Sadly, there are not yet any visible tributes to Radiohead in Abingdon, UK, such as plaques or statues, however I did take at look at Abingdon School where the band started.
Below is the entrance to the school. Fortunately nobody thought it was suspicious for a guy on his own to be photographing it with a large camera when pupils were wandering around. Perhaps there is a regular stream of Radiohead fans checking it out, and hence they are used to it.
I find it so interesting that Abingdon is a conservative looking town, dating to medieval times, with some beautiful ancient buildings, and yet in this environment such innovative music was born. This picture gives you an idea of what the main street looks like.
This is about 10 minutes walk from the school. My Radiohead day was typically cloudy, grey and intermittently wet, and in spending a few hours listening to their music I wondered if the UK climate helped give rise to the wonderful streak of melancholy in their music (particularly evident for me in Thom Yorke's voice. This picture of the River Thames may give an idea of the greyness today, taken about 100 metres from the main street.
These two pictures below are fairly typical of the buildings in the centre of Abingdon, and perhaps further illustrate my point about radical work coming from an historic English environment.
In terms of Radiohead's music, my listening today confirmed my view that the Bends and then OK Computer are my favourite albums, but my admiration for Kid A is growing, and I'm beginning to understand In Rainbows better. Now it seems rather strange that it took me a little while to appreciate their sound world.
Listening to Nine Inch Nails has changed my perspective somewhat: interestingly I find myself less tolerant of pleasant but ultimately second rate music (e.g. Vampire Weekend). NIN has made me more discerning, which means that I value Radiohead's utter genius even more.
Hi! Thank you so much for your post! I'll soon visit Abingdon, and your information helps me a lot :D
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, glad you found it useful and enjoy your trip to Abingdon!
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Abingdon dates to well before medieval times and claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited town in England. As regards recognition of Radiohead in the town, one place would be in the museum, but I'm not sure any such recognition figures in the town council's plans for the re-furbished museum, but I can ask - I am on the museum committee!
ReplyDeleteAnother place would be our Napoleonic Old Gaol - they played one of their first gigs there when it was a Leisure Centre and when it re-opens as a restaurant we have been promised some recognition of its history.
ReplyDeleteOther ex Abingdon School celebs include David Mitchell.
I was in the same year as Thom and Colin at Abingdon - you may like to know that the first recordings by On a Friday were made in the music school in a large room on the first floor called 'Music Studio One'. It is visible on the side of the Amey Hall with the three lead-clad dormer windows.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of the music school has been replaced by a much more superior building, but many rehearsals and listening sessions were spent in Studio 2 or the 6th form study room.
Thank you for all these comments- I'm really interested especially to hear from the contemporary of Thom and Colin. I do hope that Abingdon will be able to find some way of marking the contribution of Radiohead to contemporary music. I'm also very grateful to http://www.abingdonblog.co.uk for linking to my site.
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