When a supergroup decides to play a surprise intimate show in LA, celebrities flock to the gig, and last night’s Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco set at Echoplex was no different. Even though the ‘superaudience’ included Rick Rubin, Danger Mouse, Spike Jonze, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, actress Ellen Page, Muse (Glenn Beck’s new favorite band), and many more, Yorke wasn’t going to let them talk over him while unveiling four new jams: “If you want to have a chat, go fuck off outside, alright?” he said, before starting the piano intro to new song “Open the Floodgates” and adding, “‘cause you won’t get back in.”
Yorke and Friends played 16 songs in about 90 minutes last night and you don’t have to take the word of audience members or reviewers that it was an amazing set because the Internet has been flooded with videos to prove it.
Here’s the setlist with a link to video from every performance:
I toyed with the idea of putting the word “supergroup” in the title, but I’ll hold off on that. Let’s just call them “friends.” Very, very famous friends. Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco will join Thom Yorke for two concerts at LA’s Orpheum theater in less than a week. Yorke made the announcement on Dead Air just moments ago (via CoS):
hi in the past couple of weeks i’ve been getting a band together for fun to play the eraser stuff live and the new songs etc.. to see if it could work! here’s a photo.. its me, joey waronker, mauro refosco, flea and nigel godrich.
at the beginning of october the 4th and 5th we are going to do a couple of shows at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. we don’t really have a name and the set will not be very long cuz ..well …we haven’t got that much material yet! but come and check it out if you are in the area. we’ve also got locals Lucky Dragons playing. all the best
Do you have a credit card handy? Buy tickets for the shows today at 7AM EST here or here. Yorke & friends may just be dipping their toes in the supergroup waters, but they do have a promo pic (see above) already.
Oh Thom, I knew there was a reason you’ve been dressing for the second coming.
Producer Nigel Godrich has been doing some rare interviews of late promoting his From The Basement live sessions and lots of interesting bits are showing up about his work with Radiohead, Beck, and many more top artists. In a talk with Drowned In Sound’s Rob Webb, Godrich answered some questions from messageboard users, including his opinion on auto-tune, his favorite producers, and the story behind the aborted sessions for The Strokes’ second album.
The Strokes enlisted Godrich to work on the follow-up to their breakthrough debut Is This It back in 2002, but they parted ways very early in the process, with the band calling the sessions “soulless.” Godrich elaborated on the scrapped project with DIS, saying there were just too many cooks in the kitchen. “You know, the problem there was that me and Julian [Casablancas] are just too similar, we’re both control freaks,” he said. “He wanted to do it his way, I wanted to do it my way, and obviously that’s the point of me being there. And I’m saying ‘Well, why am I here if you’re not prepared to try and do it the way I want to do it?’” Godrich goes on to praise the band’s first two albums, adding, “my ambition was for them to change, so that they would remain that force, and I felt like if they didn’t then they’d have nowhere to go. I think it kind of happened, but not really.”
So he liked Room on Fire, but on their last album, First Impressions of Earth, Godrich sounds off: “I didn’t like it. Nobody liked it! It was a reaction, and that was exactly my point. The second record you could be bold and do what the fuck you want, you could do anything, and by the time it got to the third record it felt a little bit apologetic, like they were trying to make themselves into something they weren’t, trying to regain that ground.”
Radiohead and Nigel Godrich definitely have a Beatles/George Martin thing going on at this point: They have collaborated for fifteen years, creating some of the most critically acclaimed and classic records of those years. Now Radiohead is the biggest band in the world (sorry Bono) and Godrich is one of the most sought after producers. Nobody’s bringing Phil Spector into this relationship, however, as they are currently hammering out Radiohead’s 8th album and according to a recent interview with Godrich, nothing’s getting in the way of this “marriage.”
“We get inside each other’s underwear and brains and it’s always a completely different, completely unique experience,” Godrich told FTB Live’s Joe Colly on the difference between working with Beck or Radiohead. “You create something that you both love,” he added. “That is a very intimate experience and also a really wonderful one. I mean, my particular career has been based on a few different marriages to people, that’s the analogy, it’s like I have these very intense relationships with different people. It’s always a bit awkward when they’re all in the same room.”
Godrich goes on to describe how he loves working with Radiohead, is “happy to do just that,” and that he doesn’t fantasize about working with other artists. “I really don’t take on a lot of new projects now because I do a lot of Radiohead stuff, and at the moment I’m not a gun for hire. I don’t enjoy that, I never really did. I just feel like relationships that just develop over 15 years are much more productive. I’ll never find another band to have that relationship with.”
When a supergroup decides to play a surprise intimate show in LA, celebrities flock to the gig, and last night’s Thom Yorke, Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco set at Echoplex was no different. Even though the ‘superaudience’ included Rick Rubin, Danger Mouse, Spike Jonze, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, actress Ellen Page, Muse (Glenn Beck’s new favorite band), and many more, Yorke wasn’t going to let them talk over him while unveiling four new jams: “If you want to have a chat, go fuck off outside, alright?” he said, before starting the piano intro to new song “Open the Floodgates” and adding, “‘cause you won’t get back in.”
Producer Nigel Godrich has been doing some rare 
Radiohead and Nigel Godrich definitely have a Beatles/George Martin thing going on at this point: They have collaborated for fifteen years, creating some of the most critically acclaimed and classic records of those years. Now Radiohead is the biggest band in the world (sorry Bono) and Godrich is one of the most sought after producers. Nobody’s bringing Phil Spector into this relationship, however, as they are currently hammering out Radiohead’s 8th album and according to a recent interview with Godrich, nothing’s getting in the way of this “marriage.”
