A daydreaming Radiohead on the Shropshire Union Canal

“Dreamers. They never learn”.

Feb 20, 2024

Norbury Junction on the Shropshire Union Canal, 19th February 2024 **(Author’s Collection)**

I followed a strangely familiar path to a lifelong fandom of Radiohead and for music fans of my vintage in the UK the name “The Britannia Music Club” will no doubt raise many memories, as well as a quaintly old fashioned look back at a still fairly recent past. I missed “Pablo Honey” in 1993 and yes, even the song the Oxford band are still associated with 3 decades later, “Creep”. Radiohead simply didn’t hit my radar until “The Bends” was available via the above named music club, and a music club you signed up to via regular back page advertisements in every magazine available whereby, on your initial sign up, for the price of one CD you could choose five more absolutely free! You were now locked into a commitment to buy at least 3 further CD’s every year for two years but who cared? I was a couple of years out of college, still living at home and with a couple of albeit poor paying part-time jobs I always had a little discretionary income and 6 CD’s for the price of 1?

So “The Bends” was duly ordered, listened to eagerly, and thoroughly hated and dismissed! I thought it too loud and brash, I’m still not a huge fan of the global success that was “High and Dry” and I needed convincing “My Iron Lung” was as great as my friend Gareth said it was. Where no convincing was necessary was in the final four tracks of the album culminating in the hair raising beauty that is “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and returning to the beginning of the album you have three incredible songs either side of “High and Dry” that told tales of dislocation and unease of a world already watching your every word and as fake and plastic as the shiny world being created to replace the earthy evolution of more simpler and humbler times.

Then “OK Computer” was released in 1997 and quite frankly the greatest album ever pressed to vinyl had been created and we had no further need for any new music ever again! My goodness. Treat yourself to some OK Computer sometime. You can pay me back in magic beans another time. More tales were told of a fracturing world with disconnected people “clinging onto bottles” hoping to avoid the “Karma Police” and convincing themselves they were “Fitter, Happier” (and more productive) whilst our new shiny world beeped and squawked and “buzzes like a fridge” and a “de-tuned radio”. Thom Yorke and his school friends from Oxford were “back to save the universe” before a 6 minute behemoth of a song pleaded for the voices in his head to stop before his own self-imposed wail to “slow down” in their majestic final track “The Tourist”. Radiohead have a happy knack of writing and composing brilliant songs to end their albums, and here’s a few older articles I wrote in appreciation of the band many, many Radiohead songs ago:

"Radiohead, and the album that isn't, but should be"

"Radiohead, OK Computer and how saying no to The Bends saved my life"

"Radiohead, and a Hail to a Thief"

"Radiohead, In Rainbows"

I’ve written similar articles for every one of Radiohead’s nine studio albums and a brief potted history would be: I bought “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” (released months apart) together on the same day in 2002 ahead of a long week away on the road for work, with Amnesiac taking a long time to love but each album having an incredible final tune once more. I bought 2003’s “Hail to the Thief” on first day of release and played it constantly, over and over and over again, and much to the bemusement of my son’s beautiful mother who couldn’t help but sing ironically along to “Go to Sleep” if only to placate me. Four years later saw the release of “In Rainbows” via an “Honesty Box” policy on the internet of paying what you liked for a download of the album, and if you find 10 finer songs back-to-back throughout an album I’d love to hear it. It had been ten years since the release of OK Computer and whilst a wholly different album, In Rainbows comes as close as possible to eclipsing its masterpiece of a stablemate.

We’d have to wait another four years for the boys next release, “The King of Limbs” in 2011, and an album of 8 tracks that sit well together but not a particular favourite before, another five years later this time, Radiohead released their ninth and so far latest album to date, the magnificent “A Moon Shaped Pool”. I was beyond eager to download their 2016 album and remember listening to it for the first time in my son’s bedroom overlooking the River Severn in Ironbridge and both christening the album their “Greatest Unreleased Hits” as well as instantly challenging OK Computer for the title of my favourite ever Radiohead album. A Moon Shaped Pool is old and young, ancient and modern and a modern day masterpiece of an album that concludes, as every Radiohead album does, with an incredible song and here “True Love Waits”, a song based on a real life tale of a child’s abandonment, of living on “lollipops and crisps” and the soul crushing lament of “I’m not living. I’m just killing time”. The song had been around forever, played live either by the full band or just Thom Yorke in his acoustic sets and now finally, on an official Radiohead album.

Eight years later, this particular Radiohead obsessive is becoming rather impatient for the release of their tenth and next album!

So I present to you the lyrics to track 2 of A Moon Shaped Pool and “Daydreaming” (official video of the song linked at the bottom of the article) and a dozen images from my amble along the Shropshire Union Canal at beautiful Norbury Junction on Monday 19th February 2024.

I hope you enjoy.

“Dreamers
They never learn
They never learn

Beyond the point
Of no return
Of no return”