This is about when we were younger but we didn't write it

Dear friends,

To me, the best thing about this cover is that it's SO faithful. Yes, it's faster, a bit more brutal, less camp, but still so faithful as to be a bit boring and tossed-off. Like a cover band playing at a bar down the street on a Sunday. Of course, there is one crucial difference. This band is made up your friends, whom you adore, and their glee is your glee. You're all slightly drunk on possibility. These songs are ours, they make up our little histories and we can play them! Look at all that smiling! Music-love is a wonderful thing.

The Headmaster Ritual (Live)/Radiohead


Watching Yorke run through all those ululating post-chorus exhortations of lalalala-di-aaay, it suddenly strikes me...of course! It's such a Rosetta stone moment. I love it when you can suddenly, clearly hear the A to the B to the C of influence.

The Smiths were also about when I was younger. Not so much Headmaster Ritual as Nowhere Fast; the glorious sound of itchy, adolescent drama.

The Headmaster Ritual/The Smiths (mp3)

Purchase Meat Is Murder by The Smiths.

Love, D