If you grew up at a cer­tain time, with a cer­tain melan­cholic dis­po­si­tion and mor­bid sense of humor, you grew up lis­ten­ing to the music of the Smiths. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, you’re rough­ly around the same age as the mem­bers of Radio­head, who also grew up lis­ten­ing to the Smiths. Ergo, there’s a good chance you’re a fan of Radio­head, a band whose own melan­cholic, mor­bid mood draws from the best Alter­na­tive bands (as they were called once) of the 80s and 90s, while updat­ing the sound of that mood on every suc­ces­sive album.

On the 20th anniver­sary of Radiohead’s mas­sive-sell­ing Ok Com­put­er, gui­tarist Ed O’Brien remem­bered their hum­ble begin­nings in a Rolling Stone oral his­to­ry, invok­ing those bands whose records you like­ly own in hard copy if you fit the pro­file above:

We start­ed off at the time of the Smiths’ The Queen is Dead, that era. By the end of that peri­od, or the mid­dle of that peri­od, there was the Pix­ies, Hap­py Mon­days and Stone Ros­es and all these things. We dipped our toe, not very effec­tive­ly, in each. But in doing so we came out with a sound. We came up with our thing. And that’s how we got signed.

No mat­ter how far they end­ed up stray­ing from gui­tar rock, their ear­ly influ­ences have always been an inte­gral part of their cre­ative DNA. On the 10th anniver­sary of Ok Com­put­er, well into their trans­for­ma­tion from alt-rock super­stars to exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic band, Radio­head filmed a two-and-a-half-hour web­cast, play­ing old and new songs, tak­ing turns DJing, and cov­er­ing one of my favorite Smiths’ songs, “The Head­mas­ter Rit­u­al” from 1985’s Meat is Mur­der.

It’s a track tai­lor-made for them—a song that “express­es fury at a kind of school life that has been for­got­ten,” writes Katharine Vin­er, but which the fierce­ly anti-author­i­tar­i­an Thom Yorke remem­bered well. Years into his suc­cess­ful career, he still smart­ed from his unpleas­ant school years.

In inter­views, writes Will Self at GQ, he’s often “waxed dis­con­so­late­ly about his dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed child­hood, the fre­quent changes of school, and the bul­ly­ing at those schools because of his paral­ysed eye.” If you grew up lis­ten­ing to the Smiths, you too may have a per­son­al affin­i­ty for “The Head­mas­ter Rit­u­al.”

And you prob­a­bly also fre­quent­ly wal­lowed to Joy Division—a band that, like Radio­head, rad­i­cal­ly changed musi­cal direc­tion, albeit for a much more trag­ic rea­son. After the sui­cide of lead singer Ian Cur­tis, Joy Divi­sion reformed as New Order, synth-pop super­stars and prog­en­i­tors of acid house. On their first record, Move­ment, they had a lot of post-punk brood­ing to get out of their sys­tem, with songs like ICB (which stands for “Ian Cur­tis Buried”) and “Cer­e­mo­ny,” orig­i­nal­ly a Joy Divi­sion song.

Fur­ther up, see Radio­head cov­er “Cer­e­mo­ny,” a song that defines an era—one, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, in which Radio­head grew up. And maybe you did, too. But chances are, if you grew up lis­ten­ing to Radio­head, you know their influ­ences no mat­ter when you were born.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio­head Will Stream Con­certs Free Online Until the Pan­dem­ic Comes to an End

Intro­duc­ing The Radio­head Pub­lic Library: Radio­head Makes Their Full Cat­a­logue Avail­able via a Free Online Web Site

Radio­head Puts Every Offi­cial Album on YouTube, Mak­ing Them All Free to Stream

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In the 60s and 70s, rock and folk bands intro­duced ear­ly Euro­pean music to the mass­es, with Medieval, Renais­sance, and Baroque strains run­ning through the songs of Simon and Gar­funkel, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Fair­port Con­ven­tion, and even Led Zep­pelin. For the most part, how­ev­er, arrange­ments stayed mod­ern, save the appear­ance of a few, still-rel­e­vant folk instru­ments like man­dolins, dul­cimers, and nylon-string gui­tars.

