One of two links to Youtube Chieftan Mews sent out on the same day both linked Youtube videos of BBC Test Card F titled ‘BBC Test Card F (1978)’.
“The time now very nearly 3 o clock, the next program on bbc1 Songs of Praise follows at 3.15 after a trade test transmission…”
A Youtube commenter names the piece of music as ‘Finally, swing-time’ by Pit Fontana’s New Sound. According to TestcardCircle.uk that song was used during the 2nd half of 1978 to early 1979.
Mew’s tweeted a 2nd Testcard after this one ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6SmOBxP9-g ; Test 2 ), however the second tweet was not deleted until the 20th of March 2012. You can read more about it, and the history of Test Card F here.
Songs of Praise is a weekly religious program first broadcast in 1961 early on Sunday mornings. Consisting of church hymn’s it still runs today and is broadcast in a number of countries.
In 2007 Adam Buxton uploaded a parody of Songs of Praise providing his own subtitles to the program with amusing results:
Adam Buxton is British DJ and Comedian who in 2007 helped Radiohead with their Thumbs_Down webcast to celebrate the release of In Rainbows.
A fan of the band he wrote a nice long detailed blog post about the whole thing here on his website, and later in 2008 entered his own (rather hilarious) remix for the Reckoner remix competition:
On the 29th of November 2011 Adam Buxton ran a live BUG Music Video’s special evening focusing on Radiohead’s career, during which he screened some behind the scenes footage of the recording of Thumbs_Down, Previous video clips from the band and a interview with Jonny and Colin. Described as a ‘one off’ Adam repeated the event in Los Angeles on February 2nd 2012.
A Silly Blog carries a nice review and description of the event Here.
One of the most interesting bits of trivia from the program refers to a In Rainbows Scrapbook mentioned in the Bug Program notes as a ‘proposed but ultimately unreleased DVD ‘scrapbook’ from the In Rainbows period’.
(Source: Attributed to Ian Davies by Auntie Nubbins of A Silly Blog )
Adam Buxton is on twitter as AdamRealBuxton and is one of the accounts Chieftan Mews follows on Twitter.
@ChieftanMews: At 0:36 I appear in the Zigg only to disappear and reflect to the dark side of the moon. http://t.co/Qw0PTnn stuck help #10 of 10
@ChieftanMews: #10: Please @ 1 song that makes you feel energetic & write about it in 1 sentence. (1 answer only, #10 expires August 11, 2011 at 00:00 GMT)
On Facebook this read as:
#10: Please message me 1 song that makes you feel energetic. Write about it in one sentence. (1 answer per person or disqualified/blocked. #10 expires August 11, 2011 at 00:00 GMT)
Chieftan Mews first tweets a link to a video Servo posted to Chieftan Mew’s Facebook wall on August 1st:
Screenshot of Mew's Reply to a question on Facebook, August 1st, 2011.
Servo took the video loop from www.the-ziggurat.com and posted to Youtube on July 31st 2011. The link takes you to 0:36 in the film where a head can be seen to the bottom left of the picture outlined in green and blue.
On the 3rd of August Chieftan Mews replied to the video with:
My face emerges at the 30 second mark at the lower/central portion of the screen and then disappears a short time later. Please call a plumber or a lumberjack immediately.
The Dark Side of the Moon is the title of Pink Floyd’s eighth album released in 1973, a album compared to OK Computer it also happens to show a prism separating a rainbow out of white light on it’s cover. In Rainbows being the band’s previous album for which the moving rainbow blocks video where made.
( Original cover for Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of The Moon – Source : Wikipedia )
Similar to the Ziggurat film was a videoclip for Videotape made for the end of the 2007 Thumbs_Down webcast featuring Thom Yorke’s face turning into a mess of coloured blocks.
Thom ended up uploading the video to Dead Air Space on the 12 of February 2008 with the following message:
RED BLUE GREEn +
had a niggling feeling that this never really got seen much.
Its a kind of video thing to go with Videotape using lots of wierd techniques we were messing with.
Nigel and I really enjoyed making it at the end of last year.
It appeared at the end of a webcast which i think was lost due to transmission problems.
So here it is (roughly) for you to see again.
x
Thom
The original video on DAS is gone but you can still watch it on Citizen Insane.
