THE NATIONAL ANTHEM (5:51)
available on: kid a

THE NATIONAL ANTHEM (LIVE)
available on: i might be wrong - live recordings

the orchestra of st. johns conducted by john lubbock and scored by jonny greenwood. hook horns blown: andy bush [trumpet], steve hamilton [alto], martin hathaway [alto], andy hamilton [tenor], mark lockheart [tenor], stan harrison [baritone], liam kerkman [trombone], mike kearsey [bass trombone]. rhythm sampling by henry binns.

this song was first mentioned in ed's diary on july 22 1999.

quotes: ed [01-12-99]: eight 'jazzers' came down for the day and blew their stuff all over 'everyone - the national anthem'. they were fantastic............thom and jonny conducted. what a day.

jonny [20-01-01]: "It started with Thom saying this track should turn into a Charlie Mingus track by the end. Thom has these ideas quite often, sometimes they are best ignored and sometimes they are genius and he's completely right. We pretty much just got a brass section into the room, and I scored out the rough tune. Thom and I stood in front of them conducting - I say conducting it wasn't Simon Rattle it was more jumping up and down when we wanted it to be louder and faster and calming them down at certain points, I'm sure it looked ridiculous. But it sounded pretty good on tape, I think."

Its a very spiky sound, is that what you wanted? Jonny: "It is. We wanted them to play around with the rhythms of the what was happening, and do cross beats, and be taking turns to do solos. A bit like Charlie Mingus - the organised chaos of that - the fact that it's not random, there is organised chaos going on, but it's very loose around the edges."

And the soloing seems to get intense towards the end of the track, were you trying to build up the noise quota? Jonny: "Yeah, well the very last high note is actually done on the lowest instrument which gives you some idea of the sweat and the red faces going on in that room. It was just intense you know."