On A Friday - Lemming Trail (1986)

It's pretty well-known that before Radiohead appropriated the title of the Talking Heads song for their name, they were known as On A Friday, as the only time that they could practice was on a Friday. The wrote and recorded a lot of songs during these sessions, some of which were released on their own OAF label as demo tapes, whereas others would not surface until many years later. The earliest known demo tape by the band comes from 1986, when the line-up included a saxophone player, Rasmus 'Raz' Peterson. Jonny Greenwood had not yet joined the band, but his brother Colin was on bass, alongside Thom Yorke on vocals, acoustic guitar and keyboards, Ed O'Brien on guitar, and Phillip Selway on drums. The tape was recorded in the music room of Abingdon School, and contains seven songs, with remixes of three of them which are slightly weird 'dub versions', where the vocals cut in and out at random. One last track was tagged on to the end of the tape, which was obviously recorded at a different time, and is of a noticeably lesser quality. Although these are the earliest known recordings from On A Friday, they were actually the last to surface, only appearing on Youtube in 2011. The owner explained that her husband was at school with the band and partied with them before Jonny joined, and the demo was given to him at 17 in school, after he used to go and see them play in Oxford, and became friends with the band. Although this demo was recorded by a bunch of teenagers in their school music room, it's surprisingly competent and confident, and you get the impression that this is a band who could go far. I wonder whatever happened to them.   

Track listing

01 Fragile Friend
02 Girl (In The Purple Dress)
03 Everybody Knows
04 Mountains (On The Move)
05 Fat Girl
06 Lemming Trail
07 Lock The Door
08 Fragile Friend (Remix)
09 Lemming Trail (Remix)
10 Lock The Door (Version)
11 In The Breeze