Toronto hears “Follow Me Around” at a Radiohead show for the first time

Radiohead played Toronto on Tuesday 17 October, their first concert in the city since Maple Leaf Gardens in April 1998, and in the first encore played “Follow Me Around” at a concert for the first time. The band had run the song through at soundchecks on the OK Computer tour, and Thom Yorke plays it near the end of the tour film Meeting People Is Easy.

The band played the Sears Theatre, the Air Canada Centre cut down to a theatre, and its 5,500 tickets sold out within minutes (NME put the crowd at 8,000). The concert was billed to go out live as an audio-only webcast from virtuecast.com, a Toronto company, and within hours of the show ending, NME reported, a recording was online, posted by the fan site At Ease.

Yorke gave each song he introduced a mock corporate sponsor. “Airbag” was Brought to you by Ford³. NME tied the joke to the band's refusal of sponsors and to Naomi Klein's No Logo, a book that has shaped their year down to touring Europe in their own tent rather than in sponsored venues.

A fan site named after the song, followmearound.com, had been asking on its news pages for the band to play it on this tour, and the setlist on file notes it came at fans' request, for the site's webmistress.

Setlist