Hold Steady guitarist slags Radiohead
August 22nd, 2008 by Wade Tatangelo in NewsThe Hold Steady, to my ears, are basically a straightforward, neoclassic rock band that’s managed to endear itself to the fickle indie set. Will there be any fallout from Hold Steady guitarist Tab Kubler dissing indie gods Radiohead and then praising Oasis, the bane of stateside hipsters? Or is it just silly blog fodder?
“I like [Radiohead] as a rock band, all the buttons and sequencing and stuff like that I don’t really care for,” reads the Kubler quote in NME.com. “I’m a fan of rock music and what they’re doing now I don’t think is very good.”
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:00 pm
I don’t think his statement about Radiohead there is off the mark at all …
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Pssh.. It’s entirely off the mark. The guy has little idea what Radiohead is doing when they’re playing live.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Yea, sounds like a statement he made without really thinking too hard. But hey, he’s a musician, what do you expect?
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Well, I can’t say I know what Radiohead is doing live, but when I don’t like the albums, I can’t really be expected to shell out for bloated concert tickets – can I? Radiohead lost me a long time ago. No offense to anyone who thinks they’re the cat’s pyjamas …
August 25th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
sounds about right to me. The Hold Steady are progressive lyrically without being convoluted in terms of content and musically they rock in a very subtle way and put on a great live show.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:52 am
On the one hand, the guy making the comment is a really good rock guitarist, and I dig the records his band makes (though I’m most intimately familiar with “Boys and Girls in America”, if that is any indicator of my credibility).
On the other hand, I’d take “Pabloy Honey”, “OK Computer” or “The Bends” over any rock record the Hold Steady have made, and I greatly appreciate that Radiohead can say “OK we’ve done that let’s do something else we enjoy”. I’ve found the latter part of Radiohead’s career to be extremely enjoyable and musically interesting and rewarding (screw the quotes, but Optimistic, Morning Bell, National Anthem, Idioteque, Pyramid Song, You and Whose Army?, I Might Be Wrong, Dollars and Cents, Knives Out, Reckoner, and Jigsaw Falling Into Place vs. middle-age-guy-who-was-in-Lifter-Puller-yelling-at-you-about-the-Mississippi-river? Seriously?). I’d rather be listening to their records, and I’d rather be opening for them period.
I still love The Hold Steady, but they are a far smaller drop in the bucket than Radiohead.