The #10 of 10 suggested that there was a series of 10 tweets to come, this proved to be correct as it was followed by the first of ten weekly questions asking for fans to respond with their own answers.
Fan’s where given a choice between responding on Facebook or Twitter, two of the most popular Social Networks as of 2011.
@ is a symbol used to direct a message on Twitter therefore requesting fans to tweet him directly with @ChieftanMews.
With Facebook it seemed he wished to receive the replies as Private Messages, of which he would take only 1 per person on threat of banning them so they could no longer send him messages or view his Facebook page.
The difference has to do with a design limitation that on Twitter you can only send messages to people who follow you. This means that while Chieftan Mews was able to send Direct Messages (DMs) to fans following him they would not be able to reply or send their own without Mew’s following them first.
While ‘1 answer per person or disqualified/blocked.’ on Facebook seems to suggest a competition to date there’s been nothing suggesting that Mew made direct use of the answers offered to him by fans, or that there was any organized prize for answering his messages correctly.
Though he has been known to Directly Message or reply to peoples Facebook Posts on his wall from time to time it’s unknown if Chieftan Mew’s replied to any of the suggestions given to him in response to his questions.
@ChieftanMews: #9 of 10: What is your personal definition of: ‘freedom’? (exp. 18-Aug)
The second of a series of 10 weekly questions Mew’s tweeted and posted to Facebook between August 11th and October 7th in order to help him escape from a abandoned part of the Radiohead website named The Ziggurart.
The quiz may have been in the lead up to the release of The King of Limbs – Live From The Basement which was announced on November 9th, a little over a month after the final question was tweeted.
We’d love to hear what answers other people sent to Mew’s ‘quiz’!
Let us know in the comments or email muggs@ersmenoo.com.
@ChieftanMews: #8 of 10: http://t.co/IAEHtG1 Have you really considered that you have been lied to constantly since you were born? (Expires Aug 25 or so)
The 3rd of a series of 10 weekly questions asked by Chieftan Mews.
In this case it came with a link to The King of Limbs – Live from The Basement on the Offical Radiohead Youtube Channel which the band have been using since 2005 to host their videoclips and some webcast material for In Rainbows and The King of Limbs. They also uploaded all of the remixes from TKOL-RMX 1234567 and The Daily Mail/Staircase along with The King of Limbs on the day the album was released in stores.
Radiohead reported on Dead Air Space that there had been a issue getting The King of Limbs – From The Basement shown in the UK, apologizing for the delay on July 20th as “the original broadcaster decided not to show it”.
On June 5th 2011 BBC Worldwide Music Television announced that they had signed a deal to be the international distributor for The King of Limbs – Live From the Basement.
Their press release gave the following details:
BBC Worldwide Music Television has signed a deal with Radiohead to distribute internationally a new and exclusive live performance of Radiohead’s eighth album, ‘The King of Limbs’.
Radiohead – The King of Limbs: Live From The Basement is a 55-minute performance from one of the most successful and critically acclaimed acts of their generation, who have sold over 30 million albums worldwide. The programme will feature the notoriously elusive band performing the entirety of their celebrated new album in a studio setting with some additional behind the scenes material. It is scheduled to be the first time that the grammy-award winners are captured on camera this year.
The King of Limbs album was released digitally in February 2011 and physically at the end of March 2011, yet this exclusive performance will be the first time the band will have played this collection of songs in public. The band will be performing for acclaimed music show ‘From the Basement’, the brain child of production genius Nigel Godrich, who has either engineered or produced all of Radiohead’s albums since The Bends and has worked with a variety of international acts including Paul McCartney, U2, R.E.M and Air.
Having launched the title at MIPTV, BBC Worldwide has already received pre-sale offers for a number of major territories and expects to have a substantial network of broadcasters in place for its premiere.
Salim Mukaddam, VP Music Television at BBC Worldwide said, “It is a real honour to be working with Radiohead on this project. Radiohead are a band that rarely performs for television, but when they do, it’s a moment to savour. There is already huge anticipation for this performance and we’re delighted that they’ve decided to work with us at BBC Worldwide, confirming our position as market leaders in Music Television. As a fan I cannot wait to see these beautiful songs brought to life in this programme.”
