Song · Pablo Honey era (1992–93)
Banana Co.
An On a Friday song that Radiohead played from 1993 to 1998 and that missed The Bends.
feb 1993
signal radio
It dates from the On a Friday years, before the band were Radiohead. The version most people heard first was acoustic, recorded at Signal Radio in Cheshire on 11 February 1993 and put out that spring as a B-side to “Pop Is Dead”. The sleeve credits it as “recorded live courtesy of Craig Cash”, a DJ who had presented a late-night indie show on KFM in Stockport and who went on to write and act in The Royle Family. Mac Randall called it Beatlesque. The words go after the multinationals and what they do to the places they move into, with the fruit company of the title standing in for all of them.
1993–98
in the set
Nine days after the radio session the band played it at the Venue in Oxford, and that year it was in the set on forty-four nights. In Paris in April 1996 it closed the night at La Cigale, and when the OK Computer tour picked it up again in Cleveland in August 1997, more than a year after its last 1996 night, at the Zodiac in Oxford in July, it stayed in until Calgary the following April.
1993–96
the studio version
They cut a fuller version, with electric guitars, at Courtyard Studios in March 1993 and thought about it for The Bends. It missed the record. In 1995 the band gave it to an album by the coalition against the Criminal Justice Bill, and in January 1996 it was a B-side again, on the second CD of the “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” single, nearly three years after the first.
on stage
Live, World Beat Center, San Diego, 16/07/1993.· Elias Junewatch on youtube →
the record(1)
on stage(3)
Live history
| Times played | 100 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Saturday 20 February 1993 · Oxford |
| Last played | Wednesday 8 April 1998 · Calgary |
| Closed the night | 5 times |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
Tabs (1)
sources7
- The site's own catalogue note, based on Drowned in Sound and fan archives.
- Mac Randall, Exit Music: The Radiohead Story.
- Wikipedia, “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”, for the single's track listing from its liner notes, and MusicBrainz, for “Banana Co.” on the second CD (CDR 6419).
- The 2003 treefingers.com lyric page (
_legacy/lyrics/songs/banana_co..txt), for the electric guitars. - This site's news stories on the “Pop Is Dead” single (1993), the “High and Dry” single announcement (1995), the La Cigale night in Radiohead World Service (1996) and the “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” single, from Music Week's listing of 20 January 1996, for the benefit album and the formats.
- The site's live archive, for every date.
- The “Pop Is Dead” sleeve, as catalogued by Discogs, for the Craig Cash credit, and Penny Anderson, “Craig Cash proves that good guys can win”, The Guardian, 7 October 2008, for who he was.