With their recent and highly publicised world tour now but a fond memory for those who attended, the cats behind Radiohead’s fansite Radioheat At Ease have put pen to paper (finger to key) and crunched the numbers to come up with the final statistics of the tour. Everything is listed from the number of shows performed to the tracks, and everything down to which show contained a live debuted track and how many times said track was performed thereafter. My personal favourite – the number of shows protested by the Westboro Baptist Church (photo included thanks to Stereogum).
Touring isn’t necessarily a numbers game, but if it were, Radiohead would surely be winning, or at least in the top 10. Once you check out these stats, it will become a lot clearer just how much work these guys had to put in to bring the show to you, so you better be grateful. Here goes…
All up, Radiohead hit up 17 different countries:
USA, Mexico, Canada, France, Spain, Portugal, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia
From that, Radiohead performed 57 shows in total:
Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Austin, St. Louis, Kansas City, Broomfield, Glendale, Seattle, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Coachella (twice), Mexico City (Twice), Mansfield, Newark (twice), Washington DC, Cincinnati, Cuyahoga Falls, Bonnaroo, Tinley Park, Auburn Hills, Camden, Montreal, Nimes (twice), Bilbao, Lisbon, Taipei, Jisan, Fuji Rock, Quarry of St. Triphon, Rome, Florence, Bologna, Codroipo, Berlin (twice), Manchester, London (twice), Paris (twice), Amsterdam, Cologne, Strasbourg, Antwerp, Auckland, Brisbane, Sydney (twice), Melbourne (twice).
54 different songs were played:
(Including True Love Waits and Hunting Bears snippets; not including the Everything In Its Right Place intros)
Longest show:
25 songs/140 minutes (Bonnaroo)
Shortest show:
20 songs (Coachella via Bilbao) Most other non-festival shows have featured 23 or 24 songs (except for Kansas City and Auckland which featured 22 songs, owned).
Album Breakdown:
To make this a bit easier to process, the Radiohead At Ease crew put all the albums into catagories including everything Radiohead have released since The King of Limbs (TKOL+), B-sides/Other (including These Are My Twisted Words), and then all the new songs. 1/12 means one song from that album’s twelve songs were played. (make sense?)
Pablo Honey – 0/12
The Bends – 2/12
OK Computer – 7/12
Kid A – 6/10
Amnesiac – 6/11 (including Hunting Bears snippet)
Hail To The Thief – 5/14
In Rainbows – 8/10
The King Of Limbs – 8/8
The King Of Limbs+ – 3/4
B-sides/Other – 5
New Songs – 4
New Song Frequency
Identikit: 34 performances
Ful Stop: 10 performances
Skirting On The Surface: 2 performances (3 including the ACL performance)
Cut A Hole: 2 performances
Live Debuts (Not including tracks after KOTL)
The Amazing Sounds Of Orgy: 4 performances
Meeting In The Aisle: 4 performances
Treefingers: 2 performances
Songs Played At Every Concert:
Bloom, Lotus Flower, Reckoner
Songs Played Only Once:
Packed Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin Box, Subterranean Homesick Alien, A Wolf At The Door
Last show that featured a track played live for the first time:
Amsterdam, October 14 (the song was A Wolf At The Door) 48 of the tour’s 54 songs were played during the first 17 shows (the first 2 North American legs). Six songs were introduced during the final 40 shows of the year.
Opening Songs:
Bloom (x35)
Lotus Flower (x21)
Lucky (x1)
Bloom opened the first 28 shows of 2012 (through Montreal). Lucky then opened Nimes 1 (this was the first show after the Toronto accident); Bloom then opened the next three European shows. Show 33 in Taipei marked the first time Lotus Flower opened a concert and it would open 21 of the final 25 shows of 2012.
Closing Songs:
Idioteque (x18)
Paranoid Android (x14)
Everything In Its Right Place (x12)
Street Spirit (x6)
Reckoner (x5)
Karma Police (x1)
Exit Music (for a film) (x1)
Idioteque closed just 3 of the first 17 shows when the band mixed up the final song quite regularly. But during the final third of the tour Idioteque became a regular closing song.
Everything In Its Right Place intros:
True Love Waits (x14)
After The Gold Rush (Neil Young cover) (x6)
The One I Love (REM cover) (x6)
Unravel (Bjork cover) (x6)
Small Axe (Bob Marley cover) (x2)
Electrolite (REM cover) (x1)
Notable 2012 Absences:
Fake Plastic Trees, Just, My Iron Lung, No Surprises, Morning Bell, 2+2=5, Where I End And You Begin, Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Appearances by the Red Pants:
4 in total – The last red pants appearance was in Cuyahoga Falls, quite early in the tour. What happened to the red pants is 2012′s greatest mystery. If you need more detailed Red Pants stats as well as the colour of other items of clothing worn by the band, click here
Protests by Westboro Baptist Church: 1 (debuted in Kansas City) Seriously, check it below. Apparently the church has an issue with the band quoting the word of God for their own benefit (don’t start pulling threads on their argument, you’ll just get angry).
