Oh, sure, everyone knows “Creep” and “High and Dry” and “Fake Plastic Trees”, but Radiohead didn’t capture my consciousness until OK Computer came out. In retrospect, this album helped define the existential angst of my senior year in college. It is the simplest and one of the most enduring of my memories from that year, reminding me of working on {m}aganda magazine (interesting, when did the curly-brackets become intrinsic to the name? I credit JRM)

Tempus fugit, indeed. So now it’s been 10 years since OK Computer first came out. Each song is carefully etched into the inside of my brain. Most vividly are the memories of this album that came from the early ‘00’s, when Kid A and Amnesiac came out. The seeds of these two albums were born in their predecessor. Despite all the new material, I still listened to OK Computer fervently.

I watched Radiohead perform at Shoreline Ampitheater in the San Francisco Bay Area (was it 2000? 2001? Is it really that long ago?) But memories of cities are all jumbled up in my mind: L.A., S.F., Chicago, NYC, Miami, San Diego, Sacramento.

The most easily accessible are the memories of travelling either by train or car down to S.D. to visit my sister. It always seemed to be February. The sky was the indistinct grey that reminds me so much of OK Computer’s cover. Easily my most favorite song, “Paranoid Android” captures the ennui and alienation of being an outsider caught up in the maelstrom of the Hollywood lifestyle. This is the dark side of L.A., often ignored by the city’s boosters, but revelled in and frequently mentioned by the city’s detractors. (I don’t think it’s an accident that L.A. is the setting of the future dystopia depicted in “Blade Runner”.) It also captured my loneliness and sense of being abandoned as I slogged through a depressive episode. And I can’t help but think of Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a robot with major depressive disorder.

Has it been 10 years already? While I’ve somehow ended up sort-of where I wanted to be, I definitely took some unexpected ways to get here. If I had a time machine and could meet my younger self, I doubt I’d have any wisdom to offer that would allow myself to avoid any of the unpleasant experiences I could’ve done without. I’m not really sure that I’ve learned anything practical about life, really.

In any case, there are two tribute albums available for download as (mostly) mp3s (A track or two are AACs, I think)

stereogum · OK X: A Tribute to OK Computer

hypeful · OK Computer turns 10

(Links from ”Ear Candy with Travis Hay”)