Live archive
The webcasts
From December 1999, Radiohead put a camera in their own studio and broadcast to whoever could keep a dial-up connection open.
The Kid A broadcasts
The first run went out while Kid A was being made: the band in a room, working, with the feed left on, watched in a video window the size of a postcard.
The broadcast on 10 February 2000 carried the first airing of “There There”, more than three years before it came out as a single. The same night produced “Ed’s Scary Song”, which is not really a song at all. Ed took the lead vocal and read out phrases he had pulled from a hat.
On 23 March 2000 they played “I Am a Wicked Child”. It turned up live once more, in Salamanca on 6 August 2002, and came out the next year as a “Go to Sleep” B-side.
No whole night is known to survive; what is left is a fan compilation.
what survives
A fan's reel cut from the 1999 and 2000 studio webcasts· VAPOURBROTHERSwatch on youtube →
The Hail to the Thief broadcasts
The band went back on air while making their sixth album. This site covered it at the time, on a page that is still in the archive: “On the third webcast the band played two new songs called Good Morning Mr Magpie and I Froze Up.”
The first became “Morning Mr Magpie”, shortened and rebuilt, and did not reach a record until The King of Limbs in 2011. The second, “I Froze Up”, has never been released at all. The broadcast on 18 December 2002 is the one the live archive holds a page for, and its oddest moment is “Winter Wonderland”.
18 december 2002
Half an hour of the 18 December 2002 broadcast· andriolowatch on youtube →
clips(3)
Thumbs Down, Scotch Mist, Radiohead.tv
The band broadcast from the studio again in November 2007 as Thumbs Down, then closed the year with Scotch Mist, a live film put out around New Year’s Eve and announced on Dead Air Space. Radiohead.tv gathered both under one name.
The November broadcast holds the only “Ceremony” in Radiohead’s logged history, one of the last two songs Ian Curtis wrote.
thumbs down and scotch mist
Scotch Mist, the whole film· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
clips(3)
From the Basement
Twice the band played for From the Basement, Nigel Godrich’s series, which has no audience and no host. Godrich had engineered The Bends and produced every Radiohead album since OK Computer.
Both sessions sat unlabelled in this archive until 2026, filed under a studio name like any other date, and their setlists gave them away. The 2008 session runs to fourteen songs, with a second “House of Cards” taped for Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and includes “Bangers + Mash” and “Go Slowly”, both from the second In Rainbows disc. The 2011 session is the whole of The King of Limbs played through, with “The Daily Mail” and “Staircase”, two new songs that came out as a single that December.
This archive logs the King of Limbs session as 1 July 2011, the date in the setlist record, while the video that circulates is labelled December 2011. One is when it was played and the other when it went out; until that is settled, the date here is only the one the archive holds.
both sessions
In Rainbows: From the Basement, the whole session· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
clips(2)
The broadcast log
There were more broadcasts than this, particularly across the winter of 1999 and 2000. The log holds the ones the live archive can date.
| Date | What happened | Recording |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday 9 December 1999 | The first of the studio webcasts ran for three and a half hours, with the band DJing nearly 40 songs and playing with sock puppets. They ended it with an acoustic “Knives Out”, the song’s first airing. | |
| Friday 10 December 1999 | ||
| Thursday 10 February 2000 | The second webcast. An early “There There” went out, then a techno piece of Jonny’s, then “Ed’s Scary Song”. | |
| Thursday 23 March 2000 | The third webcast, and the first “I Am a Wicked Child”. It reached a concert stage once, in Salamanca on 6 August 2002. | |
| Wednesday 18 December 2002 | A Christmas webcast from the Hail to the Thief sessions, and the one night they played “Winter Wonderland”. | watch → |
| Thursday 8 November 2007 | A month after In Rainbows came out, the band were on air from the studio again. They opened with Björk’s “Unravel”, the only time they played it, and gave “Faust Arp” its first outing. | |
| Friday 9 November 2007 | This one went out as Thumbs Down, with the only Radiohead performance of the Smiths’ “The Headmaster Ritual”. | watch → |
| Monday 17 December 2007 | The last of the studio broadcasts, filmed for Scotch Mist, which went out on New Year’s Eve. | watch → |
| Wednesday 2 April 2008 | In Rainbows: From the Basement. The same day they taped a second “House of Cards” for Late Night with Conan O’Brien. | watch → |
| Friday 1 July 2011 | The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement. “The Daily Mail” and “Staircase”, put out as a download that December, were taken from this session. | watch → |