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On a Friday's Gripe demo tape sells for £6,000
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Photo: Omega Auctions · press photo, Omega AuctionsGripe, a demo cassette by On a Friday, sold for £6,000 at Omega Auctions on 26 January, three times the house's estimate of £2,000. On a Friday was the band's name at Abingdon School, taken from the day they rehearsed.
The seller, who stayed anonymous, knew the band in the early 1990s and was given the tape by one of them. Omega dated it to 1987 or 1988, after the five had left school and before they signed to EMI as Radiohead in 1991. In 2013 Omega sold an earlier On a Friday tape, a 1986 demo, to an American collector for £2,000.
The first three songs are newer. On the cassette Thom Yorke wrote that there were three tracks at the beginning, and inside the inlay that they were the most recent recordings, from 1989. None of the three had been heard before. In Yorke's hand they are “Promise Me”, “Body(?) in a box” and “These are the Chains”; the auction house's announcement gave the last two as “Boy In A Box” and “These Chains”.
Gripe, as written on the cassette and inlay
| # | Title | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Promise Me | Thom |
| 2 | Body(?) in a box | Colin/Thom |
| 3 | These are the Chains | Thom |
| 4 | Happy Song | – |
| 5 | To Be a Brilliant Light | – |
| 6 | Sinking Ship | – |
Yorke designed the red inlay card, which names all five, and gave each of the older songs a note in brackets. One reads Happy Song (why don't you write a happy song?)
3, another Sinking Ship (how would you like a job like that?)
3, and “To Be a Brilliant Light” is filed under midlife crisis, no comforts.