Thom Yorke Asking For A Carbon Footprint Up His Ass

anthonyjmiccio | April 21, 2008 1:15 am

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Radiohead will be performing on Late Night With Conan O’Brien on Wednesday, which falls during NBC’s “Green Week.” Radiohead was the first band to play on the long-running show back in 1993, so it’s a bit of a sentimental moment for everyone involved. Thing is, the band is sending a clip of themselves performing in London rather than flying down to perform on set. Thom will announce before the clip that by not flying across the Atlantic Ocean, they’ll be saving a lot of resources for Gaia. So should fans decrease their carbon footprint by not sitting in Conan’s audience? Or maybe just not sit through yet another clip of Radiohead playing live?

Recorded live in London, Radiohead’s performance of “House of Cards,” represents an ongoing effort by the socially conscious band to act in the greenest manner possible. By opting to record this exclusive performance rather than fly over for a one-off appearance, the band – as frontman Thom Yorke notes in the introduction to their performance – avoided leaving a carbon footprint equivalent to driving one’s car for a solid year.

Fuck you, Thom Yorke. I’m supposed to applaud you for finding a way to promote your new album on Conan without increasing your “carbon footprint” on the planet? I know how easy it is for Radiohead is to film themselves playing live in a room. It’s all you guys do. This only deserves commendation is if I accept that it was a necessity for you to appear on Conan in the first place. And as I’m not a self-righteous, self-enamored rock star (yet), I can’t make that logical leap. Are you going to send holograms of yourself on tour, allowing fans to congratulate themselves (and you, of course) by declining the ecological strain that would created by dragging your moany ass across the world? Should award nominees preface their “live-via-satellite” acceptance speeches by saying that by staying on set and not walking down the red carpet, they’re helping keep our planet just a little bit healthier?

Radiohead playing Conan (again) (sort of) (green) (video) [Brooklyn Vegan]

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