How Occupy Wall Street Got Hoaxed: The Email From Radiohead's 'Manager'

Rosie Gray

A protester's sign at Zuccotti yesterday: "Where is Radiohead?"

There was a lot of confusion down at Zuccotti Park yesterday, where protesters -- and the media, and about a zillion music fans -- thought that Radiohead was going to come and perform around 4 p.m. They didn't, despite an Occupy Wall Street press conference saying that they would. Nobody was sure of what was going on.

The rumor took on a life of its own. By our count there were at least 1,000 people on the scene yesterday afternoon, though many of them were misguided Radiohead fans. During the group's massive General Assembly yesterday, there were calls of, "If you're here for the concert, go home!"

OWS has released a statement apologizing for the confusion, though yesterday evening consensus still hadn't been reached about what exactly happened. Hero Vincent, one of the men responsible for Occupy's PR, told us that "there were no tricks and no pranks. Just miscommunication." As it turns out, there were all three -- and we've been able to pinpoint the exact source of the mess.

Runnin' Scared has obtained the email sent to Occupy Wall Street from an impostor claiming to be Bryce Edge, one of Radiohead's three managers.

From: Bryce Edge
Date: Thursday, September 29, 2011
Subject: RE: Radiohead @ Occupy Wall Street
To: arts_culture@nycga.net

Dear Occupiers,

My name is Bryce Edge, and I'm one of the managers for the band
Radiohead. The guys are really impressed with what you have managed to
pull off, and they wanted to stop by and play a couple songs in
support before leaving New York. I don't want to create a big media
circus that might worry the police or endanger what you've built, plus
the band wants to play for the people who have been camped out, not
everyone in New York who didn't get a ticket for Thursday's show. I
was told this was the committee to email - do you think this would be
possible? They have some unscheduled time Friday afternoon between 4
and 6, would that work? I read that the police aren't allowing sound
equipment, but they could do acoustic. Let me know.

Best,
Bryce Edge

Courtyard Productions, Inc
8383 Wilshire Boulevard # 526
Beverly Hills, CA 90211-2425

We have the email address of "Bryce Edge," which Radiohead's publicist Steve Martin confirmed was not that of the real Edge, and we'll update if we hear back from him. We called Courtyard Productions, Inc. and were put through to an entirely different company.

Steve Martin reiterated that there was "no confirmation whatsoever" at any point yesterday that Radiohead would be playing.

"There's certainly never been a press release concerning anything in America about Radiohead without me approving it," he said.

Occupy Wall Street sent out their official statement to press last night:

Over the last twenty-four hours #occupywallstreet received several emails purportedly from Radiohead's manager detailing a show for Friday, September 30th at four in the afternoon. Due to miscommunication within our rapidly expanding and adjusting group, we were unable to determine that this was a hoax in time; it can be difficult to seperate [sic] rumor from fact in an open source movement. To insure the quality of our communications, Patrick Bruner will be responsible for all official statements coming out of #occupywallstreet.

Last night was the first time we ever got an automated email response from them.

Update 5:28 p.m.: Despite what you might read in Gothamist's confusing post on the subject, we'd like to reiterate that we were given explicit permission to publish the fake Radiohead email from a source inside Occupy Wall Street. Next time, they might want to get in touch before putting us in a post.

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]

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