Ahead of the Smile Concert, Remembering Radiohead's 1993 Miami Debut

Hot on the heels of the release of its debut album, The Smile, the side project of Radiohead members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, will make its Miami concert debut on June 29 at the James L. Knight Center.

This isn't the first time members of the Smile have performed in Miami. Yorke and Greenwood moonlight for one of the most beloved rock bands of all time. Nearly 30 years ago, I was lucky enough to see Radiohead play its first-ever South Florida show.

I first encountered Radiohead in a distinctly early 1990s way. I would bring my Walkman to school, and when the AA batteries ran out of juice, slowing down my A Tribe Called Quest cassette to unlistenable speeds, I would switch to the radio function. My high school was right by the University of Miami, so I usually listened to WVUM. More often than not, 90.5 FM would play experimental music outside what was then the mainstream.

I distinctly remember waiting for the school bus when I first heard the opening guitar riff for "Creep." Now it's considered classic rock with acoustic versions playing in Marvel movies, but in May or June of 1993, "Creep" sounded different. The lo-fi recording, especially Greenwood's dead-note guitar blast, made it stand out. Yorke's voice and lyrics tapped into simplicity. There was the theme of self-loathing that all high school kids could relate to, but unlike most singers at the time, there was no mumbling. Yorke enunciated every emo word. There was also a catchiness to his verses, so that when he sang, "I want a perfect body," by the second time I heard it, I could already sing along to the following verse of "I want a perfect soul."

I wasn't the only one who fell hard for that song. Within weeks the video for "Creep" was played heavily on MTV and the local mainstream rock station WSHE 103.5 between Guns N' Roses' "November Rain" and 4 Non Blondes' "What's Going On." At some point during the summer of 1993, I borrowed a friend's cassette of Radiohead's debut Pablo Honey. In hindsight, the album is a bit hit or miss, and Radiohead would scale much higher peaks, but even beyond "Creep," there were enough hits that the cassette was on heavy rotation on my boombox when I did homework or played Mortal Kombat on my Sega Genesis.

When tenth grade started, and I heard Radiohead was coming to Miami Beach's Cameo Theater on September 23, 1993, I had to make sure I would save up the $15 or $20 to be there. In retrospect, it seems wild that Radiohead was the opener for the New England-based rock band Belly. But at the time, it seemed reasonable that both were one-hit wonders with the same amount of fame.

Belly was invited to do an in-store meet and greet at Yesterday & Today Records on that same Thursday afternoon. After school ended, I took the bus down Bird Road for the photogenic Tanya Donelly and her bandmates to autograph the CD for their debut magical realist album Star.

Rich Ulloa, who owned Yesterday & Today, tells New Times, "I remember that day. I wish we had videotaped it. We had a good turnout." He didn't go to that night's show, so 30 years later, he had no idea who they were touring with, "I never knew that Radiohead opened."

But every pierced high-school kid with unnaturally dyed hair in South Florida knew. That's who lined up outside down Washington Avenue past the Campton Apartments, which served as Ace Ventura's apartment when Jim Carrey's 1994 comedy came out a few months later.

It was the first time I saw a show at the theater, but Cameo hosted a murderer's row of performers in the late '80's through the end of the '90s. Pearl Jam played their first Miami show at the Cameo in 1992, and so did the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1987. Eminem performed there in 1999 and the Notorious B.I.G. in 1995.

When the doors opened, the teenagers had to wait. Because the first opener was the Bats, a New Zealand band who, upon listening to their indie-pop sound, I now enjoy but at the time was bored stiff by. I wanted to see a band with songs I'd heard play.

Radiohead took the stage a bit later, and there was an audible gasp from the crowd. While most in attendance would call themselves "alternative," the alternative scene of 1993 was dominated by the machismo of grunge, music played by manly long-haired men whose fans would mosh in front of center stage to humorless anthems of alienation. The video for "Creep" did nothing to contradict this. Yorke's hair was short, if a bit scruffy, but he seemed earnest, taking his angst as seriously as Alice in Chains or Soundgarden.

But the Yorke who sauntered onto Cameo's stage with a long bleach blonde mullet was quite different. He seemed otherworldly and androgynous, channeling more into David Bowie's alien glam rock aura, while his peers' live shows were more influenced by Robert Plant's rock-god persona.

It was perhaps a foreshadowing of what Radiohead fans could expect in the years to come, with the band always seeking to defy expectations. Going Britpop with 1995's The Bends, making a concept album with interspersed spoken word in 1997's OK Computer, and bringing music into the 21st century with 2000's at-the-time-radically-revolutionary Kid A.

However, not everyone was impressed with what they saw from Radiohead at the Cameo in 1993. Rat Bastard, the ever-contrarian founder of the International Noise Conference, was at the show. "New Zealand's legendary band the Bats on tour supporting Radiohead absolutely musically destroyed them. The Bats outclassed creepy-cover-band-sounding Radiohead in every aspect that night in the Cameo, especially in songwriting," he tells New Times before allowing, "It must have been just the air I was breathing."

In my memory, Radiohead was great. It was before my journalism days, so I didn't take any written notes of the evening, but thanks to the magic of the internet, I found a time capsule of the night that could back up my memories. YouTube user 2Shellrock has a 50-minute audio recording that purports to be taken "Live from Miami, FL 1993-09-23." Instead of video footage, there's a still shot of Yorke in a striped shirt that might or might not have been taken that night.
The band rips through 14 songs that correspond with my memories. The set is mostly faithful versions of the dozen songs that make up Pablo Honey, but they also surprisingly play a rip-roaring rendition of "The Bends" that wouldn't be released in recorded form for another couple of years.

Yorke barely addresses the audience. Four songs in, he finally does, stating with a little on-brand contempt, "This is the song that, um, made us famous. I don't know why. This is called 'Creep.'" You can hear the crowd singing along, which he humors. He sounds slightly more enthused with the heartfelt "Stop Whispering," a song that Coldplay has spent a career trying to replicate.

Radiohead grew as musicians, but even in this early state, they already sounded world-class, much better than what seemed to be a one-hit wonder had any right to be. But this 1993 date was the last time Miami would have the opportunity to experience them in such an intimate setting.

Two years later, they played Miami Arena opening for R.E.M., and since 2003, they've been headliners at either the massive amphitheater in West Palm Beach or the basketball arena in downtown Miami, which have both had more corporate name changes than it has hosted Radiohead performances. 

The Smile. 8 p.m. Thursday, June 29, at James L. Knight Center, 400 SE Second Ave., Miami; 305-416-5978; jlkc.com. Tickets cost $57.50 to $87.50 via ticketmaster.com.