This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Releases Top Stories
Radiohead album launch event cancelled over safety concerns
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 18 February 2011
Good old Radiohead and their cryptic messages. Well, actually, as coded missives from the band go, the one they posted to Twitter yesterday was fairly simple. It said: “渋谷 ハチ公広場 金曜日 １８時５９分”. For those of you who don’t understand Japanese, that means Hachikō Square, Shibuya, Friday, 18:59.
Hachikō Square is one of Tokyo’s most recognisable landmarks, a huge pedestrian crossing in one of the city’s main shopping districts. But what could Radiohead be doing there on Friday evening? You should never arrange to meet people there, trust me, it’s a lost cause. And a gig in an already insanely crowded place seems like a foolish plan. We assumed, therefore, that some sort of video broadcast on one of the advertising screens that overlooks the square was most likely.
And that seemed even more likely when a spokesperson for the band got onto the NME yesterday to explain: “The band will not be in Japan tomorrow so people should not go to Shibuya expecting to see the band in person”.
But what can it be? Well, luckily for us, Japan is nine hours ahead of the UK, so we can already tell you what happened: Nothing. Nothing at all. Seemingly, until a few hours before the event, no one had thought it might be a bad idea to send a load of crazed Radiohead fans down to the busiest part of Tokyo at its busiest time of day. In a statement issued overnight (our time), Radiohead’s Japanese label Hostess Entertainment said that they event had been cancelled over safety concerns following consultation with police.
The band had indeed planned to broadcast the video for new song, ‘Lotus Flower’, on one of the screens overlooking Hachikō Square, but instead it was shown on the Japanese ‘The King Of Limbs’ website at www.thekingoflimbs.jp (which went down almost instantly) and on YouTube (which didn’t). WARNING: Contains jiggling.
According to reports, despite attempts to warn fans that the event had been cancelled, many fans failed to get the message and still arrived in Shibuya as 7pm drew closer.
To make up for the disappointment, the band have brought forward the release of ‘The King Of Limbs’ by a day, meaning digital copies are being distributed now.
