Anyone can play computer, Ok?

Two interesting music events:

1. The end of the iPod.
2. Twenty Five Years of OK, Computer.

They are not entirely linked, but do, to me, mark the end of the old way of listening to music. I used to travel to my consultancy gigs by plane, and became very familiar with the old pre-T5 Heathrow terminals and their varied shops. In 'Dixons' I noticed the early iPods being displayed and thought they seemed like a way to reduce my luggage even further. I bought one, with its click wheel and Firewire 400 connection and hooked it up to MusicMatch and then began the lengthy conversion of my CDs to MP3. It worked, but I wondered whether we'd ever get to the stage where downloading the digital files direct to the device would catch on. Then we traversed the Napster years. 

Of course, it presaged the end of the music industry.

Then to Ok, Computer. Twenty five years ago I bought the CD, already having their earlier albums in my collection (remember those?)

This album was, at the time, a milestone of clever production and complicated interweaving of ideas and in some senses was fighting against the rise of the shuffle playlist.

It reminded me of a band refiring the booster rockets on concept albums, but without the pretensions to fill an album side with one track.  

That's not to say Radiohead didn't have the rock'n'roll moves too - as in 'Anyone Can Play Guitar' (Reading '94) with Jonny Greenwood swirling his telecaster by the cable. 

But then going on to do film music including for Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread, Power of the Dog and Licorice Pizza.