what’s this “we” stuff

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, king of angst rock, is suitably conflicted about the environment and his own role in destroying it. It turns out you can’t be a superstar without a most triumphant concert tour. And any most triumphant concert tour burns tons of fossil fuels. And the fans generate gobs and gobs of unrecycleable waste (for instance most concerts are a waste of time; and you’ll never be able to recycle that time).

Here’s what Thom said:

“The whole apparatus of big festivals is not cool.”

Ok, now here’s a slogan we can use: “It’s the Apparatus, Stupid!” I’m with you, Thom, if by “apparatus” you mean smelly, greasy-haired commiejugend standing around wreathed in second-hand cannibis smoke, drawing up a new constitution in the air with the embers clinging stubbornly to their roach clips. I am so sick of that apparatus.

“If we could go to them and say, you can only use paper cups, you can’t use generators, you have to use solar panels.”

Dude! Solar panels! So awesome…until the sun goes down. Which is usually long before the main act wonders onstage as if they are lost and took a wrong turn. Anyway, MTV tried that, it’s called “unplugged” and it was huge back in Kurt Cobain’s day. All these bands would record music without using electricity. Except for the recording equipment and the broadcasting equipment and the coffee maker and such. But they didn’t do the whole open field thing. Dang! I see what you mean, man!

“You technically can’t make it happen.”

Not until the hemp-powered cold-fusion ipod comes out.

“That stresses me out, because I am a hypocrite.”

Preach it brother.

“As we all are.”

Whoa, wait. We who? We all-in-the-band, or all-all, as in everybody? ‘Cuz I ain’t, cuz.

If I had a rock band our festivals would take place only in recently levelled old-growth hardwood forest (you can sit on the stumps!). My stage show would involve two monstrous genetically engineered cow intestines belching methane into the air, which we of course would burn for a whopping 2.54 billion BTU’s an hour. The immediate environmental impact would mess with low pressure systems as far as 250 miles away, spawning tornadoes, hurricanes, or sometimes both.

As if the light and heat from the methane were not enough, we’d also run massive generators powered by makeshift brick and mud nuclear reactors which barely remain stable for the duration of the show. After the show everybody has to clear out and you can’t clean the littered field up for another 40 years due to the fallout.

Our stage would be constructed entirely out of 297 brand-new SUV’s, all of which would have their engines revving the whole time. We would pay minimum wage minus “expenses” to illiterate drivers to drive each SUV so that the stage could periodically roll forward into the crowd. It doesn’t pay to get too spaced out at one of my concerts. And you’ve never seen a mosh pit like this.

Instead of pot we’d have hand out cans of freon to huff. And the noise level would be such that children of concertgoers born many years later would sustain inner ear damage because their deafened parents always yelled. What a night to remember.

The point is that I’d make all of this clear right from the outset. My fans would never wonder for a moment if I was conflicted about the impact of my concerts on the environment. We are not all hypocrites.