News > Thom Yorke
Thom Yorke Suprises Hollywood, Hollywood Acts Accordingly
By Johnny Firecloud
Monday, October 5, 2009
Sure, we’re a day or two late with this one, but we’ve been justifiably distracted this past weekend.
At an intimate surprise show in Los Angeles on Friday, superfans mingled with celebs such as Danger Mouse, Spike Jonze, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, actress Ellen Page, Rick Rubin and Muse as Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke debuted his new band while playing the entirety of his solo album The Eraser, as well as a few new songs.
Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco played a dream set for Yorke fans at the tiny Echoplex club in L.A. Yorke made his feelings known about the constant chatter among the Hollywood aloof.
“If you want to have a chat, go fuck off outside, alright?” he said, before launching into new song Open The Floodgates, adding, “‘cause you won’t get back in.” I personally applaud the man for putting his foot down, because one of the perils of this incredible job is standing among the unaffected hipster douche masses at every L.A. show I go to. Ruins the entire experience when Lindsay Lohan is constantly fidgeting and trying to score coke on your left, while girl-pants-wearing femboys strain to see through their sunglasses as they tap away on their Blackberries to your right.
Yorke and his new band played a 16-song set that lasted roughly 90 minutes. If you weren’t among the lucky few hundred in attendance, no need to fret! We’ve got every single song on video, right here for you. That’s right, the whole set. Here’s a couple samples:
The Eraser
Paperback Writer (Radiohead B-Side)
Skirting On The Surface is a song the came to be during the In Rainbows recording sessions, but was never played (or released) before. Open The Floodgates has been floating around since Radiohead’s 2006 tour. The song was soundchecked (with drums) at Bayside in San Diego on June 27th, 2006 and never heard from again, until Friday night.
The setlist, with a link to video from every performance:
The Eraser
Analyse
The Clock
Black Swan
Skip Divided
Atoms For Peace
And It Rained All Night
Harrowdown Hill
Cymbal Rush
New Songs:
Open The Floodgates
Lotus Flower
Skirting On The Surface
Judge, Jury, Executioner
Encore:
Paperbag Writer
The Hollow Earth
Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses
Photo by Trixie Textor
digging thom’s crazy dancing and flea’s bass on paperback writer. cool vids.
Flea rocked that bass on Paperbag Writer. Fuck yeah.
oops, sorry, paperbag writer. beatles brainfart. Flea’s basslines are always so tasty.
haha no worries. we had to look it up.
thanks for posting this stuff…
it was weird and great to see flea and thom sharing the stage and actually the whole band has chemistry, so let’s hope they take it into the studio.
i’m glad flea is getting the chance to branch out and do some new, more cutting edge stuff… the chili’s had unfortunately gone stale a few albums back, imo…
props to joey waronker , that dude can play some fucking drums …
thom’s new stuff is cool too, i really like ‘open the floodgates’ .
I really hope they extensively tour North America. It would be awesome to hear the Eraser in it’s entirety live.
@dainzo yes, both Flea and Frusciante deserve way better than the RHCP.
@Fernando
Don’t forget Chad Smith…
http://www.myspace.com/bombasticmeatbats
[...] Waronker and Mauro Refosco. The band first played last October without a name (we’ve got much better video of that performance), and when named in the lineup for this year’s Coachella festival, they were billed under the [...]