IT'S RADIODEAD By MAXINE SHEN
October 9, 2003 -- EVERYONE loves the British "art-rock" band Radiohead.
Except maybe your co-worker. The person sitting next to you on the subway. Your best friend. And 23-year-old Olenka Denysenko of Manhattan - who definitely won't be catching the band tonight and tomorrow at Madison Square Garden.
"I borrowed one of their albums from a friend when I was on a long bus trip," she recalls. "It was sleepy, mellow and a downer - I was about to slit my wrists."
Denysenko is among the growing number of music buffs who commit the alt-rock equivalent of sacrilege: admitting they don't like Radiohead.
The Internet is ablaze with people like her.
Check Google and you'll find nearly a thousand hits for phrases like "I hate Radiohead," "Radiohead sucks" and "Radiohead is overrated."
"Their music just scares me," says a blogger named Tiffany. "There's nothing so great about this band to me. Hell, to me, they're probably the worst band ever."
"I think they're boring," offers Erin Franzman, 27, an AOL city entertainment guide editor.
"To me, their last good song was 'Creep' because that was the last song that had a hook and was short. I don't like whiny, self-indulgent musicians, which is what I think they are."
The Oxford, England quintet first hooked up in 1987, but didn't put out their first album until 1993's "Pablo Honey," with the single "Creep" receiving considerable radioplay. They have since put out five more albums, each to rave reviews and commercial success.
Other "pop-aware" bands that follow in Radiohead's tradition include Coldplay and the (now defunct) Verve.
Spin Magazine writer Chuck Klosterman is a fan - but admits the band is divisive.
"In New York, everybody that likes music has an opinion about Radiohead," says Klosterman, author of "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto."
"You have to have a very concrete opinion about why you like or dislike Radiohead, and maybe a lot of people are afraid to say they dislike them because they're afraid that their only answer is going to be 'it seems too smart for me.' "
Or maybe too grim. A group of fifth-graders recently exposed to Radiohead in an experiment in San Lleandro, Calif., were asked to draw their reactions to the music. (
Article). One drew a graveyard scene with tombstones, a man who hanged himself and a booth offering "Free Suicides." Another drew a picture of a child standing on the mountain saying, "I hate my life."
Freelance Web producer Laura Young, 22, has a friend who threw up from excitement after meeting lead singer Thom Yorke. But she says, "I hate the fanaticism of it, it's a little bit too extreme.
"You can feel very intimidated if you're around a bunch of Radiohead fans, it's like they're speaking a different language."
But the tides, they are turning.
"Hating Radiohead is the hipster's dirty little secret," says Franzman, the entertainment guide editor.
"I work with two people who are going to the show, but were just saying that now Radiohead has reached such critcial mass and critical adulation that there's a backlash, so now it might be cool to hate Radiohead."
Spin's Klosterman agrees: "There's definitely now a symbolic value to saying you hate Radiohead - even Kid Rock makes a big deal about hating Radiohead. He even has a video where he's literally using toilet paper with the word 'Radiohead' embossed on it."
http://nypost.com/entertainment/7638.htm
