nasty," he says. "I quite like it." And he agrees that "Give Up the Ghost" – a spare, repetitive ballad on the record – became something else at Roseland: a booming, circular prayer as Jonny sampled and manipulated Yorke's live vocal.

"You're sampling what the mic is taking from the room too," the singer explains. "It's getting the room back, again and again and again. What it's going to sound like in an arena. . ." Yorke's eyes go wide with delight. "I'd forgotten about that. It could be something."

On a cool midsummer evening in Oxford, Colin is strolling briskly to a pub in the old center of the city, noting historic sites along the way. He gestures at a narrow door leading into Modern Art Oxford, a prominent gallery. When they weren't playing together or in school, the young members of Radiohead hung out in the basement lounge, "talking forever, each of us over a single cup of coffee for five hours," Colin says.

Around the corner, he points to a store – part of Cult, a clothing chain – and notes with a bemused smile that Yorke worked in another local branch as a salesman. It is an improbable image: Yorke, a compact man of impatient energy and lethal irony, closing a deal on designer jeans.

Passing a phone booth, Colin remembers Radiohead's first, stumbling attempts to make records, before they got their EMI deal. "There was no e-mail or cellphones," the bassist says. "We'd find a call box, put money in it and call a studio." Once, when they asked how much a session cost, "the guy said, 'Nine hundred pounds.' We said, 'Thank you!' and hung up." Radiohead ultimately cut most of their first album, 1993's Pablo Honey, at a studio co-run by a producer who had worked with the Sixties-blues version of Fleetwood Mac.

Then there is the Bear Inn, a truly ancient pub (established 1242) with perilously low ceilings. Colin, an Oxford native, and Yorke – born in a small East Midlands town, Wellingborough, and raised for a time in Scotland – first met in their preteens. They were both taking classical-guitar lessons at Abingdon School, outside Oxford. At the Bear, the two managed to buy drinks even though they were underage and talked about their role models for the band they planned to form: New Order, Talking Heads and Yorke's favorite, R.E.M.

Over a pint of ale at a picnic table outside the Bear, Colin fondly recalls "that excitement of noise" at Radiohead's first local gigs, "when you play in a pub, borrowing some older guy's Fender bass cabinet and you've had four cans of lager to get your courage up. We did that for the first show we ever did. It was a 20-minute walk that way." He points down the street running behind the Bear, toward the Jericho Tavern. Radiohead made their concert debut there in 1986 under the name On a Friday, after their usual rehearsal day, when the members were all at Abingdon School. Selway, the oldest member, was 19; Jonny was not yet 15.

Later, standing outside a restaurant in a residential neighborhood, Colin notes another Radiohead shrine: the house near the corner of Magdalen Road and Ridgefield Road that Colin, Selway and O'Brien rented in the summer of 1991. The band stored its equipment there, and all five members lived there, in varying combinations, for about a year. "Good times," Colin says with a sigh, "although Jonny never did any of the washing up."

Selway characterizes that period as "good training for tour buses. There were piles of pizza boxes in the corner. It would get so unbearable that someone would have to do the cleaning. I was coming and going for most of the year. I seem to remember Colin moving into my room after I'd decorated it quite nicely."

Yorke arrived after he graduated from Exeter. "We would come back from gigs," he says, "and listen to the answering machine. There would be messages from 10 A&R men."

The Ridgefield Road house was the end of Radiohead's adolescence – the point at which they became a full-time band obsessed with their work and progression. Jonny describes one Christmas when he was still in high school and the others were home from college: "We rehearsed in some hall in town every day, including Christmas Eve. It was insane. There was no concept. We were working on songs for some nebulous future reason we had not clearly thought through.

"That's the kind of intense time we spend together," he says. "That's how it's always been. Our gang principally revolved around playing musical instruments, songs to talk about."

"I think that was when we wrote 'Creep,'" Yorke says when asked about that Christmas. "There are these periods when you get energized. You can't force yourself to hang out. But when we're working, when it's happening and it's all good, all that shit just occurs."

Yorke's aversion to the road surfaced early. So did his distaste for the play-the-game decorum expected of a major-label band. Manager Edge recounts "a famous gig" in Las Vegas "when we'd done some ridiculous routing because of the seeming lack of knowledge American promotion guys have of geography. We were doing a radio show, supporting Tears for Fears, and everyone was grumpy." During the show, "in a fit of pique," Yorke smashed half of the stage lights. Edge maintains that "the idea of him doing anything like that now is long gone."

But Yorke looks back on his not-much-younger self – particularly the tormented anti-star preserved in Meeting People Is Easy, the 1999 documentary of the OK Computer tour – without excuses. "I was bored," he states flatly, backstage in Miami, of his aggro-zombie aura in that film. "I loved that record. But the idea of being stuck with those songs for a year and a half, in the same form, no change, no nothing – I struggled with it. We'd finish a song, and I'd stand there, frozen.

"I understand now why we did all of those shows," Yorke confesses. "If we hadn't, we wouldn't be where we are. But I lost my nerve. We've been through different stages – that was a bad one."

"What's different about us," Jonny chimes in, "was that right from the beginning, our obsession was songs. As a byproduct, we tour now."

"It wasn't a bunch of mates" on Ridgefield Road, O'Brien observes, "more like a bunch of co-conspirators. We had this common goal. That's what it was all about, dreaming it up. All this stuff we have now – there was never any doubt it was going to happen. And it did, because the material world caught up.

"But I would say this – they are my brothers. Some of the others don't realize that. But we'll be at one another's funerals. We've been through this. We're family."

