Extra! Extra! Radiohead to give out a newspaper next week
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On Monday and Tuesday, Radiohead will be giving out a newspaper in commemoration of ‘The King of Limbs’ being available in record stores. Why are they giving out a newspaper? Because Thom Yorke is William Randolph Hearst now? Because they got jealous when McSweeney’s did it? Because the New York Times is going behind a paywall soon and we gotta read something? Any or all of those reasons could be true, but the truest reason is because they are Radiohead, the band that was once a band but is now something like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Oh, and also, it probably ties in with the elaborately packaged ‘newspaper edition’ of the album that will be released on May 9.
Radiohead’s periodical has a lovely title: The Universal Sigh. (Hey, is that a newspaper or a meditation tape I never returned to the local Buddhist center?) It will be given away at select spots all over the world. In Los Angeles, you can get it Tuesday at 6400 Sunset Blvd. (Amoeba Records) and 3700 Sunset Blvd. (perhaps where the Silver Lake Farmers Market sets up). The website for the newspaper doesn’t say who will be giving away the papers -- but let it please be little street urchins in newsboy caps shouting ‘Extra! Extra!’
Related: Radiohead’s ‘The King of Limbs’ reviewed
The Universal Sigh has already leaked, it seems; a copy of it sold on EBay for $60. The rest of us in North America will have to wait until Tuesday (Europe gets it a day earlier).
Remember when trudging to the record store on Tuesdays made you a super-fan? Not so anymore. In the age of sussing out ticket-purchase locations via ZIP codes, fandom is not for the faint of heart. Well, at least they aren’t making us geo-cache anything.
Related:
Radiohead weekend: Best of the dancing Thom Yorke mash-ups -- so far [Video]
Live review: Thom Yorke at the Orpheum Theatre
--Margaret Wappler