Radiohead's fourth newsletter plans a summer in North America

The fourth issue of W.A.S.T.E., the newsletter Radiohead write themselves for their fans, sets out a summer spent almost entirely away: 18 North American cities in late June and July, then the Reading Festival on 28 August. They are home so seldom, the band joke, that they save on laundry.

America is where “Creep” is now doing considerable business, and a week of promotion there took them from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco, with MTV interviews, stretch limousines and a guest spot on KROQ's Loveline, answering callers' personal problems.

The song has travelled elsewhere too. The band say that after “Creep” did well in Israel they spent a week in March based in Tel Aviv, playing three gigs and going on national TV and radio. The first two gigs were thin (they were told a rival act had the crowds), but the Saturday show was packed, and they liken it, in jest, to Beatlemania.

They are franker about May's British tour for “Pop Is Dead”, which started with lukewarm reviews and weak publicity. ULU was full, and Belfast and Dublin were Radiohead's first Irish shows.

The T-shirt bootleggers get teased about their takings, and the extras in the “Pop Is Dead” video are thanked for walking miles in the cold, unfed, while being shouted at.

There are no definite plans for our next UK tour, but as soon as there are, they will be sent to you.

Radiohead¹

Between issues, readers are pointed to Pop Is Dead, a magazine run by fans through Val Savage in Manchester.

In the Hit List, where each member names what he is listening to, Thom Yorke picks Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish and Scott Walker's “Boy Child”, and Jonny Greenwood owns up to a “pseudy” classical record he doesn't name and an obscure second-hand Coltrane album on vinyl.

The North American cities, as the newsletter lists them