Radiohead greet Rio in Portuguese at their first South American show

Radiohead played their first concert in Brazil, and in South America, on Friday 20 March, topping the Rio de Janeiro night of Just a Fest at the Praça da Apoteose. They came on at 10.35pm, Mauro Ferreira reports on his blog Notas Musicais. They opened with “15 Step” and then introduced themselves in Portuguese with Boa noite! Nós somos o Radiohead!³ (good evening, we are Radiohead).

Los Hermanos, back together for the festival's two nights, opened at 7pm sharp, and Kraftwerk played in between.

In “There There”, he writes, Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood came to the front of the stage to play drums, and Thom Yorke went to the piano for “Videotape” and “Everything in Its Right Place”. Ferreira says the night lived up to the high hopes for the band's Brazilian debut. He picks out “Karma Police”, and the lights playing on hanging metal strips during “The National Anthem” and “The Gloaming”. In his account the older, more direct songs, “Bodysnatchers” and those from The Bends, drew a much warmer response from the crowd than the stranger In Rainbows material.

“Creep”, which the band had left out of most of the tour, came back on Monday at the second of their two Foro Sol nights in Mexico City. In Rio it closed the second encore, at 0.43 on Saturday morning.

Setlist, Praça da Apoteose, 20 March 2009