OMG Radiohead

I’m back, dudes. Can we get a big round of applause for Mr. Greg Katz for holding down the Rawkblog fort this week? And Jesus, what a week: I get off the Internet for five minutes and motherfucking Radiohead announces, enormous middle finger to the record industry in the air, that their new album drops in 9 days. I just pre-ordered it and paid 7 pounds and man, I feel like part of the zeitgeist.

This is huge moment in music history and there are a number of reasons why – Radiohead’s fans are largely Internet-based and there’s no real debate on them being the web’s most popular band anyway, so offering the album for download (and essentially leaking it themselves) not only creates the excitement of a release date but also reaches directly to their audience. And given Radiohead’s stature and the enormous amount of goodwill people have for them – them being the best band in the world and all – people might actually pay for this thing, even though they don’t have to. It’ll be interesting to see how much it sells in the next couple weeks – I’d conservatively guess 100,000, which would be a huge amount for online, but who knows? Maybe they’ll drop half a mil? Anything could happen. Regardless, this is the wave of the so-bright-you-gotta-wear-shades future, one where bands sell their own music and without wasting millions on ClearChannel spins and Los Angeles billboard advertising and where leaks are the new release dates. It’s going to be glorious.

As for the music itself – whoa. Judging by the tracklist, the album’s going to be another classic, but we can all reserve judgement until October 10. I’ll be revising the LP7 preview in the next couple days, but man, if you’re not already excited beyond belief I don’t know what to tell you.

New jams and photos and all that good bloggy stuff real soon. It’s good to be back.