Tag Archives: Question

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 / #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)

Posted on by Muggs

Aug 4, 2011:

@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.

Starting on July 6th 2011 Chieftan Mews stated that he’d been banished to The Ziggurart ( I am stuck in here with some juicy footage: http://www.the-ziggurat.com – Please call a medic or psychiatrist for me immediately. ␄ ) in return for removing footage of Supercollider from The King of Limbs – Live From The Basement ( that buck, took me out of the final cut so I took Supercollider & some juicy footage before being banished to the Zigg. Stuck.Help ) .

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.

All up the questions where:

Aug 11, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: #9 of 10: What is your personal definition of: ‘freedom’? (exp. 18-Aug)

Aug 18, 2011:
@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)

Aug 24, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: #6/10: Which artist of today reminds you of the John Heartfield of yestercentury? (#7 expires Sept 1, #6 expires Sept 8) #rigid #tkol

Aug 25, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: #7/10: No more hiding: “The atom had a positive, a negative & a neutral” & “Later for the date than the hadron collider” & “I am open.” ??

Sep 8, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: #5/10: What’s on agenda at the World Policy Forum in Yaroslavl? Congrats to PJ for answering last week, you won a prize.

Sep 15, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: 4/10: Leaves fall & then grow again. From the same branches. The sounds they make can change too. .. … Kid is now an Adult?

Sep 21, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: 3/10: You all snap snap snap. Expect a rabbit out of my ass. Please don’t judge me. Are you feeling Feral? Snap snap snap all you: 10/3

Sep 27, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: 2/10: Why do some assume this is a countdown instead of a quiz?

Oct 7, 2011:
@ChieftanMews: 1/10: Was/Is this all a w.a.s.t.e. of your/our time? Stay detuned.. .. .. .. .. .␄

After which Mew’s tweeted that he was now free of the Ziggurart (Like you, once again, I am a free fugitive of life..

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.

#9 of 10: What is your personal definition of: ‘freedom’? (exp. 18-Aug)

Posted on by Muggs

Aug 11, 2011:

@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.

Mew’s stats that the question will expire in one week’s time, after which the 3rd of the questions was posted ( #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) ).

In this case he asks for fan’s own definition of the word ‘freedom’.

Currently it’s unknown for what purpose the quiz was run, nor if anything was supposed to come from it as on October 7th Mew’s last question asked if the entire thing had been a waste of time ( 1/10: Was/Is this all a w.a.s.t.e. of your/our time? Stay detuned.. .. .. .. .. .␄ ) before stating later the same day that he was now free of the Ziggurart ( Like you, once again, I am a free fugitive of life. ).

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.

#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)

Posted on by Muggs

Aug 18, 2011:

@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.

( Source: BBC.co.uk )

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.

(Source: BBCWorldwide Blog)

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.

The ‘lie’ statement from Mews refers to the fact that the copy of The King of Limbs – Live From The Basement uploaded to Youtube was described as ‘in full’ in the Youtube Comments, Chieftan Mews had previously claimed on July 12th that the version broadcast was missing footage of Supercollider ( @nigelgod that buck, took me out of the final cut so I took Supercollider & some juicy footage before being banished to the Zigg. Stuck.Help ).

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.

Mew’s later retweeted a link to the video from AustinLBrock ( RT: @AustinLBrock: [1080p] Radiohead – The King Of Limbs From The Basement [Full Show + Supercollider] #Radiohead #ThomYorke http://t.co/tD0arRGD ).

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.

#6/10: Which artist of today reminds you of the John Heartfield of yestercentury? (#7 expires Sept 1, #6 expires Sept 8) #rigid #tkol

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Aug 24, 2011:

@ChieftanMews: #6/10: Which artist of today reminds you of the John Heartfield of yestercentury? (#7 expires Sept 1, #6 expires Sept 8) #rigid #tkol

The sixth of a series of weekly questions Mew’s provides two hashtags with his question along with the information that he will be taking replies until the 8th of September… though what he had planned to do with them is still unknown. #7 refers to a 2nd question ( @ChieftanMews: #7/10: No more hiding: “The atom had a positive, a negative & a neutral” & “Later for the date than the hadron collider” & “I am open.” ?? )

#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:


( Source: Banksy.co.uk )

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.

4/10: Leaves fall & then grow again. From the same branches. The sounds they make can change too. .. … Kid is now an Adult?

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Sep 15, 2011:

@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.


( Reckoner Remix’s screenshot from Wired )

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.

Source: Colarado Springs Independent )

Kid is now an Adult? refers to Kid A now being over 10 years old, old enough to make them a adult today.

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.

“Off The Grid. Into The Woods.”

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Mew’s has deleted almost all his tweets again.

Chieftan Mew’s twitter page as of the 18th of March 2012:

This might be to mark the end of the first leg of Radiohead’s 2012 Tour which wrapped up in Phoenix, Arizona on the 15th or it could be for some other reason entirely.

