With the release of the brand new Radiohead album a few weeks ago, I’ve noticed a few articles such as this one at A Blog Supreme about the band’s relationship with jazz musicians. They are on record as being heavily influenced by jazz, and this influence goes both ways: musicians such as Chris Potter, Brad Mehldau and The Bad Plus have covered their tunes, and we ourselves have a mini Radiohead set that always goes down really well at Beats & Pieces gigs. Indeed, the article above makes the bold (but probably accurate) claim that the band ‘might just be the most-played jazz composers to have emerged in the last 20 years’.
Although there’s been a video of our version of 15 step knocking around youtube for a while, as far as I know there’s nothing of the other Radiohead tunes we do so I thought I’d post this recording of four tunes (Nude, 15 step, Everything In Its Right Place, Just) from our gig at Ronnie Scott’s in January:
Radiohead set – live at Ronnie Scott’s by beatsnpiecesbigband
It was just recorded on a little Zoom recorder at the back of the room so there’s a bit of audience noise – thanks to whoever it was that ssssssh’d people though!
Also thought I’d mention again that this whole Radiohead project was inspired by Colin Towns‘ work with other people’s music, where he completely disassembles the original and reimagines it completely differently. Check out his albums of music by Frank Zappa, John Lennon and Kurt Weill, the last of which is on Spotify here – the two different versions of Mack the Knife perfectly illustrate his rearranging style.
Posted by on 18/03/2011 at 17:29 in misc and tagged bad plus, brad mehldau, chris potter, colin towns, covers, frank zappa, john lennon, mahavishnu orchestra, radiohead, ronnie scott's.
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