Christmas comes early.
(if but for a fleeting moment…)
Re-fell in love with New Order’s “Ceremony” during a road trip this weekend. Was trying to explain to Melissa what this band meant to this insecure Asian-American boy growing up as a teen in New York City, and how there’s this constant thread of bittersweet-longing-for-some-promised-happiness-not-too-far-off-in-the-distance in their music, and how I’m more grateful I bit on the chance to see them play when they stopped by NYC a few years back for $100, and…and you can quickly see how I was unable to effectively articulate my feelings for the band.
Procrastinating tonight to put off doing some serious work, I start digging around for some other live takes of “Ceremony” and oh wait, what’s this?...Radiohead covering the song for a radio program?...You have got to be eff’in kidding me. I don’t think I breathed waiting for the YouTube clip to load up all the way through Thom Yorke’s first verse.
Check it out if you’ve never heard the song before. Check it out if you have heard it before. Check it out if you’re Thom Yorke reading this right now.
In the end, I think it almost touches the greatness of New Order’s original version, but that’s not the point. The music is played spot on, and Thom Yorke does what comes naturally to him without worrying about sounding like Bernard Summer. But I don’t think you can listen to Bernard Summer singing “Ceremony” (or any songs from that period) without hearing his heartache over Ian Curtis’ suicide. And I’m not sure Thom should be accountable to replicate that sort of emotional high- (or low-, in this case) note without his own written material.
Still, ranks right up there with some of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever been surprised with.