Bryce Edge of Courtyard Management, Radiohead’s management company said, “This will be Radiohead’s first collaboration with BBC Worldwide and the band are excited at the prospect of having their first live performance of ‘The King of Limbs’ broadcast around the world . The band will be filmed and recorded by the From The Basement team, which includes Nigel Godrich their long time producer, Dilly Gent ,who commissioned many of the memorable Radiohead videos and Grant Gee who filmed the Radiohead documentary ‘Meeting People is Easy'”
Radiohead – The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement becomes available to international broadcasters in June and is embargoed for broadcast until 1st July 2011. The programme is filmed in HD, will have no audience and no presenter – just a rare opportunity to see an intimate performance from one of the greatest bands in the world.
On the 20th of July BBC Worldwide America announced that rights had been sold to broadcast the performance on the MTV Network in America.
The BBC Worldwide Blog carried a piece the next day written by Salim Mukaddam the Vice President of BBC Worldwide Music Television about the project:
Last year I had the opportunity to bring together my personal passion and professional life when I met with Radiohead’s management, Bryce Edge and Chris Hufford. You could not wish to meet two more welcoming, co-operative, professional and knowledgeable people. Both Chris and Bryce instantly saw the potential that a partnership with BBC Worldwide could deliver. However, any project was obviously going to be dependent on the band – thankfully the band was interested and had a project in mind.
Radiohead launched their new album ‘The King of Limbs’ in February and from that point everything seemed to happen at light speed. The band wanted to work with their long time producer Nigel Godrich. He is one of the team responsible for ‘From The Basement’ – an incredible music show that sets the benchmark for quality in music television. The band’s concept was to perform the whole of their new album for our TV project…
…The result is a beautiful fifty five minute journey into the world of Radiohead. The King of Limbs is a stunning album in itself, but seeing the band bring these songs to life is a joy to behold. The full programme is coming to a TV screen near you soon, with confirmed broadcasts on Palladia in the USA, Canal + in Spain, Fuji TV in Japan, MultiShow in Brazil and SuperChannel in Canada.
To date Radiohead – Live from the Basement never made it to television in the UK despite broadcasts occurring in other countries such as Spain, America, Canada, Japan, Brazil and Australia. The BBC Claims that this was due to them being ‘unable to find a broadcast partner’ for the UK even with the BBC having their own broadcasting network in that region.
On February 3rd 2012 AustinLBrock uploaded the full recording of The King of Limbs – Live From The Basement to Youtube with the permission of the band’s management and BBC Worldwide. Unlike the original version uploaded by the band this included the footage of Supercollider from the Bluray and DVD that the band released on the 9th of November 2011.
#rigid short for “I’m rigid with excitement” which was a quote from Episode 2 of The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time.
#tkol which is a abbreviation of The King of Limbs.
In this case he asks fans to provide suggestions of contemporary artists who remind them of John Heartfield a German artist who was best known for his political ‘photomontages’ during the 1930-1940s which satirized the Nazi Party. Chieftan Mew’s later tweeted one example of his work entitled ‘O joyful, o blessed, miracle-bringing time.’ featuring a choir of angels wearing gas masks.
Photomontage is a technique for making composite pictures that pre-dates the use of computer software such as Photoshop. Instead the photos where cut and glued by hand to create a new image which was then sometimes photographed in order to create a seamless print.
According to Thom Yorke The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time was named after a John Heartfield collage. You can read more about it in the post about the Christmas image here.
Many of the replies seemed to point towards Banksy the pseudonym for a English graffiti artist famous for his political work and dark humor as a possible contemporary for John Heartfield:
@ChieftanMews: <Abbatoir noises> #5/10: What’s on agenda at the World Policy Forum in Yaroslavl? Congrats to PJ for answering last week, you won a prize.
The 5th of a series of 10 weekly questions tweeted by Chieftan Mews the World Policy Forum is a annual international conference first held in 2009 in Yaroslavl, Russia.
Wikipedia describes it as:
..a permanent international platform for on-going intellectual discussions and practical definition of directions of development of the modern state and its role in ensuring security and stability of the modern world.
The Forum is traditionally held in Yaroslavl (Russia) under the auspices of President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev.
Each year’s conference is focused on a main topic and 3-4 sections, in 2011 this was ‘The modern state in the age of social diversity’ and ran on 7-8th of September.
