Radiohead's Austin City Limits hour airs on PBS and goes online

PBS broadcast Radiohead's first Austin City Limits on Saturday 6 October, as the opening episode of the programme's 38th season, and put the whole episode on its website the same day, ahead of some of its local stations. Terry Lickona, the executive producer, calls it a rare full-hour performance. A behind-the-scenes film from the taping has gone up beside it.

The hour was cut from the set the band played at ACL Live at The Moody Theater in Austin on 6 March, early in the American leg of the King of Limbs tour. Eleven of the 17 songs made the edit, kept in the order they were played, from “Bloom” to “Paranoid Android”. “Lotus Flower”, the clip the programme released in April to trail the episode, is one of the six left out, and so are “Reckoner” and “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”. “Morning Mr. Magpie”, the clip that came with the news in late August that Radiohead's episode would air on 6 October, made it.

“Paranoid Android” is the oldest song in the hour, and most of it comes from the later records, The King of Limbs above all. “The Daily Mail” and “Staircase”, two songs left off that album and released together as downloads last December, are both in, and so is “Identikit”, unreleased, which was first played on the tour's opening night in Miami. They continue to amaze, whether it's with an old classic, a new twist or an obscure track all but forgotten.⁷ The hour also has “The Amazing Sounds of Orgy”, a B-side from the “Pyramid Song” single, which the band had played live for the first time only the night before the taping, in Dallas.

Taped 6 March 2012, broadcast 6 October 2012

“Morning Mr. Magpie”, Austin City Limits, PBS, taped at the Moody Theater, Austin, 6 March 2012· Austin City Limitswatch on youtube →

Behind the scenes at Radiohead's Austin City Limits taping, with “Lotus Flower”, 6 March 2012· Austin City Limitswatch on youtube →