Quote: "I bet you couldn't even fathom how many thousands of hours of studying theory, mastering technique, and composing music these people have worked and put in to be as good as they are. Besides that fact, Steve Vai and Joe Satriani are anything but metronomes and mindless shredders."
That's sort of a double-negative and you summed up my entire point right there... to play by the book is one thing, but to break the rules is something entirely different, and that's why I love Radiohead so much.
Quote: "Still, about 150-200 years ago, the lovely Radiohead music you have come to enjoy was actually being done, innovated and surpassed."
Somehow I doubt Mozart knew what a Theramin was
Yes, it's impossible to "truly" do anything completely original, but the fact of the matter is that Radiohead took a genre, redefined it entirely, and created a unique sound out of what they had to work with... just as Sonic Youth had not long before them. They didn't crack open a music book and say "hey, let's compose a musical." They plugged some broken guitars into a tweaky amp and created something totally new and awesome, and I openly dare you to find someone else in Rock who was making music with that style and "flavor" before they existed... you won't
Point is, for every human being who has been inspired by Steve Vai AND Joe Satriani combined, there's about four who've been inspired by Radiohead. When "Creep" was released as a single in 1992/ 1993, everyone said "holy crap, this is beautiful, it's like '50's music but way edgier!", but most people dismissed them as one-hit-wonders. They proved that wrong by becoming one of the highest-selling/ rated groups of the 90's and they're an icon of that generation. Radiohead is considered by some (including myself) to be the "saviors of serious rock." They didn't get this title by looking cute (go to yahoo and do an image search on Thom Yorke)... they
earned it by writing music that wasn't only original and completely unique, but it made people want to emulate it (the list of bands who openly admit to ripping off Radiohead's sound, and the amount of bands who lie about it when really they do, is staggering).
Radiohead, Beck, Blur, Bjork, and a small handful of other artists had a far wider impact on the music industry than Steve Vai and/ or Joe Satriani. Why? Because the latter individuals, while inspirational in that they break the boundaries of what a guitar can do, don't reach the mass media. Go ask your typical 14 year old if they've heard of Steve Vai, and they'll say no. Then go ask if they've heard of Radiohead and the Beatles... let me know what they say. Radiohead blew up out of Oxford with a unique sound, a unique style... a completely original entity on a landscape of plastic pop stars, and that's why they not only got immensly rich and famous, but undeniably earned the title of one of the best bands of the 90's. That has a far bigger impact on the music industry than what Vai and Satriani do. Again, I'm not saying they're crap, but I would never go so far as to say they really impact popular music, and I would definitely argue against anyone thinking they're more unique than Radiohead or a band/ artist of their caliber.
As far as people calling Radiohead the "saviors of rock..." this list is too long to put html tags on each of them so you'll all need to deal with copy & paste
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/v-pfriendly/story/88119p-80297c.html
http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/topics/infoart/radiohead/
http://www.dprp.vuurwerk.nl/reviews/radiohead.htm
http://www.dailyegyptian.com/fall00/10-13-00/radiohead.html
ugh, you get the point. In the 90's, the media had a field day with labeling Radiohead as the greatest band of the generation. I didn't buy into the hype because I was a Radiohead fan when the band had a song called "pop is dead" and they were named "On a Friday." But if you have listened to OK Computer from start to finish and you honestly disagree that it's one of the greatest albums ever produced, then I'll have to think you haven't listened to it from start to finish
"Hell is an Irish Pub where it's St. Paddy's day all year long" ~ Christopher, The Sopranos
