Radiohead, Donkey Kong, and Mashed Potatoes

There are some things in this world you won't be able to appreciate as much as you could until you learn about their past. Whether it be history, music, or another individual, there are some things that wont perk your interest until you possess more than a basic knowledge about them.



Once every few weeks I go to my local library. As a child I never appreciated the library, because I had always been told that it was some magical place where all your dreams could come true and an animated Macaulay Culkin would talk to a flying book voiced by Whoopi Goldberg. Of course this information only ended in disappointment, but that's really not the point. In my bi-weekly trip to the library, I typically hang out at the music section for about ten minutes, grab as many cool CD's as I can, and head home to burn them onto my computer (which by the way is the best way ever to build your music library. How this is legal and downloading it from the internet isn't is beyond me, but that's a rant for another day).

Now, I like Radiohead. Yes Thom Yorke is absolutely bonkers. No I don't care. I found their album Kid A in the music section and, assuming it was awesome just like their album In Rainbows, I placed it with the other albums I had already picked out. When I put it on my computer though I was greeted by something that sounds an awful lot like a pterodactyl falling into a black hole while David Bowie plays keytar and Pac-man gets crushed beneath a torrential downpour of tetris blocks, all while a habitual smoker yells into a large metal fan to produce a robot voice.

Needless to say it sat mostly untouched for about six months on my desktop while I admitted myself to a mental hospital. Yes, Kid A is such a weird album that it caused me to have a mental breakdown and go temporarily insane.

Six months later it's one of my favorite albums in my music library. So what happened? At one point in time, for all I knew, this album was nothing but Donkey Kong playing a bowl of potato salad like a bongo for 40 minutes. (I don't have Photoshop on my computer, but I really wanted to give you guys a visual for this. Sadly, "Donkey Kong playing a bowl of potato salad like a bongo" Google image search yielded pretty much nothing like what I was hoping for.) Now I listen to it as I fall asleep, and as I write, and as I play video games, and if I did anything other than those three things I'd probably listen to it then as well.

About a month ago I was listening to some music on shuffle and a song came on that I didn't recognize. It was strange and unique, but beautiful in it's own freaky way. It was the track "Motion Picture Soundtrack." Intrigued, I did what bored people do best and looked up the album on Wikipedia. Oh Wikipedia, how I love thee...

I read about the album for a long while, then listened to it. Then read again, and listened again. Then listened again and again and again. The music itself is strange and erratic and somewhat dissonant, but looking beyond that, each song is the gateway drug to opening up another room of your mind you've never quite fully taken the time to explore. Every track is a great novel that makes you happy and sad and teaches you about yourself and the people around you; every note is an example of the human struggle.

This is not a critique of Radiohead's ten year old album Kid A. I'm a little late for that. Although now that I mention it, you should definitely go listen to Radiohead. No, this is simply an anecdote that I hope you all can learn from. Whether it be music, or person, or the history of beanbag chairs, you can gain a deeper appreciation for all things through learning the roots and causation.

I will not go so far as to say that you cannot enjoy something until you learn about it's pilgrimage into existance, because heck if I don't love mashed potatoes with my heart, mind and soul. No idea where they came from, but jeezy-creezy they're delicious.