The 3 sections where ‘Democratic institutions in multiethnic societies’, ‘The rich and the poor: where is justice?’ and ‘Global security and local conflicts’.
The second part of the tweet ‘Congrats to PJ for answering last week, you won a prize.’ is directed towards PJ Harvey who had won a Mercury Music Prize on the 6th of September for ‘Let England Shake’ making her the first artist to win it twice.
Oddly enough it was reported on Digital Spy that sales of her album increased by 1,190% on Amazon overnight following the win.
Previously on August 25th Chieftan Mew’s tweeted a link to the videoclip for The Words that Maketh Murder from Let England Shake along with the message “I’m still banished” you can read more about that here.
On October 7th 2011 Chieftan Mews changed his location to Kenneth’s Frequency, a tribute to the title of a R.E.M song named ‘What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?’.
Screenshot of Mew's Twitter Profile taken by Inkybrown on October 7, 2011
Previously on September 22nd a fan posted a Youtube video of R.E.M’s videoclip for ‘The Great Beyond’ on Youtube the day after R.E.M broke up. Chieftan Mew’s simply replied to with “Aluminum” a lyric from ‘E-Bow The Letter’ which was the first single from R.E.M’s 10th album ‘New Adventures in Hi-Fi’
Chieftan Mews: Aluminum
22 September 2011 at 17:00 · Like · 3
YFan: tastes like fear
23 September 2011 at 01:33
R.E.M was a major influence for Thom Yorke and the band who toured with them in 1995 and in 1998 Radiohead joined R.E.M to perform at the Tibetan Freedom Concert where Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke took turns joining each other on stage. You can find footage of Radiohead performing Lucky with Michael Stipe and Thom Yorke performing Be Mine and Backup on E-Bow The Letter on Youtube.
They remain close friends and Thom Yorke sometimes adds the start of ‘The One I Love’ from R.E.M’s fifth album ‘Document’ to the start of ‘Everything in It’s Right Place’ when performing live.
The date of the change to Chieftan Mew’s twitter profile marks exactly 9 years since the release of R.E.M’s 8th album ‘Automatic for the People’ which was released on the 7th of October 1992 before going on to sell 16 million copies worldwide.
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? wasn’t from Automatic for the People, instead it was the first single from the next album ‘Monster’ from 1994. Radiohead where the support act for this tour.
Michael Stipe describes What’s the Frequency, Kenneth? as:
I wrote that protagonist as a guy who’s desperately trying to understand what motivates the younger generation, who has gone to great lengths to try and figure them out, and at the end of the song it’s completely fucking bogus. He got nowhere.
R.E.M announced on the 21st of September last year that “As lifelong friends and co-conspirators, we have decided to call it a day as a band” on their website, they had been together 31 Years and released 15 Albums of which ‘Collapse into Now’ was their last.
Rolling Stone did a really nice interview with Thom Yorke while Radiohead where in New York last year about R.E.M’s influence on him and the band, you can read it here.
Mew’s tweeted this along with a link to the clip for OCDC from the new album by the same name by Get The Blessing suggesting that it was deserving of more views.
The Video has the following description on Youtube:
Uploaded by thisistheblessing on Feb 21, 2012
The new album ‘OCDC’ by Get The Blessing out 5th March on Naim Jazz Records
Get The Blessing is a Bristol based jazz rock quartet formed in 2000 by Jim Barr and Clive Deamer who last year joined Radiohead as a additional drummer to perform material from The King of Limbs live. OCDC is their third album. Their previous albums are ‘All is Yes’ and ‘Bugs in Amber’ which the band released under the shorter name of ‘The Blessing’.
Like Phillip Selway it seems Clive Deamer can hold his own as a singer with the band releasing a exclusive version of Bugs In Amber on Youtube titled Moot that features Clive Deamer’s lead vocals.
Clive also has been providing backing vocals on Cut A Hole, one of the new Radiohead songs debuted during the American leg of the 2012 Tour.
If you’re in the UK you can catch the band playing on the following dates, although it appears they’ve got a different drummer due to Clive Deamer being on tour with Radiohead:
22/Mar/2012 – Band on the Wall, Manchester, UK
23/Mar/2012 – NCEM, York, UK
24/Mar/2012 – Kazimier, Liverpool, UK
28/Mar/2012 – Hare and Hounds, Birmingham, UK
29/Mar/2012 – Boileroom, Guildford, UK
03/Apr/2012 – Ronnie Scott’s, London, UK
04/Apr/2012 – Ronnie Scott’s, London, UK
You can find OCDC along with their previous albums on iTunes or buy it direct from their website here for 11 Pounds or 12 Pounds for postage outside the UK.