One can draw many lines in pop­u­lar cul­ture from this development—to prog-rock bal­ladry, goth rock’s dirges, metal’s medieval obses­sions, and what­ev­er that tech­no Gre­go­ri­an chant thing was in the 90s. In so many of these evo­lu­tion­ary moves, the trend has been toward more tech­nol­o­gy and away from acoustic music. So, how can play­ers of old Euro­pean instru­ments inter­est con­tem­po­rary audi­ences in their sound?

One pop­u­lar way they’ve done so is by play­ing hits from bands who drew from the tra­di­tion (and from a few who very much didn’t)—hits like Procul Harum’s Chaucer-ref­er­enc­ing “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

At the top, Baroque lute play­er Daniel Estrem gives a solo instru­men­tal per­for­mance of the soul­ful tune, throw­ing in a sec­tion of Bach’s “Air on the G String,” to which “A Whiter Shade of Pale” alludes. (I wasn’t con­scious­ly com­bin­ing rock with clas­si­cal,” com­pos­er Gary Brook­er lat­er said. “It’s just that Bach’s music was in me.”) The song’s con­tra­pun­tal struc­ture trans­lates beau­ti­ful­ly to the lute, as does the sin­is­ter musi­cal­i­ty of Cream’s “White Room,” above, a song with a vague­ly Medieval-sound­ing descend­ing melody in its clas­sic psych-rock vers­es.

Of course, Euro­pean folk and clas­si­cal informed the increas­ing­ly com­plex com­po­si­tions of the Bea­t­les, includ­ing George Harrison’s “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (or at least its first fin­ger­picked acoustic gui­tar demo ver­sion). In his take on the clas­sic, above, Estrem recov­ers the song’s folk influ­ence and retains its shifts in mood, from mourn­ful lament to hope­ful melody. Of course, Estrem not only has to trans­late these songs to a dif­fer­ent musi­cal idiom but to a very dif­fer­ent instrument—one with a tun­ing unlike the gui­tar on which so many pop songs are writ­ten.

Com­mon lutes at the end of the Renais­sance had 10 cours­es (a “course” is a set of two strings tuned to the same pitch). These instru­ments used “a more har­mon­i­cal­ly based ‘D minor tun­ing,’ instead of the more ‘gui­tar-like’ tun­ing that con­tin­ued to be used for the viol in the baroque era,” notes Case West­ern Reserve’s Ear­ly Music Instru­ment Data­base. They were suit­ed to a very dif­fer­ent kind of music than, say, the blues. But whether or not we ful­ly under­stand the chal­lenge of arrang­ing “House of the Ris­ing Sun” (called “the first folk rock song” when the Ani­mals record­ed it) for the Baroque lute, we can cer­tain­ly appre­ci­ate the results. Estrem makes a gen­tly plucked, elo­quent­ly word­less argu­ment for giv­ing the instru­ment a star­ring role in pop­u­lar music again.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

With Medieval Instru­ments, Band Per­forms Clas­sic Songs by The Bea­t­les, Red Hot Chili Pep­pers, Metal­li­ca & Deep Pur­ple

Finnish Musi­cians Play Blue­grass Ver­sions of AC/DC, Iron Maid­en & Ron­nie James Dio

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Last week, Nick Cave announced “It’s 10.30 Wednes­day evening, and if the world wasn’t in lock­down, I’d be onstage in Toulouse, France singing my heart out with The Bad Seeds. But I’m not. I’m doing the next best thing—sitting at home watch­ing Bad Seed TeeVee. Pure non-stop joy!” And you can too. Above, watch a new 24/7 YouTube livestream that will fea­ture, writes NME, “rare and unseen footage from the band’s archives,” includ­ing “pro­mo videos, inter­views, live footage, out­takes and oth­er exclu­sive unseen footage from the band’s archives.” Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nick Cave Cre­ates a List of His Top 10 Love Songs

Lis­ten to Nick Cave’s Lec­ture on the Art of Writ­ing Sub­lime Love Songs (1999)

Nick Cave Answers the Hot­ly Debat­ed Ques­tion: Will Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Ever Be Able to Write a Great Song?