Radiohead play a secret show at New York's Mercury Lounge

Radiohead played a sold-out secret show at the Mercury Lounge on East Houston Street in New York on Monday 2 October 1995, the night after their last date supporting R.E.M. in America, at the Meadows in Hartford. Eighth in the set was a new song, “Man of War”, filed on the tape as “Big Boots”, the working title it goes under this autumn. It is the earliest performance of it on record.

Andrew Mueller of Melody Maker was at the show. When it was over, Capitol's flyers for The Bends, quoting the album's reviews, lay strewn around the room, and Colin Greenwood was puzzled to see Rolling Stone's four stars printed inside quotation marks.

It's four stars in quote marks. Does that mean they just swore at it?

Colin Greenwood³

“Lucky”, so far out only on War Child's Help album), came sixth in a set of 13 songs and about an hour. A heckler down the front was rude enough that Thom Yorke came close to going for him with his guitar. Yorke later accepted an apology from the man's girlfriend, and said he had been annoying other people too.

Yorke enjoyed the gig and, unusually for him, the meet-and-greet after it. The room was quiet enough that he had taken his earplugs out.

I was nice to people tonight because I thought we'd done a fairly OK gig

Thom Yorke³

Setlist