Flashback: Radiohead Resurrect ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ in 2011
Radiohead revived their Radiohead Public Library concert series this week by sharing an In Rainbows–era performance at the tiny London club 93 Feet East on January 16th, 2008. Seven more shows are coming during the next couple of months.
The series kicked off a year ago when the band shared professionally filmed gigs from London in 1994; Dublin in 2000; Bonnaroo in 2006; Saitama, Japan in 2008; Buenos Aires in 2009; Coachella in 2012; Tokyo in 2016; and São Paulo in 2018. (You can see some of our favorite moments from the series right here.)
Radiohead have yet to announce any of the upcoming archival shows, but our vote is for their September 28th, 2011, gig at New York’s Roseland Ballroom. It was one of their few concerts that year, and tickets were almost impossible to score, but the lucky few who got inside witnessed an amazing night of music.
“The line outside the venue wrapped around the block, as fans shivered in the rain or waved placards begging for tickets,” IndieLand‘s Rob Sheffield wrote in a review. “But everybody seemed deliriously pumped to be on the scene. It was a hardcore Radiohead crowd: the kind of fans who instinctively cheer when the roadie plugs in the guitar, just because it sounds like ‘2+2=5.’”
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The show featured the live debuts of “Feral” and “Codex,” but the highlight came six songs into the night when Thom Yorke told the crowd, “This one is slightly older than the other ones.” The band then played the OK Computer classic “Subterranean Homesick Alien” for the first time since 2003 as the crowd lost its collective shit. You can feel the room’s excitement in this fan-shot video.
Watching these vintage shows online is a lot of fun, but let’s hope the band is also plotting out its next move now that it seems pretty clear large-scale concerts will return in 2022, if not sooner. Radiohead haven’t released a new album since 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool and haven’t played a concert since 2018. At the very least, we need a massive Kid A/Amnesiac 20th-anniversary box set in the near future. And if they want to launch a little tour to support it where they play both albums in their entirety, we don’t think anyone will complain.
