Radiohead tape Austin City Limits, then fill the Erwin Center

Radiohead taped an episode of Austin City Limits, the long-running PBS music programme, at its home, ACL Live at The Moody Theater, on Tuesday 6 March, their first Austin show since 1995. About a minute and three-quarters into “Reckoner” the song fell apart, and the band stopped and started it again.

The Austin Chronicle counted about 2,000 people inside. Many of them held tickets for the next night as well, while fans without one crowded the pavements outside trying to buy or trade. The band played 17 songs in about 90 minutes, with Thom Yorke moving between guitar and piano. The episode will be shown on PBS in the autumn, in the programme's 38th series.

“The Amazing Sounds of Orgy”, the Amnesiac-era B-side, was in the set the night after its first ever live outing in Dallas, and the encore opened with “Skirting on the Surface”, which the full band had first played in Dallas too. Ted Chase, reviewing for QRO, calls it a mellower, Latin-tinged song that went down less well than “Idioteque” or “Paranoid Android”. The audience stood to applaud at the start and at the end, and kept clapping for a second encore that never came.

The next night, Wednesday 7 March, the band played the Frank Erwin Center, the University of Texas basketball arena, which holds about 16,000 and sold out within minutes. Twelve LED screens hung over the stage, rising, falling and tilting through the set with blocks of colour and close-ups of the players. The two hours ran to 23 songs and two encores, adding, among others, “Kid A”, “The National Anthem”, “Nude” and “These Are My Twisted Words”, which had returned to the set in Houston on 3 March, and ending, like the taping, on “Paranoid Android”.

The Austin Chronicle calls the taping muted, under the programme's standard lighting and with a quieter mix, and the arena show the full experience, with Yorke looser on the bigger stage. In both sets the paper picks out “Lotus Flower” as the turn and “Idioteque” as the peak.

After “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” at the arena, Yorke told the crowd the band had spent the day in downtown Austin and, in honour of the city's unofficial motto, Keep Austin Weird, had done their bit and bought the T-shirts. Jonny Greenwood wore a Texas T-shirt under his Oxford shirt.

Austin, 6 and 7 March 2012

“Morning Mr. Magpie”, Austin City Limits taping, 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 →