Reply To: No Surprises Radiohead Cover

[peter]

On Old Joad said

I am a big fan of Radiohead, and I love what you do with their songs, great job ☮️

Thanks much!

I love Radiohead. They’re one of my all-time favorite bands. I’ve shared that I stopped performing music long ago due to very bad tendinitis, so I’m limited to doing these little recordings. But what was really nice about this one was that because the tempo was slow — and it’s a very simple song — so I was able to play through the entire song with very little tendinitis pain. I realize the triplets I did on the toms were questionable timing (I still kept it — it was my first take), but considering that I really can’t practice anymore and my only time playing is after I press record to do this stuff, I was reasonably happy with the result. Pre-tendinitis, I would probably have been brutally critical of my playing, but it’s relative to what I am physically able to pull off today.

When I was working on this song with my daughter and unsuccessfully tried to persuade to sing, she told me that she had recently asked her school choir director if she could perform “No Surprises” as a solo at the next choir concert. I thought, that’s a cool coincidence. No doubt, growing up hearing me play a lot of Radiohead stuck in a good way.  She grew up hearing a lot of music, from Billie Holiday to Chopin to Coltrane to Nirvana to Muddy Waters to Zeppelin, but she seems to love Radiohead, Nirvana, Coltrane and Jeff Buckley the most.

Your friend who keeps the beat.