Radiohead leave out “Creep” at the Riviera in Chicago

Radiohead played the Riviera Theatre in Chicago on Thursday night and left out “Creep”, though the crowd shouted for it all night. Ed O'Brien explained why on the Chicago station Q101, telling the presenter that the song cuts both ways, Ari Bendersky reports in Rolling Stone. Because it was such a big hit, people would come to the shows and leave once it had been played, and the band do not want a one-song career.

The set leaned on The Bends and OK Computer, and the one Pablo Honey song in its 21 was “Lurgee”. Teenage Fanclub opened the night. Rolling Stone's report puts Billy Corgan, Butch Vig and Shirley Manson of Garbage, and members of Phish in the audience.

On older songs such as “The Bends”, Jonny Greenwood and Ed O'Brien played straight chord changes. On the new ones they worked whammy bars, amp knobs, pedals and the bodies of the guitars, and Greenwood spent much of the show on keyboard sounds standing in for bells, violins and choirs.

The Chicago Tribune's reviewer calls the show rapturously received. His high points are Phil Selway's restraint on “Let Down”, and “Exit Music (For a Film)”, “Lucky” and “No Surprises”. In the new songs he finds the Beatles' pop experiments, the ambition of 1970s progressive rock, the yearning of a church choir and, he insists, opera. Thom Yorke's tenor is what makes it work, and in the reviewer's account Yorke turned “Lucky” into an aria, sailing up into the high notes.

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