Two On a Friday demos from 1986 turn up on YouTube

Two songs said to come from On a Friday's first demo tape, “Everybody Knows” and “Girl (In The Purple Dress)”, have been posted on YouTube. On a Friday was the band's name before Radiohead, taken from the day they rehearsed; they formed at Abingdon School in 1985.

The woman who posted them says her husband was at school with the band, partied with them and was given the tape at 17. The reports date it to 1986 and the school's music room, and she says it was made before Colin Greenwood's younger brother Jonny, the last of the five to join, was in the band. Everything about the tape rests on her account.

As the first reports heard them, both songs are very much of the mid-1980s, with big U2-style vocals over jangling guitar in the manner of R.E.M., and a saxophone solo in each. One title was already known: Mac Randall's biography Exit Music lists a song called “Girl in a Purple Dress”. The tapes fans knew until now are from 1991, the self-titled On a Friday demo, which had an early “Stop Whispering”, and Manic Hedgehog.

Phil Selway, she says, was at university in Liverpool with her and her husband, and he did study at Liverpool Polytechnic. The two of them used to go and see the band play in Oxford. I remember seeing them in Oxford where me and my husband made up an audience of 6!¹

“Everybody Knows”, On a Friday demo said to date from 1986, as posted on YouTube in November 2011· klootmewatch on youtube →

“Girl (In The Purple Dress)”, On a Friday demo said to date from 1986, as posted on YouTube in November 2011· klootmewatch on youtube →