by Joey O., Host, Y-Rock on XPN

Radiohead’s OK Computer was released in America the first week of July in 1997, a few weeks after it came out in the U.K. The build up created an air of anticipation and mystery. There were the early rave reviews on the NME’s Web site, there was Capitol Records’ promotional gimmick of sending out Walkmen with a cassette of the album glued inside it (maybe the labels should try that today to prevent piracy!). I distinctly remember “Paranoid Android” winning in the Y100 Cage Match multiple nights, defeating a couple songs that most folks would connect to that summer: Sugar Ray’s “Fly” and Smash Mouth’s “Walking On The Sun.” Especially since it was determined that “Paranoid Android” was too sprawling and weird for American radio audiences, so “Let Down,” while a magnificent song in its own right, became the lead single here.

I remember it came out the same day as other high-profile releases such as Blues Traveler’s follow-up to Four and The Prodigy’s Fat Of The Land, the album that was *supposed* to take America by storm. I bought it at the now-defunct Record Revolution in King of Prussia… and listened to it religiously for the entire month. I’m pretty sure that I spun OK Computer well over 20 times, on a near-daily basis that July. It was the perfect soundtrack for an alienated teenager who’d just finished his freshman year at college and was beginning to understand the real world. A few years later, I wrote a thesis paper relating OK Computer’s themes to various literary works.

Radiohead also played the Electric Factory on my birthday that August. I couldn’t find anyone to go with me and went alone, I’m not even sure if the show completely sold out. I have a VHS bootleg of the concert, and some footage shot outside the venue made it into the Meeting People Is Easy documentary.

Radiohead wouldn’t come back to the Philadelphia area until 2003, but I traveled to NYC multiple times to see them. Then there were those Tower shows last June… maybe “Radiohead in concert” deserves to be a Memorable Moment of its own.