Sunday, December 9, 2007

Who Did They Open For? Radiohead Edition

One of my favorite music trivia questions involves Radiohead and which act they opened for in the U.S. back in August 1996. It was for a short 13 show tour and the headliner was known to cover 'Fake Plastic Trees' in '95 at their own show. So it's true that Radiohead, arguably the biggest band in the world, was subservient enough to be a proverbial side show to increase their fan base. So obviously they would have hitched their ride to U2, maybe Pearl Jam, or even the Chili Peppers, right? Not exactly.

Do the following lyrics ring a bell?

You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

You grieve you learn
You choke you learn
You laugh you learn
You choose you learn
You pray you learn
You ask you learn
You live you learn

Isn't it ironic? Radiohead had the honor and privilege of opening for the one and only Alanis Morisette for the month of August 1996. Another short month later, Radiohead would head to a secluded and supposedly haunted 15th Century mansion to begin recording the epic album OK Computer.

From Wikipedia:

Radiohead began a brief tour as opening band for Alanis Morissette, in which they premiered many new songs that would go on to make up OK Computer, and played "Paranoid Android" regularly. However, the ending differed markedly from the final version of "Paranoid Android." The third section originally had the lyrics "Hallelujah", where the final version has "Rain down...".

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