there will be blood.

(Joshua Masayoshi Huff)

Radiohead have announced their 2008 international tour--the strange thing, though, is that it doesn't feature very many North American dates. In fact, they only have 8 dates--and two each in the states of Florida and Texas.

WHAT?

They're overlooking Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Seattle, among others. The positive is that their US dates fall when I probably wouldn't be able to attend anyway--so my dream of seeing Radiohead live is still alive.

But at this point, I don't even know how I feel about seeing Radiohead live. This tour is full hypocrisy. On the "Kid A" tour, Radiohead made venues take down their corporate signage--the band were heavily into Naomi Klein's "No Logo" at the time. They released no videos for the album, and instead went with 40 second "blips". It's marketing was anti-marketing and anti-consumerism.

One would have thought that they would have taken a similar stance on this upcoming tour, especially because they let fans pay whatever they wanted for "In Rainbows"--including $0.00. This approach was ground-breaking (even if the music wasn't) and kept that world's most relevant band...well, the world's most relevant band.

Earlier, Thom had been talking about not doing a big tour because doing so would force them to play at huge arenas, creating gridlock and as well as a huge carbon footprint. The band said that though they loved playing in Washington's Gorge, having people drive all that way would really harm the environment--something the band is very serious about (Thom and Jonny played "Friends of the Earth" gigs a few years back).

And, now, they not only play gigs out in the middle of nowhere (how is the DC date at the Nissan Pavilion in VA?), but they're having Live Nation (Clear Channel, essentially) promote and staff the tour.

Yes, you heard right--Clear Channel, the company who is the very definition of corporate greed in music. This fact means that tickets will be at least $100. It puts us all in a bind, as Pitchfork wrote--ethics or Radiohead? The band are clearly in the twilight of their career, and this may mean that this is one of our last opportunities to see them. How can you go from incredibly far left to extremely far right? Do they have to feed their kids?

As much as I love Radiohead, I just don't know much I care about them anymore--not after this.

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Arsenal v ManU in the FA Cup tomorrow. No idea what time it's on, but, as bsto put it, it's going to be a huge momentum match, especially for the league.

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Check back Monday--I've got a mix done. It's not a bikemix, but I definitely think it's worth coming back for to grab.


Have a great Friday...or what remains of it.