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Radiohead break off recording to play a Haiti benefit in Los Angeles
Radiohead stepped out of the studio on Sunday 24 January to play a benefit for Haiti at the Music Box at the Fonda in Hollywood, and raised $572,754 for Oxfam America's Haiti Earthquake Response Fund. Near the end of the night Thom Yorke announced the total.
Gross, fuck me. $572,754 dollars. That's over half a million dollars alright
Thom Yorke10
The second encore opened with Yorke alone on electric guitar, singing in falsetto, on a new song fans are calling “Lotus Flower”, its first airing at a Radiohead show. He had tried it out at his own shows in Los Angeles in October, first at the Echoplex and then at the Orpheum.
Phil Selway announced the show on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, on Thursday 21 January, saying the band were in the middle of recording. Every ticket went to auction on Ticketmaster for 39 hours, and all the money, booking fees included, went to the fund. Winning bids ran from $475 a ticket to $2,000 a ticket for the top pair, whose buyer Yorke named from the stage as “Peter Grousbeck”; LA Weekly traced the pair to Peter Walker, a co-founder of the Silver Lake label Dangerbird, and his wife Brie Grousbeck.
It was the band's first show since Reading Festival at the end of August. They played 24 songs over about two hours, reaching back as far as The Bends and leaving Pablo Honey alone. Yorke and Jonny Greenwood opened by themselves with “Faust Arp”, and Yorke let the crowd choose between “Just” and “Airbag”. They chose “Airbag”.
About 1,300 people were in the room. Justin Timberlake, Drew Barrymore and Paul Thomas Anderson were there, and so was Flea, who has been playing in Yorke's new band. Yorke teased the crowd about where the money had come from, and people shouted their answers back. So, what did you do to get the tickets? Borrowed money from dad? Blackmailed your boss? …Sold your bike?
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Setlist, Music Box at the Fonda, Los Angeles, 24 January 2010
| # | Song | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Faust Arp | Yorke and Jonny Greenwood only |
| 2 | Fake Plastic Trees | – |
| 3 | Weird Fishes/Arpeggi | – |
| 4 | The National Anthem | – |
| 5 | Nude | – |
| 6 | Karma Police | – |
| 7 | Kid A | – |
| 8 | Morning Bell | – |
| 9 | How to Disappear Completely | – |
| 10 | A Wolf at the Door | – |
| 11 | The Bends | – |
| 12 | Reckoner | – |
| 13 | Lucky | – |
| 14 | Bodysnatchers | – |
| 15 | Dollars and Cents | – |
| 16 | Airbag | The crowd chose it over “Just” |
| 17 | Exit Music (for a Film) | – |
| 18 | Everything in Its Right Place | Encore 1; Yorke alone at the piano |
| 19 | You and Whose Army? | – |
| 20 | Pyramid Song | – |
| 21 | All I Need | – |
| 22 | Lotus Flower | Encore 2; new song, Yorke alone on electric guitar |
| 23 | Paranoid Android | – |
| 24 | Street Spirit (Fade Out) | – |
the night
Music Box at the Fonda, Los Angeles, 24 January 2010· formengrwatch on youtube →