Radiohead's Thumbs Down webcast puts Thom Yorke's head in a box

Radiohead broadcast Thumbs Down, their first webcast since 18 December 2002, from their Oxford studio on radiohead.tv on the evening of Friday 9 November. Thom Yorke introduced it in a short piece to camera. This is our way of celebrating the fact that we finished a record.¹ The album's CD release on 31 December had been announced two days earlier. The show had been thrown together over the previous couple of weeks, and Yorke told viewers Don't expect any quality level cos there is none, except when of course when the professionals are involved¹.

For “15 Step” the band borrowed a long passage from the end of David Fincher's Se7en, introduced with the caption “And now for something completely different”, and put Yorke's head, singing cheerfully, in the box in place of Gwyneth Paltrow's.

Most of the show came from the studio, where they played “Bodysnatchers”, The Smiths' “The Headmaster Ritual”, “Reckoner” (its first time live), New Order's “Ceremony” and “I Might Be Wrong”, with records in between. “Bodysnatchers” was a frantic, wound-up take, and straight after it the band left the studio to mill about in a living room while an unseen voice mocked them. One acoustic song, “Faust Arp”, was filmed outdoors on top of a hill. Shots of the band giving the thumbs-down sign ran through the whole thing. The chalkboard drawings came back, with houses under arrows pointing down and the line “Why don't you turn off your computer and do something else?” Clips were all over YouTube within hours.

Adam Buxton had let the plan out on his BBC 6 Music show, reported on Tuesday, saying he was helping with the technical side of a Friday broadcast from Oxford. On the Thursday night, at 10pm GMT, a 20-minute “testcast” went out on radiohead.tv. Yorke DJed first, an ambient piece that turned into bass-heavy electronics. After some coloured graphics came a cover of Björk's “Unravel”, with Yorke at the piano and Phil Selway sitting out. It ended with someone writing “to whom it may concern” and “I give up” backwards on a blackboard.

Records played on Thumbs Down, as Uncut listed them