The 500 - #111 - The Bends - Radiohead

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #111
Album Title: The Bends
Artist: Radiohead
Genre: Alt Rock, BritPop, Post Grunge
Recorded: Three London Studios, including Abbey Road

Released: March, 1995
My age at release: 29
How familiar was I with it before this week: Very
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #276, dropping 165 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Just

To say I was obsessed with Radiohead’s second release, The Bends, would be an overstatement. But, for about six weeks in the summer of 1995, it was a dominant part of my daily soundtrack. That record followed me everywhere, from late-night runs and city drives to the stereo humming in my first solo apartment. It literally arrived at a moment when everything in my life felt unstable and unfinished, but also on the brink of profound transition.

Radiohead in 1995

It was a strange hinge-point. My world was changing and I was trying, often clumsily, to change with it. There was possibility everywhere, but also the unmistakable feeling that I was letting go of things I might never get back. I was turning 30, and from the dramatic heights of that moment (laughable now from the vantage point of 60), it felt like an expiry date. I was convinced I’d aged out of relevance, a relic lingering in a world that had already moved on. That feeling lined up perfectly with The Bends, especially the record's third single release, Fake Plastic Trees. The song’s lyrics and sound captured the weariness and exhaustion of a routine life, without raging against adulthood, just sagging under their combined heft. "Gravity always wins."

The summer of 1995, at a road hockey tournament
 in Victoria Park, London, Ontario.

That summer, I was still working at a bar, slinging drinks and chicken wings, watching the staff skew younger with every passing month. I’d been accepted to Teacher’s College. So it was an exciting time, but that came with so much second guessing. It meant giving up my apartment, draining my savings, and hauling myself from London to Thunder Bay. It meant trading a lucrative, comfortable gig for a flyer on something resembling a real career. What if I failed? What if I didn't fit in the education world? What if this was the moment future-me would point to and say, “That’s where it all went sideways.”

Clearing tables at the bar in 1995.

On top of that, I’d just ended a nine-year relationship. At that time, we both knew that breaking up was the right decision. Neither of us was in a good place to support the other. However, it still felt like I'd cracked my life open on purpose and was convincing myself there was something better waiting for me. Thom Yorke's lyrics from Just, the fourth single on The Bends, always seemed to find the right, fragile moment to remind me that I'd made a grievous error.

That’s where The Bends lived. An album about pressure, dislocation, and the low-grade panic of becoming someone you’re not sure you recognize yet. It didn’t offer answers. Instead, it poked and prodded. It made me question things I thought I’d already decided. Yorke’s voice sounded both accusatory and exhausted, like it was asking whether my new ambitions were salvation or just another reckless gamble.

In those summer weeks, as my move to Thunder Bay drew near,  The Bends simultaneously served dual purposes. It was certainly comforting “escape” music, but also diagnostic. Rogue lyrics seemed to know how to name my anxiety and accompanied my doubt. Yet, somehow, listening to The Bends also made it easier to keep moving. It got me through difficult days, and pushed me onwards.

Packing up for Teacher's College.

From where I sit now, all of that anxiety feels comically ridiculous.  I wasn’t a relic at 30. I wasn’t blowing up my life. I was turning a page...granted, with far more internal drama than the moment required. But maybe that intensity mattered. Maybe taking it all so seriously was the point.

Everything worked out. The move to Thunder Bay led to a career I love. I managed to win the girl back. The risks paid off. And the things I feared I was losing? Most of them were just shedding their earlier shapes. I didn’t know that then. I only knew I was experiencing a dozen conflicting emotions, often in the same day. Fear and excitement, grief and restlessness, doubt fighting with determination, loneliness brushing up against a quiet, stubborn hope, all of it sharpened by a pressure that somehow kept me moving.

That’s why The Bends still makes sense to me. It was a companion at a time when I needed to scare myself into action. Admittedly, I took everything far too seriously then and every choice felt permanent while every potential misstep seemed catastrophic. But maybe that intensity was necessary. Maybe the fear, the pressure, and the overthinking were just the cost of committing fully. In the end, things worked out not in spite of that anxiety, but because of it.