That is "a strength we don't really acknowledge to ourselves," Colin says. "We're far too English."

There is a physical side to it that I find interesting – the breath," Yorke says. He is trying to explain where he goes in his head and what he feels when he sings. "It's a meditative state, like standing in the tube station when the train is coming through. Things go past you – trains, people.

"It took me a few years to learn how to do it," he says of performing, during a breakfast interview in London last July. "Seeing people like Michael Stipe and Jeff Buckley – I realized it's a good place to go. It's OK to shut your eyes."

Later that day, Radiohead convene with Edge and Hufford to discuss touring in 2012. Afterward, O'Brien describes the meeting as "fraught." Yorke already sounds uneasy over his egg-white omelet: "The level of machinery freaks me out sometimes. You walk backstage, and there's people and stuff everywhere.

"We never wanted to be big," he says. "I don't want to be loved in that way. You can say it is selfish. You can also say this is someone who gets a kick out of what they do: trying to fuck with your head." Yorke enunciates the last phrase with relish.

"Because that's what it's all about," he continues, "casting the net wide, creating chaos and trusting something will come of it – not panicking, just going with the blind faith and all of these moving parts. This idea – where will the band be in five years? Fuck that. I'm just looking for little diamonds in the dust."

"Thom has the most acute bullshit detector in the band," O'Brien says, with awe, in Miami. "It's that balance – an intensely critical life, with an ability to feel, to have great intuition. We're not necessarily making the smartest business decisions. But we are following our intuition. It's about the art."

"This is a work in progress – that's the bit I like," Yorke confirms, just before that last practice. Then he says something else. "I was thinking, when I was on holiday recently – I've been doing this more than half my life." He pauses. "That's bonkers!" Yorke proclaims with an astonished laugh. "And it's cool. It's a job – and a good job.

"We actually need to get on a stage now and see where we're at," he declares, ready to play. "It's a large stage, and there will be a lot of people." There's more laughter. "But I've been told that's OK."

[deadweight-at7am]

PTV show

Saturday was the PTV show at the Fillmore. It was a great experience with a few stumbling blocks along the way. The crowd was a really hilarious conglomeration of people who looked like they were going to a rock show and people who looked like they were cosplaying. I don't know how to describe it otherwise. I met up with an internet friend there named Shayla and we waited in line together. It was spitting rain because of the remnants of Ian but luckily not pouring. As soon as we got to the doors it literally started to pour rain, so everyone was getting soaked. Getting in was easy, we all had GA tickets so it was standing room only. I will say, I think I could have dealt with standing room at a different point in my life but my experience with people in the audience were less than fantastic. MOST people were cool and we happened to start talking to a group right behind us of 21 year olds, they were actually really funny. They thought we were their age and I'm like "nah babes I'm 33" and they looked fucking SHOCKED hahaha. The concert was for I Prevail but I wasn't really there for them (as a lot of people weren't) and I have to say the opening acts (Yours Truly & Fit for a King) were really great. As soon as PTV came on they played Noises that May Startle You in Your Sleep and slid right into Hell Above which was PHENOMENAL. Amazing way to start a show. Especially bc Misadventures is my favorite album of theirs. So, they played great songs and also Pass the Nirvana. I felt like I was the only one standing in my area that knew all the words to Pass the Nirvana which was kind of funny and a bit odd but ya girl likes to go off at shows.

The shitty part was that a) huge men who were like 6'2"+ kept squeezing in front of a group of us small women. I feel like men should have better sense than to stand directly in front of women but unfortunately they don't so that kept making us have to inch our way around them. Total bozos. But then once PTV started playing this group of girls who were literally at least 6'3" started backing up and elbowing Greg & I. It got so bad that I though they were going to knock me over and trample me. My safety is important and I'm not going to the hospital for some stupid assholes so, it made me super angry. I started pushing them yelling VERY loudly "GET OFF OF ME" and they refused to even turn around which is how I knew they knew what they were doing and didn't care. I continued to kick the backs of their feet and push the fuck out of them until it got to a point where they were just blocking my view entirely and I couldn't even move. So, I told my crew I needed to move out. I was decently in the middle of the crowd but I wasn't going to be able to do that for another 20 minutes. So, we moved towards the back and stood at the bar where another woman overheard me loudly complaining about how I was about to punch them and she said that she was 2 rows behind the barricade and had to leave because she couldn't breathe people were pushing her so hard.

There are a lot of really young people at these shows who don't know concert etiquette. I didn't care about the pit. I didn't care about moshing. None of that bothers me, I know where it's going to be and I don't get anywhere near it. But the fucking pushing, shoving, being disrespectful and literally standing on someone is fucking out of control. I have a bad temper and I'm like not going to get thrown out of a venue for punching some dumbass in the head. I thought about it though. The guy standing behind us was like "we should just open a pit right here and tear their asses up!" At the end of the day the show was AWESOME. I did stay for some I Prevail songs but their setlist was SEVENTEEN songs, wtf. I also just don't really vibe with them although they did put on a great show and sound very good live. We watched the guitarist from Fit for a King crowd surf while still playing his guitar and then stand on the bar, drink a beer and get back in the crowd and surf back to the front. It was very entertaining. He was super high energy. And one of the dudes from I Prevail spit water into the crowd LMFAO I turned around and said "EVERYONE'S TESTING POSITIVE FOR COVID TONIGHT!" It was funny, we laughed.

At the end it was like 10:30 when we left so we were there for about 4 and 1/2 hours. It was really fun. I admit that I will see them again if they go on a headlining tour. My other friend Michael was at the barricade and caught Tony's guitar pick. He even has a great video of it.