Can I tell you the single most bizarre and reckless and potentially catastrophic stunt I've ever pulled as a professional rock critic?

I should have gotten arrested for this.

In 2003, while living in Oakland, California, and working as

the music editor for a Bay Area Alt Weekly called the East Bay Express, I played the new

radio head album, the 2003 radio head album, Hail to the Thief, for a classroom of fifth graders,

and I asked those kids to draw pictures

based on what they heard and how it made them feel. Jail. Prison. I should still be in prison. Walk into the jaws of hell.

Tom York's voice draws you closer. It makes you lean in toward him conspiratorially, even when he's literally singing the

words, walk into the jaws of hell. It's wild, man. I am standing in a fifth grade classroom

in San Leandro, California, surrounded by nine, 10, and 11-year-olds who are not at all psyched

about being forced to listen to the celebrated

zeitgeist-defining English rock band Radiohead.

I found a fifth grade teacher who would consent to this experiment, and the kids' parents

consented to letting me publish their kids' drawings.

Here's the first drawing by Maddie, age 10.

Okay, let's see.

We got a boy and a girl taking a romantic magic carpet ride amidst pyramids and swirling clouds.

Maddie, I'm pretty sure this is a scene from the Disney movie Aladdin.

I'm going to tell you up front. I don't think

every kid took the listen to Radiohead prompt super seriously. That's fine. It's fine.

Thank you, Maddie. Yeah, the teacher consented, the parents consented, but the actual fifth

graders notably had no say in the matter.

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