Friday, March 19, 2004

Radiohead-Fitter Happier

Fitter, happier, more productive,
comfortable,
not drinking too much,
regular exercise at the gym
(3 days a week),
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries,
at ease,
eating well
(no more microwave dinners and saturated fats),
a patient better driver,
a safer car
(baby smiling in back seat),
sleeping well
(no bad dreams),
no paranoia,
careful to all animals
(never washing spiders down the plughole),
keep in contact with old friends
(enjoy a drink now and then),
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in the wall),
favors for favors,
fond but not in love,
charity standing orders,
on Sundays ring road supermarket
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants),
car wash
(also on Sundays),
no longer afraid of the dark or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate,
nothing so childish - at a better pace,
slower and more calculated,
no chance of escape,
now self-employed,
concerned (but powerless),
an empowered and informed member of society
(pragmatism not idealism),
will not cry in public,
less chance of illness,
tires that grip in the wet
(shot of baby strapped in back seat),
a good memory,
still cries at a good film,
still kisses with saliva,
no longer empty and frantic like a cat tied to a stick,
that's driven into frozen winter shit
(the ability to laugh at weakness),
calm,
fitter,
healthier and more productive
a pig in a cage on antibiotics.

Sample looping in background: [This is the Panic Office, section nine-seventeen may have been hit. Activate the following procedure.]

Released:
June 1997
Found on:
OK Computer

Many people mistook the computerized voice on this track for that of physicist Stephen Hawking. The strange voice was, in fact, created by Thom on his Mac computer. He recorded it one night in an isolated area of the rehearsal space that the band had set up. Ed: "Thom basically had this checklist, like a nineties checklist if you like, and he had written it out. There is a bit of him playing piano, [which was] in the rehearsal room. He was very drunk one night, which you can tell by the sloppy playing on it, and he just played out this melody and stuff. He was very anxious that it wasn't him saying [the lyrics] - this voice is neutral. By the computer saying it, it doesn't becomed a bit of pretentious art-wank, it's something neutral in the way that the computer stumbles over words and doesn't get the pronunciation or the inflections right." Adds Thom: "The reason 'Fitter Happier' exists is 'cos of mental background noise. Some days you're in a disturbed state and it moves to the front." The track was used as an entrance song for the band on their 1997 tour.
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