Fiery Furnaces Vs. Everyone

What started off with Fiery Furnaces' Matthew Friedberger mistakenly thinking Radiohead had written a song about an experimental composer instead of a World War I vet has turned into an internet feud between Friedberger and Beck.

See, this summer Radiohead wrote a song about Harry Patch, the last surviving British World War I veteran who died earlier this year. At the beginning of this month, Friedberger thought Radiohead had written the tune about experimental composer Harry Partch (see the difference in names there?), and dissed the band in an interview with Spinner.ca.

"How's the song? Is it 48 notes to the octave?" Friedberger told Spinner. "What does it have to do with Harry Patch? Oh, my wife says I'm being very rude. She doesn't like me insulting Radiohead. She's afraid they will send their lackeys through the computer to sabotage us. But they needn't worry — we are a band that sabotages ourselves."

Friedberger later issued a statement in which he said he hadn't heard Radiohead's song about the veteran, but was sure he wouldn't like it if he did.

"No doubt Radiohead and their fans can ignore his opinion of this matter and continue with their triumphant artistic conventions," the statement read. "Matt would much have preferred to insult Beck but he is too afraid of Scientologists."

This week, Beck somewhat passive-aggressively responded to Friedberger's diss by writing a song called "Harry Partch" and posting about it on his website. It uses Partch's 43-tone scale, which Friedberger was insulting in his Spinner interview.

Friedberger responded to Beck by posting a gigantic rant entitled "IMAGINARY RESPONSE!" on the Fiery Furnaces' MySpace page in which he calls Beck's song a virtual response.

"But doesn't this imaginary feud demand imaginary responses?" the post reads. "And therefore, imaginary response songs? Shouldn't we step — isn't now the time to ascend — from the merely virtual to the boldly imaginary?"

Yeah, basically it's all like that, and you can read it here.