Happy 25 to Kid A

People don't spend time just staring at images for very long anymore do they? (Well unless they're these photos of Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor anyway.) No but seriously -- it used to be a thing when a new album would come out that you'd listen to it and sit staring at the artwork on the album while you did so. And so it went when Radiohead's record Kid A came out on October 2nd 2000 -- you have no idea how much time I spent staring at that weird mountainous landscape created by artist Stanley Donwood seen above. Hours and hours of my life. I'd just moved to New York and (I'm pretty sure I've shared this on one of its earlier anniversaries) I listened to this album constantly. You cannot overestimate how much I mean by "constantly." All my first months here were spent wandering the streets listening to this music. And I still can't hear any song on Kid A without being immediately transported to that time. It's also the reason I got to see Radiohead perform in a small(ish) space -- on October 11th 2000 they performed at the Roseland Ballroom and it was the greatest show I've ever experienced. They had a heap of musicians on-stage with them, besides the usual band members -- I specifically remember trombones. I also remember feeling as if I was levitating off the floor. Anyway this record is a masterpiece and I'm going to go listen to it right now. Actually somebody uploaded the entire audio of that Roseland show and I'll share it below and we can listen to that together -- funny to realize this was before we could film things with our cell phones, so audio seems to be all there is...