RT: @NonsuchRecords: Krzysztof Penderecki, Jonny Greenwood Collaboration Out Now; “Carries a Powerful Impact,” Says @MusicOMH http://bit.ly/zESEPR
Mew’s retweeted this from Nonsuch Records who are responsible for the release of the recent album by Krzysztof Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood. Nonsuch have previously released Jonny’s other classical work including the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood and Norwegian Wood.
The link is to information about the record dated the 13th of March 2012. The day before Mews retweeted it.
The new album featuring works by Krzysztof Penderecki—”Poland’s godfather of the musical avant-garde” (Independent)—paired with those they inspired by Jonny Greenwood is out now on Nonesuch Records. On the album are Penderecki’s Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia (for 48 strings) and Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver and 48 Responses to Polymorphia, all performed by the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra, with Penderecki conducting his pieces and Marek Moś conducting Greenwood’s. “The results are ear-tingling,” says NPR. “What we hear on this album is a meeting of two artistic visionaries connected in a real dialogue.”
Yesterday Jonny Greenwood posted to Dead Air Space that Penderecki is coming to London this week to play material from the album live.
Jonny writes:
Penderecki is coming to London this week, with the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra . They’re going to play the music on the recording we’ve just released together.
To hear him conduct Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Polymorphia with this wonderful Polish orchestra is a really magical experience, so if you’re in London on Thursday, perhaps you’d like to come along…..
He includes a photo of the orchestra rehearsing and picture of what appears to be his original notation for one of the pieces:
The New York Times is carrying a great feature piece about Jonny titled ‘Radiohead’s Runaway Guitarist’ which you can read here.
NCR was providing a free stream of the album however it’s no longer available, you can order it from Nonsuch for $13.00 for just the MP3 or $14.00 for FLAC or CD+MP3
@ChieftanMews: 4/10: Leaves fall & then grow again. From the same branches. The sounds they make can change too. .. … Kid is now an Adult?
Tweeted the day before the release of TKOL RMX 1234567 a two-disc CD collating the collection of Remixes of The King of Limbs released between July 4th and October 10th Chieftan Mew’s refers to the remixes in this tweet as growing from the same ‘branches’ as the original songs. Both leaves and branches are a reference to ‘Stems’.
In remixing the term Stems are used to denote the individual parts of a song isolated into separate files to facilitate remixing. Previously with In Rainbows Radiohead had released Stems of both Reckoner and Nude for a remix competition located at RadioheadRemix.com.
While in 2005 Trent Renzor famously experimented with releasing stems of his music for fans Radiohead had previously run a competition in 2003 called ‘The Loophole’ providing samples from Hail To The Thief and offering fans the chance to become ‘a minor celebrity’ by having their remixes featured on the Radiohead website. Unlike other competitions The Loophole contained more then just stems of songs from Hail To The Thief as samples included additional pieces such as offcuts, alternative takes and even one sample that would later turn up in on The Eraser as part of Black Swan. While it’s unknown how many remixes where made there was 100 ‘winners’ featured on the Radiohead.com site.
You can read more about The Loophole and maybe download some of the original stems yourself to mess around with at Citizen Insane.
Last year on twitter Flying Lotus admitted that he too was asked to provide a remix of The King of Limbs but didn’t know where to start with it, he later gave more details in a interview:
Indy: He was also on your last album. Are there any more collaborations like that in the works?
FL: Not that I know of. They wanted me to remix the new Radiohead record, and I’ve been trying to mess with that a little bit. But I haven’t gotten to it yet.
Indy: Tell us what that’ll sound like when you’re done with it?
FL: It’s too early to say, man. I have no fucking clue. It’s difficult to work with, because the pieces that they gave me, there’s no real a cappella. It’s like piano and voice at the same time.
Indy: So you can’t separate them.
FL: No, I can’t. So I have to come up with some shit that’s a little similar to the record, I guess, to an extent.
Hunting Mews 
