Radiohead play nine new songs on their first visit to Thessaloniki

Radiohead played nine new songs at the Earth Theatre in Thessaloniki on 25 June, their first visit to the city, and ignored repeated calls for “Creep”. Ed O'Brien praises the crowd's patience in his diary, and finds the requests understandable on a first visit. The ones for “Pop Is Dead” he finds less so. cheeky bastards¹

The theatre is a modern amphitheatre dug out of the hill above the city. O'Brien writes from Athens, where the band arrived the next morning for the first of two nights at the Lycabettus Theatre, near the Parthenon; he has yet to see any of the antiquities.

The new songs, he says, are working pretty well now in the set¹. “In Limbo” is still a little tricky, but “The National Anthem” and “Everything in Its Right Place” more than make up for it.