When the current lineup for Radiohead front man Thom Yorke's "other band" first played last October at LA's Echoplex they didn't have an official name. People then were referring to them as "Thom Yorke and Friends" or as the "Thom Yorke and Flea side project" band. In fact, when the lineup for this year's Coachella Festival (April 16, 17, 18 in Indio CA) at which they are one of the main attractions on the closing day, was initially announced, they were simply billed under the name ????.  Consisting of Yorke, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, producer Nigel Godrich on keyboards, and session percussionists Joey
Waronker and Mauro Refosco, the group, under Yorke's orchestration, has settled on the band name Atoms For Peace. However the Coachella website currently lists the band simply as "Thom Yorke," no doubt for easier recognition & less confusion.

In recently trying to fill in a friend on what I'd spent the last year or two listening to, I realized that my personal taste tends to gravitate towards some element of either Folk form (any hint of hill-folk finger-pickin' or Ozark/Appalachian melancholy and I'm in), Psychedelia or the tendency to extend a theme for a good long jam (a category in which I include a lot of the Jazz that I like), or just a great, funky groove.

With those qualifiers in place, the following is a year by year review of the last decade which somehow got past me with out noticing it. I mean, really?!! 2010?!!!  I didn't see it coming: 

2000: Album of the Year

Air's enjoyable and wacky Moon Safari had been on the decks for a couple years before they contracted for the soundtrack to Sofia Coppolla's Virgin Suicides. The resultant score is absolutely sublime and marked the French electronauts as contenders to watch.

For myself, it was the defining sound of the millennium's new year.
















Shelby Lynne released a killer country-soul gem, I Am Shelby Lynne, that echoed early material from the likes of Bonnie Raitt. Thinking that it was a brilliant debut from a talented 32yo unknown, I was eventually shocked to find that it was her 6th album. I listened to it for months.

Since Radiohead first released the Thom Yorke-penned song "Creep" seventeen years ago, numerous artists -- including many well known, high-profile acts -- have covered the Radiohead hit that became so popular that the band themselves distanced themselves from it for a spell.

Originally released in 1992 as their debut single, "Creep" was not initially a hit. But it did become one when it was rereleased the following year, when it also appeared on their debut album Pablo Honey. Out of uneasiness with becoming a sort of one-hit-wonder band associated with this sole major worldwide hit, plus the fact that Radiohead had shifted in style as the nineties progressed, Yorke and the band ceased playing it in concert altogether by 1998. After three years, they changed their mind and re-added it to their show playlists, although only sporadically.

Truth is that it is a great song and one that one that countless others have covered: many of which are included below in either video or audio format. Included in the versions are covers by Beck, Chrissie Hynde/Pretenders, Moby, KoRN, the Dutch band Shiver, Sad Kermit, and Weezer at a Hootenanny in Portland last summer. Weezer also played the song at a Hootenanny in the Bay Area and again at a concert in Tokyo last year. Also below is the original version by Radiohead. Not below but viewable on YouTube is Tears For Fears 1996 live in Brasil cover of the song. 

My personal fave remains the original, with Chrissie Hynde coming in a close second. I place off-key Moby (an ariist who I normally like) in the last place, even behind the frog named Sad Kermit. If you have time, check out the versions below and post your opinion / rating of best to worst version in the COMMENTS below.
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Amoeblog Update: thanks to the Amoeblog commenters SFatNIght who informed me of the Prince cover of "Creep" at Coachella last year which is not great audio quality recording but well worth checking out, and also to Amoeblog commenter Robert Gable who turned me onto the wonderful Edmund Welles bass clarinet quartet version of the song which I have added below. Thanks!

The act of heckling performers has to be as old as time itself. I'd bet even way back in the prehistoric, early days of mankind that whenever one cavemen got up to entertain his fellow cave dwellers that some neanderthal in the group would heckle him midway through his bit.

It just seems to be part of the human condition for those in the peanut gallery to feel the need and right to shout out their criticisms, even if unjustified, at those giving their all onstage. Those onstage include stage actors, musicians, comedians (perhaps the number one target of hecklers), and even politicians.  Additionally many self appointed critics have also been known to scream out their feelings at the movie screen, proving that heckling is meant as much for the benefit of fellow audience members as for the performer(s).

And even though it comes with the territory, especially for stand-up comedians, it has to be pretty tough for those up onstage, already performing a demanding draining job, to have some uninvited (often drunk) loud-mouthed bozo scream out his/her dissatisfaction with your performance.  For the rest of the audience, however, a heckler hounding a performer can often result in some entertaining interplay between the two parties. Of recent performer/heckler altercations, probably the one that first pops into most minds is the November 2006 incident at the Laugh Factory comedy club where Michael Richards (aka Seinfeld's Kramer) went off on a nasty tirade on some African American audience members (see below).  How he handled it is a textbook case of what not to do if you wish to remain active in showbiz, especially in these camera phone/YouTube digital days when every move is being documented to be later used against the respective parties.

But every performer handles hecklers differently and it is pretty interesting to study the different approaches applied.  Below I have included video clips of some that deserve a peep, such as the late great stand up comic Bill Hicks who, in a bit that superficially seems to rival Kramer's, really rips into a female audience member-- even using the "C" word  on this woman.  But the key difference is that, even in his most riled rant, he stayed in control and remained entertaining -- even if the audience didn't know where he was going with the bit. And at the end he made fun of himself.  More importantly, it was within character - the sort of thing that you might expect from the notorious comedian who ruffled many feathers by always telling it like it is (or was).