Rob Harvilla used to be a music writer for The Other Paper in Columbus. He also freelanced for some fancy glossy magazines like Alternative Press. Rob left Columbus a few months ago for a good gig in San Francisco (it’s kind of like we traded him to SF as the player-to-be-named later in the Duffy to Columbus deal).
As a different way to preview an upcoming Radiohead show, Harvilla went to a local school to see what kids think of Radiohead.
In order to solicit an honest, undiluted opinion about Radiohead, you’d have to find the proverbial People Living Under Rocks. As People Living Under Rocks are unavailable, let’s use fifth graders.
Specifically, Mitsi Kato’s fifth-grade class at Roosevelt Elementary in San Leandro.
Mitsi has consented to a simple experiment: We will play a career-spanning selection of Radiohead songs; the kids, equipped with Sharpies and blank sheets of paper, will simply draw whatever the music suggests to them. We don’t even give them the name of the band. They don’t know anything about Radiohead, the mountain of criticism, the mythology. Their thoughts and interpretations are pure, unsullied, literally unique.
They are also extremely bizarre.
The kids consent to this experiment, if only because Mitsi tells them to. They do, however, immediately request that we play Sean Paul or 50 Cent instead.
Read the article and check out the amazing drawings that Radiohead inspired.