Radiohead Cover New Order and The Smiths On Webcast

Radiohead covered classics by The Smiths and New Order for their damn bizarre webcast on Friday night (November 9) for radiohead.tv. 

Entitled ‘Thumbs Down’, the webcast intersperses live performances of their own tracks plus covers of The Smiths’ ‘the Headmaster Ritual’, New Order's ‘Ceremony’ (as written by Ian Curtis) and Bjork’s ‘Unravel’ with weird montages. 

Another highlight of the webcast was the parody of the David Fincher movie ‘Se7en’, which spliced a clip of the infamous ending where Morgan Freeman opens a box containing Gwyneth Paltrow’s head – the band deftly switched this for Thom Yorke’s head singing ‘In Rainbows’ opener ’15 Step’.

The webcast kicks off with an MIA track before that band launch into a version of ‘Bodysnatchers’, while ‘Faust Arp’, 'I MIght Be Wrong', ‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place’ and an extremely poignant rendition of ‘Reckoner’ also feature.

Explaining the reasons behind the webcast, Thom Yorke in extremely high spirits (possibly slightly inebriated?), said: “This is Thumbs Down because it’s …[holds thumbs down]… and we are to play some music if we can still stand up. This our way of celebrating the fact that way have finished a record. Yeah Yeah Yeah. So, we’ve been doing some stupid stuff the past few weeks knocking some things together. Don’t expect any high quality cause there is none except of course when the professionals are involved because we need them.”

Friend and comedian Adam Buxton comes on with Thom Yorke at one point and jokes: “That’s Thom clowning around, he’s sick of everyone thinking he’s a miserable person, he’s rebranding.”

Ed O’Brien’s DJ set – which features some damn funky dance moves – featured the likes of Asian Dub Foundation’s ‘Naxlite’ and Kings of Leon’s ‘My Party.’ Colin and Johnny Greenwood later took to the decks playing Bonnie Prince Billie and Fela Kuti amongst others.

Elsewhere, there was plenty of artwork and writing on chalk boards  -   one of which read ‘Why don’t you turn off your computer and do something else?’

CLICK HERE to see highlights of Radiohead's webcast