As for that long-ago breakup, after reuniting, we married and we're both Radiohead fans, enjoying several listens to The Bends this past weekend, clearly framing it in a different context -- as an extraodinarily good record.

The 500 - #378 - (What's The Story) Morning Glory? - Oasis

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

Album # 378
Album Title: (What's The Story) Morning Glory?
Artist: Oasis
Genre: Rock, Brit Pop
Recorded: Rockfield Studios, Monmouth, Wales
Released: October, 1995
My age at release: 30
How familiar was I with it before this week: Very
Song I am putting on my Spotify: Champagne Supernova

Oasis exploded on the North American music scene during the spring and summer of 1996. My room-mates in Teachers' College were fans and this album was in regular rotation during the five months we spent together in our residence at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. If it wasn't playing on the communal stereo in the living room, it could be heard coming from one of the bedrooms on the second floor of our townhouse.

One of the few pictures I have of my roommates Craig (seated) and
Brendan in our townhouse. Also pictured, my other roommate Randy's dog Shaft.

At first, I wasn't a fan of the band. However, slowly but surely, the album won me over. My room-mate Brendan was teaching me guitar and together we worked on the song  Wonderwall from this record. I suppose my initial animus stemmed from a letter I had received 12 months earlier. More on that later, but first a little background on the band and this album.

One of the few pictures I have of me in Teacher's College.
Hard at work in my dorm room on my "state of the art" computer.

(What's The Story) Morning Glory? is the second studio release from Manchester, England, rock band Oasis. The five-piece band included Paul Arthurs on guitar, Tony McCarroll on drums, Paul McGuigan on bass. However, the band are best known because of the Gallagher brothers, Liam and Noel, who feuded publicly and courted controversy for more than 15 years.

The Gallagher Brothers Liam and Noel (with guitar)

The group formed in 1991 and were originally called The Rain. Their first release as Oasis, Definitely Maybe, was a commercial and critical success. McCarroll was fired from the band over creative and personal differences and replaced by Alan White, who would remain with them for the next four records.

Album Cover for Definitely Maybe

Following a financially successful, but perilously hedonistic world tour, the band returned to the studio to release (What's The Story) Morning Glory? in 1995. It was another stepping stone toward Oasis becoming one of the best selling groups of all time, with over 75 million records sold.

It was around this time that I learned of them. I had been corresponding with Scott, a friend from high school, who had moved to England to pursue his career in music. It was a time before email and the two of us were communicating through handwritten letters. 

When I last wrote, I had asked about the bands that were popular across the pond.  Scott told me about Blur, Elastica and Portishead, but it was a line about a band called Oasis that grabbed my attention. I found the letter a few months ago while cleaning my office and snapped a picture in anticipation of this post. 

It reads: "Oasis. Northern Mancunian shite. These boys rip off everybody and are infuriatingly arrogant to boot. Death would be too good for Liam Gallagher. Don't bother with this lot."

Please don't judge Scott too harshly. He was a talented singer-songwriter-guitarist and passionate about his own art. He also suffered from the curable condition of being a twenty- something. 

Scott's scathing review certainly coloured my opinion of the band as they became popular in Canada. At the start, I simply ignored them, choosing to listen to other artists. But, in Teachers' College, there was no escaping their sound and, eventually, I became a fan. Sure, they were arrogant -- but there was no denying their talent as musicians and songwriters.

Unfortunately, I have lost touch with all the people in this story - Scott, Craig, Randy and even Brendan, with whom I lived for another six months after Teachers' College. The old letter from Scott was a nice reminder of a past I had forgotten and I thought a lot about my old pals as I wrote this post. Friends who now seem like ghosts from a life someone else lived. 

Hearing (What's The Story) Morning Glory? in its entirety took me back too and I was particularly moved by this opening lyric from Don't Look Back In Anger:

"Slip inside the eye of your mind,
Don't you know you might find
A better place to play.
You said that you'd never been,
But all the things you've seen, 
Slowly fade away."