Coachella got off to a bumpy start last night, with Radiohead’s headlining set cutting out multiple times due to technical difficulties. The first incident, ironically, occurred during “Full Stop,” the third song on the band’s playlist, which was interrupted by a brief outage. The crowd reportedly handled that one pretty well—“Ha ha, guess that’s why they call it ‘Full Stop’”, etc.—but people started losing their minds when the music cut out again on the band’s fifth song, “15 Step,” off In Rainbows. Deprived of both the music, and any easy punning opportunities, the crowd let out ”one of the biggest collective groans I’ve ever heard,” according to Consequence Of Sound.
Thom Yorke and company did their best to joke their way through the sonic outages— “I’d like to tell a joke to lighten the mood. But we’re Radiohead so fuck it,” Yorke reportedly told listeners once they finally retook the stage—but the crowd notably thinned out during the interruptions. That being said, the British alt-rockers apparently nailed the rest of the set for the diehards who stuck around, finishing with “Creep” before moving into a five-song encore that closed on “Karma Police.”