You can read all his deleted tweets, along with a complete record of every tweet known here. along with a annotated version of his current tweets here.

He’s also updated his Twitter Location to “Off The Grid. Into The Woods.” and his twitter display picture back to his original green one with the file name clipclopclipclop.jpg
New Profile Picture "clipclopclipclop.jpg"

Off the Grid is a term used for not being outside of the electrical grid either though providing your own power or simply living without it all together. While popular with people aiming for a more sustainable lifestyle it’s also a expression used for falling out of the modern world, usually with the aim of getting back to nature.

Mew’s clearly is aiming for the second as he returns to the woods, he’s used this expression before in terms of returning to the forest/woods to announce a period of silence followed by little twitter activity nor news from the band.

clipclopclipclop is a reference to the end of Episode 3 of The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time:

“What is Fear? Fear is the Clip Clop of Police Horses.
Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop.
Sleep well.”

2/10: Why do some assume this is a countdown instead of a quiz?

Posted on by Muggs

Sep 27, 2011:

@ChieftanMews: 2/10: Why do some assume this is a countdown instead of a quiz?

This was the 2nd last of a series of tweets sent out weekly (usually on a Wednesday or Thursday) asking a question, each usually expecting a reply from fans within a week. It seems that this tweet refers to fans expecting something to come of the quiz and thinking that October 14th (a week after #1) would see something happening. The question of ‘what would happen on October 14’ becoming a point of discussion on message boards and on The King of Limbs Part 2.

On Facebook Cheftan Mew added “- Nothing as it seems. – ” to the end of the question.

Screenshot from Facebook

Of course a clever fan replied stating that the reason was because the numbers started at ten and where going down.. (thus a countdown).

Interestingly it seems to show that Chieftan Mews has read The King of Limbs Part 2, he had previously joked about a theory published on The King of Limbs 2 believing Ims Menoo to mean Semi-Moon where after explaining that Ims Menoo meant nothing of the sort he added (Moon Theory – Ha!) referring to the idea of a lunar release schedule for new material titled the ‘Moon Theory’ on the site.

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.

1/10: Was/Is this all a w.a.s.t.e. of your/our time? Stay detuned.. .. .. .. .. .␄

Posted on by Muggs

Oct 7, 2011:

@ChieftanMews: 1/10: Was/Is this all a w.a.s.t.e. of your/our time? Stay detuned.. .. .. .. .. .␄

This was the last of the #10 series of tweets from Chieftan Mews sent out each Thursday for 10 weeks. On the same day as this tweet Mew’s sent a second message stating that he was ‘free’ (Like you, once again, I am a free fugitive of life.) assuming that the quiz had lead to him escaping from the Ziggurat from where he’d been trapped over the previous months.

w.a.s.t.e stands for We Await Silent Tristenro’s Empire and is the name for Radiohead’s official online store and fanclub since 1992. According to Follow Me Around it is from a 1966 novel written by Thomas Pynchon titled The Crying Of Lot 49.

Wiki gives a brief description of the book as:

The shortest of Pynchon’s novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero (or Tristero). The former actually existed, and was the first firm to distribute postal mail; the latter is Pynchon’s invention. The novel is often classified as a notable example of postmodern fiction.

Time included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005

The novel follows Oedipa Maas, a Californian housewife who becomes entangled in a convoluted historical mystery when her ex-lover dies and designates her the co-executor of his estate. The catalyst of Oedipa’s adventure is a set of stamps that may have been used by a secret underground postal delivery service, the Trystero (or Tristero).

According to the historical narrative that Oedipa pieces together during her travels around the San Francisco Bay Area, the Trystero was defeated by Thurn und Taxis – a real postal system – in the 18th century but went underground and continued to exist into Oedipa’s present day, the 1960s. Their mailboxes are disguised as regular waste-bins, often displaying their slogan W.A.S.T.E., an acronym for We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire, and their symbol, a muted post horn.

( Source: Wikipedia )

Amusingly according to a interview with Thom and Jonny in 1995 the band started their own church titled ‘The Holy Church of Waste’ while on tour in the US.

Jonny: (cutting Thom off) No, we’re reverends…..

Thom: (Cutting Jonny off) Oh yeah, we’re reverends…we’re all reverends.

Jonny: We started our own church.

Thom: The Holy Church of Waste.

Jonny: Well, we can legally marry people and bury people in 13 American states, including California.

Thom: So if anybody needs, you know, to get married, we can do it for them now. (to Jonny) How much did it cost us? Twenty dollars?

Jonny: Ten dollars or something. So we are going to conduct a mass community-style wedding at our LA show, that’s tomorrow.

You can read the rest of the interview on Follow Me Around here.

While we do not yet know if this was ‘just a waste of our time’ on November 9 Radiohead announced on Dead Air Space that they would be releasing a Bluray/DVD edition of The King of Limbs – From the Basement with Supercollider ‘added as a bonus track’.

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.