No Rock And Roll Fun

HEADS INTO THE FUTURE: Our Radiohead correspondent Aaron's been back in touch, with the following musing:

As a long time Radiohead fan, I'm really interested to know what the band are going to do after their record deal ends (this'll happen pretty soon).

The whole band have had an anti-industry stance for years now. Back in the day, Colin went on the BBC's Newsnight to advocate file sharing and napster. Just two weeks ago, Thom said the band would be "completely unrecognizable in two years". But then, three weekends ago, MTV were allowed to record a Radiohead show in London - then again, Thom mouthed off about their presence the whole way through the gig.

So, what I want to know is, will Radiohead follow through at the end of their record contract, and become the first, mainstream, popular music act to say goodbye to the record labels and run things the way they want, using the net..? I sure hope so, because, they're big enough the change the way things are done, as the lyrics/tabs issue shows.

The other thing, of course, is that the band seem less bothered by the whole flogging of records aspects of the music industry to be that worried about the risks of taking such a step. Bush tried to do this a few years ago, and came a bit of a cropper in the process; mainly because at that time there hadn't been the massive popularisation of music downloads brought about by Metallica's Napster campaign. But now things have shifted a lot.