Fake Radiohead song is fake, says the Toronto baker who wrote it
A few days before Christmas, an allegedly unreleased Bends-era Radiohead track hit YouTube, under the made-up-sounding title “Putting Ketchup In The Fridge.” It spread across the Internet like wildfire—sullen, droney, Bends-era Radiohead wildfire—raising questions about the track’s authenticity and origins. Gawker linked to a 4chan thread in which someone claimed that the track was “supposibly [sic] stolen by my friend who used to work for EMI and burned onto a cd-r.” Well, “supposibly” is the operative word here.
A few days ago, CNN reported that the song is not a lost Radiohead track, but rather a tune by Toronto baker Christopher Stopa. And now Torontoist has got the full story behind “Putting Ketchup In The Fridge,” which was originally titled “Sit Still” and recorded by Stopa’s band Public a decade ago. “As nice as it is, because I like Radiohead, and on some technical level it means I sang [the song] well, I don’t really want to be known as the person that was mistaken [for] Radiohead,” Stopa told Torontoist. “Art is about making something interesting.”
Anyway, you know what’s more interesting than the mystery behind a potential, could-be, long-lost Radiohead song? The mammoth, freshly pressed ice cream sandwiches Stopa puts together at his Toronto bakery, Bakerbots Baking. Maybe he can introduce some new flavours to capitalize on his incidental fame, like “Just” Vanilla, or Peppermint Daylight, or ... Pralines Android ... and Cream. Anyway, you can listen to the song below, which you might still like, even if it’s not by your precious Radiohead anymore.
