Monday, April 6, 2009

Radiohead + USC Marching Band

This clip is from over a month ago, but I was watching it again and I am still just blown away by it. Radiohead agreed for the first time in their career to perform at (or even show up to) the Grammy Awards, and delivered a live performance of "15 Step" from In Rainbows with the help of the USC Trojan Marching Band. The rehearsals and hard work that must have gone into this from the college students pays off brilliantly, and you can see the excitement in their faces. Not only is this a brilliant song, it's a creative and imaginative performance that, phenomenally, works as well as the original.

"15 Step" is in 5/4 time, which means it has five beats per measure and the quarter note is eqaul to one of those beats. If that doesn't make sense, you can count it out from the intro as "1 2 3 4 5, 2 2 3 4 5, 3 2 3 4 5, 4 2 3 4 5". Additionally, the brass section functions as the bass, a technique that actually has roots in classical and very early jazz music, before the string bass became prominent outside of orchestras. If this post makes me a dork, well that's nothing new. I think this is genius.

Enjoy and comment below if you like this performance half as much as I do.

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