Radiohead
Meeting People Is Easy
(Kudos Films/Phonogram)

Rating: 8/10

Fantastic music, planes and motorways. Interviews, interviews. More interviews. Beautiful new music echoing through empty foreign halls. Good manners in difficult circumstances. Tantrums. Sulking. Fantastic music. The angst, the angst...

And it's true, that's what it is about. In fact, that's exactly what it is - it's a bloke with a camera and a bloke with a boom mic following a group of shy but tremendously exciting musicians around the world and documenting them dealing with all the fuss they've caused. So we go to Barcelona with them and sit through some inane interviews as newsprint scrolls down the screen. We go to New York and sit through some more inane interviews. After another show Thom is refused entry to a club where he thought his aftershow party was and the doorman yells, "Write a song about it! Radiohead! Creep! Dickhead!" as Thom trudges miserably away.

We hear some brilliant new songs recorded by Thom on the bus and in soundchecks. We watch Radiohead touchdown in Paris, Sydney and Tokyo, and hear them play more ace shows. In Berlin we watch Colin almost reach the end of his tether with a podgy NME hack (That's you, that is - Ed) and complain about not being able to see the city - and we don't feel much sympathy for either character.

But the most frustrating thing about this video is that you could read every word of every feature or review that gets scrolled down the screen and learn only a fraction of what this film teaches you about the band. It's an exhaustive view of the group at work, but still you discover nothing about who they really are. They're clever swine, Radiohead.

Ted Kessler

N.M.E.
30.11.99