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Beck Comes Out on Top of Ridiculous, Somewhat Imaginary Band Feud

By Jocelyn Hoppa, Crawdaddy!

I’ve kinda been watching this one from a distance over the last week or so, trying not to care. But it’s gotten too ridiculous to ignore, and I suppose now is the right time to give you all the recap. Especially since, you know, today’s theme is all about our hungover brains being easily entertained with music people’s shit talkin’. That’s what today’s all about, in case you didn’t know.

SO. Way back in August, before we even had this blog, Radiohead released a one-off charity track called “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” Patch was the last surviving UK veteran of WWI and died just recently at the age of 111. Proceeds from the single benefit the British Legion. Seems like a nice, sensible thing for a band to do, right?

Well, on November 3rd, the webzine Spinner ran an interview with the Fiery Furnaces in which the brother half of the duo, Matthew Friedberger, upon being told that Radiohead sent out a mass email describing the tribute, went fucking apeshit about it. He said, “F— you! You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That’s a put-on. That’s a branding technique and Radiohead have their brand that they’re popular and intelligent. So they have a song about Harry Patch.”

Confused? You should be. While I’m sure Harry Patch was a real cool guy, it’s a rather suspect thing for a band to align themselves with so to appear as thought they are all cool and obscure with their references. As it turns out, Friedberger confused war veteran Harry Patch with American composer Harry PaRtch. D’oh! Good one, dude.

THEN. Then, because he obviously had to answer to what was at least perceived as his giant fuck up, Friedberger issued a statement saying that he knew all along that it was Harry Patch, duh, and he just thought it would be funny to make a joke. Is that even believable though? I dunno…

The story gets better and continues on after the jump.

Friedberger’s statement:

“Like most creative musicians, Matt Friedberger is not a fan of Radiohead and most of their chart busters. Of course, Matt and all the Fiery Furnaces family are great fans of allTommys living or dead, so much so that lots of the Fiery Furnaces’ work is, because of the pun, dedicated to imitating the Who’s Tommy.

“Back in the fall of 1996 or whenever that interview was conducted, the interviewer asked what Matt thought of the Radiohead song celebrating a WWI veteran. Matt naturally thought it would be interesting to pretend that they wrote a song about the celebrated American composer of a similar sounding name, hence his joking in the interview about Radiohead composing a song with something like 48 notes to an octave. It was easy and amusing to imagine Radiohead’s attempt to colonize that relatively arcane bit of our musical lifeworld. This is what they used to call, in some bohemian and advertising circles, ‘riffing’ or fooling around.

“Matt has not heard the Radiohead song about Harry Patch, but if he did, he is sure he wouldn’t like it. No doubt Radiohead and their fans can ignore his opinion of this matter and continue with their triumphant artistic interventions. Matt would have much preferred to insult Beck but he is too afraid of Scientologists.”

Okay, so this is the point where we cease being confused and start thinking to ourselves that this Friedberger guy is kind of a dick and should learn to keep his trap shut (and maybe get someone else to write his statements? I mean, lifeworld???). And the last sting on Beck from out of nowhere? WTF, Fiery Furnaces dude?!

AND THEN. Then, Beck posted a 10-minute tribute to Harry Partch on his website (click and scroll a bit). It says nothing directly of the Friedberger insult, but the implied “fuck you” speaks volumes. Awesome volumes. That there is a life lesson, from Beck to you.

So yeah… then… Friedberger, who apparently thinks more circular logic is just the answer to saving face here, penned a MySpace blog just yesterday about Beck’s song, titled “Imaginary Response!” If you want to read it go ahead, but I can tell you right now that it’s full of mind-numbing sentences like this one: “I propose nothing less than the liberation and use of only our imaginations for the direct purpose of, not just pop music writing, but pop music production and distribution. And subsequent, now imaginary, blog discussion.”

Ugh. So, yeah, that’s the recap. Beck comes out on top. Radiohead is obviously staying out of it. Fiery Furnaces dude reveals himself to be severely annoying. I mean, does anyone else have the image of him alone in a room talking to himself stuck in your head like I do?