Why is it that Radiohead always makes me feel claustrophobic? I bought OK Computer and Kid A after Christmas and whenever I listen to them I feel aggrevated that music as despondent and nihilistic as this is so tremendously popular. People everywhere absorb this image of a pale, lost little man floundering with an overwhelmingly greedy and materialistic society and they start do don that very persona. So in the end, instead of pointing out our ills to us, they've just created a sense of hopelessness, like there's some long, dark tunnel filled with monsters that we have to run through with no possibility of coming out on the other side. Maybe that's the case, but meditating on it just makes it seem all the more inevitable.

I like Radiohead in small doses. It's the musical embodiment of a large part of myself; someone who feels crushed by all this expectation to hold the population of Earth on their shoulders, but I also think music can challenge the system without crying. Hence the other pole, The Clash. Total disgust for beaurocracy with a militant cry of optimism. A fighting attitude. This is the kind of thing that changes society for the better. Here's to you, Strummer.