Song · On a Friday / pre-Pablo Honey (1986–92)
Rattlesnake
Ten years before Kid A, the band were already making a song out of loops.
1990
the shindig tape
It is the 12th of the 15 songs the band put on a four-track in the summer of 1990, under the name Shindig, and it is built on loops. The tape turned up online in January 2006, with three songs from 1988 beside it, and NME and Spin both reported the leak.
Rattlesnake had a drum loop that Thom did himself at home on a tape recorder with bad scratching over the top and kind of Prince vocals.
jonny greenwood · quoted on the 2003 site
the video
A recording of a song they never released.· AllRadioheadwatch on youtube →
sources3
- The site's news story “Two demo tapes from before Radiohead turn up online”, 3 January 2006, for the tape, its date and the leak.
- The site's own catalogue note, based on Stereogum and fan archives, for the loops.
- treefingers.com, the 2003 lyric page for “Rattlesnake in the Big City”, for Jonny Greenwood on the drum loop.