Radiohead mime “High and Dry” on Top of the Pops as the UK tour opens

Radiohead mime “High and Dry” on Top of the Pops tonight, billed at number 17, on the night their 13-date UK tour opens at Cardiff University. The single came out on Parlophone on 27 February and went into the chart at 17 on 5 March.

Marion are special guests on the tour, which ends at the Forum in London on 24 March. Before the tour the band played a home-town show at the Oxford Apollo on 12 February, with Supergrass supporting.

It is a double A-side, and the papers sent out with it could not agree which side came first. Hall or Nothing, the band's press agency, and Parlophone bill it “High & Dry” / “Planet Telex”; beatwax's letter to radio stations puts “Planet Telex” on top. Parlophone's fan newsletter, Flavour of the Label, pitches “High and Dry” as the starker, acoustic side of the band, after the familiar Radiohead noise of “My Iron Lung” last October.

There are two CDs, one red and one blue. The red adds “Maquiladora” and Steve Osborne's Hexidecimal Mix of “Planet Telex”; the blue adds “Killer Cars” and an L.F.O. mix. Hall or Nothing say both B-sides are live favourites, recorded for the first time. A demo of another new song, “Nice Dream”, is on the CD magazine Volume 13. The band have recorded “Banana Co” for an album by the coalition against the Criminal Justice Bill, due in April.

The Bends follows on Monday 13 March on CD, cassette and LP, 12 songs including “My Iron Lung”. It was made during 1994 with John Leckie producing. The same Monday, PMI release the band's first long-form video, Live at the Astoria, 75 minutes filmed at the London Astoria on 27 May 1994 with “Creep”, “Pop Is Dead” and songs from the new album.

The Bends UK tour, March 1995