Occupy Wall Street falls for a forged email promising Radiohead

Occupy Wall Street announced on Friday that Radiohead would play a set at its camp in Zuccotti Park, Lower Manhattan, at 4pm. The band never came, and the protest's spokesman, Patrick Bruner, admitted the organisers had been fooled by a forged email.

The email reached the protest's arts and culture committee on Thursday, apparently from Bryce Edge, one of Radiohead's managers. It offered a few songs on Friday between 4 and 6pm, before the band left New York. The set would be acoustic because the police were not allowing sound equipment, and the band wanted to play for the people camped in the park rather than for New Yorkers who had missed out on tickets for their show. A protester, Alex Carvalho, told DNAinfo it asked them to announce nothing before noon.

The camp in the park, which the protesters call Liberty Plaza, had been there for about two weeks, and Radiohead were in town, after two nights at the Roseland Ballroom on 28 and 29 September and ahead of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on 3 October. At the first Roseland show Thom Yorke had reportedly talked from the stage about Inside Job, the documentary on the financial crash, saying the people in it were still working a few blocks away.

On Friday Bruner emailed that Radiohead would play a surprise show at four, the organisers called a press conference at 1pm, and the protesters' website carried the news. The band's publicists, Nasty Little Man, said on Twitter that Radiohead were not playing and had never been confirmed, and their Steve Martin told DNAinfo it was officially not happening and never had been. The organisers held their ground for a while, saying they had confirmation by email. Then the band posted on Facebook. We wish the best of luck to the protesters there, but contrary to earlier rumours, we will not be appearing today at Occupy Wall Street.³

About 40 minutes before the start, Bruner wrote that the concert was unconfirmed and that he was as much in the dark as anyone. He later called it a hoax that had started independently of the band. It is 110 percent our fault. [Radiohead] deserve no blame for this.⁴