FYM MUSIC GUIDE: HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY TO RADIOHEAD'S 'KID A' & DEFTONES' 'WHITE PONY'

FYM wishes a Happy 10th Birthday to two great and very different albums: Kid A by Radiohead and White Pony by Deftones.

Kid A

What is there to say about Kid A that hasn't already been said? It was named the greatest album of the 00's decade by both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, which is pretty remarkable as it came out in 2000 and fended off a decade's worth of great albums to still nab that #1 spot. Creating a successful follow-up to an album as monumental as 1997's OK Computer was pretty much like asking Radiohead to climb Mt. Everest with no Sherpas and wearing only cargo shorts, but they successfully got to the top and mounted a bigger flag up there than anybody had before.

Radiohead succeeded with Kid A by throwing conventional rock album rules completely out the window. But then again, maybe in a way Kid A is an ultimate rock album. Back when the original rock & roll albums were made by people like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and all the way through to bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, they were all using guitars and drumsets and equipment in  recording studios that were the most modern and technologically advanced at the time. When the 21st century hit and Radiohead was recording Kid A, guitars, and traditional drums and verse/chorus/verse songwriting were very 20th century concepts and things of the past. Kid A was recorded using computers, synthesizers, and some of the most modern technology available, just like how The Beatles and Pink Floyd and all the others used to best tools at the time too. In that sense, the sound of Kid A is the truest sound of rock and roll today. 

Kid A made Radiohead an even better live band than they were before, and the album's best song, "The National Anthem", has been a chills-inducing highlight of their live show ever since the album's release:

White Pony

Deftones' White Pony, which was originally released in June 2000 but was rereleased on October 3 2000 with bonus tracks, could have easily been unnoticeably swept under the rug at the time of its release. It was unfairly lumped together with countless rap-metal goons that were staggeringly popular at the time. But White Pony, made by a band who were outspokenly into good music that their peers probably had never heard of like Björk and various shoegaze bands, beat the odds and became a successful album thanks to the dreamy, ethereal singles "Change (In the House of Flies)" and "Digital Bath". Its unique ambient feel has given White Pony a replayable quality that most other album of the same era and the same genre definitely do not have.

(Photo above taken by our resident Boston Beer Guide: Jeff 'Brew Daddy' Preussner, while attending Deftones live in Boston with Alice in Chains)

White Pony closing track "Pink Maggit" has always been a personal favorite and still racks up a large amount of plays since 2000:

HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY 'RELATIONSHIP OF COMMAND' BY AT THE DRIVE-IN

Ten years ago today, El Paso's At the Drive-In released their greatest and final album, Relationship of Command. Despite it being released in the same calendar year as such modern classics as Radiohead's Kid A and Queens of the Stone Age's Rated R, you have to remember the utter insults to music that were being overplayed on major radio station across the globe. Papa Roach's "Last Resort" was in the midst of its second stint as the then-current #1 song on Billboard's Modern Rock charts at the time of Relationship of Command's release (number one on the pop charts: "Doesn't Really Matter" by Janet Jackson).


After gaining a huge cult following on independent punk record labels throughout the 90's, At the Drive-In jumped ship to now-defunct major label Grand Royal (owned by the Beastie Boys), which was a subsidiary of Capitol Records. The young Texans poured a career's worth of energy, frustration, and excitement into Relationship of Command and the end result was something that sounded so fresh and original, that when lead single "One-Armed Scissor" actually started to gain some airplay on major radio stations like Los Angeles' KROQ, pretty much all of the song that were played before and after it sounded even more irrelevant, if possible. At the Drive-In also brought their now-legendarily intense live act to late night TV shows such as Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Late Show with David Letterman.



Mere months after the release of Relationship of Command, as the band was absolutely rocketing sky high in popularity, inner-band creative conflicts and touring exhaustion, among other things, caused the band to break up. It was, and still is, a very unprecedented occurrence for a band to break up while on the verge of becoming such a worldwide phenomenon.

The five members of At the Drive-In eventually recovered from the breakup, in various ways. The bands The Mars Volta and Sparta were formed and have had decently healthy careers. The Mars Volta may have arguably improved on Relationship of Command's combination of quality and grand scale with 2003's De-Loused in the Comatorium before getting lost in guitar effect pedals and lengthy jams and never recovering. Sparta stated off strong with 2002's Wiretap Scars before fizzing out quietly, as even bassist Paul Hinojos jumped ship back to The Mars Volta eventually.

Ten years after the release of Relationship of Command, it really appears that now would be an ideal time for an At the Drive-In reunion, as both The Mars Volta and Sparta have been completely stretched thin and, according to interviews with members of both bands, enough time has passed in order for any bad blood that once existed to be wiped clean. With many once-great defunct bands finding great success in reunion tours, an At the Drive-In reunion seems not only reasonable, but inevitable.

HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY: 'RATED R'

Entering a new decade means that the best albums you loved in the previous decade are soon to be turning ten years old. Album anniversaries are interesting because they help you look at how that particular album shaped not only that band's fate, but also other music in the same era since its release.

Released June 6, 2000, Queens of the Stone Age's Rated R never made a huge impact on radio or MTV, though it did receive nearly universal praise and can now be considered an absolute stoner rock classic. It was ushered in at the same time when bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit were making an utter mockery of metal. QOTSA's Josh Homme had a hunch for writing perfectly stoned, and sometimes brilliantly melodic metal that sounded remarkably fresh, but wouldn't catch on in the ears of the public until their next masterpiece two years later, Songs For the Deaf.

Highlights of the album include the grooving Mark Lanegan sung "In the Fade" and the Björk-inspired "Better Living Through Chemistry". Here's the video for the single "The Lost art of Keeping a Secret".