Last Saturday night, a DJ on 92.3 K-Rock reported the news that the British band Radiohead wants to play in Liberty State Park this summer. “What the hell’s Liberty State Park?” he asked. “I guess it’s a state park! Never seen a show there.”
It looks like he’ll have a chance.
Rumor has it that Radiohead will play Liberty State Park this summer, bringing 12,000 to 14,000 fans to the south side of the Jersey City park.
“They have made an inquiry directly to us,” Deputy Director of Parks and Forestry’s Carl Nordstrom said two weeks ago, referring to the Grammy-winning British band best known for their early-’90s radio hit “Creep.” “We’re currently talking to them and the promoter,” he added.
Radiohead had requested to play Aug. 16 and 17 on the south overlook lawn near the administration building. That same site last year served as host to the now-passe Hispanic pop star Ricky Martin, and several years ago an alternative music festival.
The state is in the middle of negotiating the terms of the deal, but word leaked out two weeks ago from web site rollingstone.com that the band had plans to play not only Liberty State Park, but other venues around the country. Other proposed dates include a stint at Suffolk Downs, a dog-racing track outside of Boston and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
Tickets are not yet available. The proposed dates are the only shows the band will play in the tri-state area. A publicist for the band said only that some June dates had been confirmed, and that when further U.S. dates were nailed down, an announcement on the Liberty State Park date would be made.
Getting people in and out of the state park has been a recent concern with some 2,500 Cirque De Soleil-goers causing traffic strains on weekends, but Nordstrom believes that the proposed dates should not be a hassle to those trying to get to the park.
“It won’t be on the weekend, for one,” he said. “It will be a Thursday and Friday.”
Last year, a July 6 Andrea Bocelli concert had been the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed by an Edison man who said the non-VIP parking in Bayonne and subsequent bus and light rail trip caused him and some 200 others to miss half of the blind opera star’s concert.
But the crowds for that show were much bigger than what is anticipated for this show.
Radiohead won a Grammy for its 1997 album OK Computer, a sprawling, grandiose and bleak expose on pre-millennial living. They followed that up with last year’s Kid A, and the band will release yet another album in June entitled Amnesiac.
They have in the past lambasted such public figures as Bill Gates (lead singer Thom Yorke once dedicated the song “Paranoid Android” to the Microsoft founder) and recently gave a thumbs-down rating to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.