During Thom Yorke's last of three shows in Los Angeles, the Radiohead frontman announced that his new, as-yet-unnamed side group, featuring Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, would be back.

While the marquee above the entrance to the Orpheum, where they played two shows following a sort of rehearsal performance at the Echoplex on Friday, listed the headliners as six question marks, Yorke at least answered one question Monday night.

Just before launching into the last song of the second encore, Yorke expressed regret that the string of unexpected concerts was about to end.

"We're going to do this again next year some time," Yorke said to a thunder of applause.

With Flea driving the groove, Radiohead's frontman funks it up.

To understand what Thom Yorke is up to with the new ensemble he brought to the Orpheum Theatre on Sunday, it's useful to quote one of pop's surviving godfathers. "Once you've done the best you can, funk it!" said George Clinton, the founder of Parliament Funkadelic and guiding light for countless musicians trying to find their footing on the dance floor.

To "funk it" doesn't merely mean to relax; it requires concentration and the kind of muscle that never tenses up. For Yorke, the frontman for the highly cerebral and very popular band Radiohead, it also means rejiggering the multidirectional music that group has perfected, to better emphasize its cornerstone: the groove.

Radiohead isn't often discussed as a dance band, though its sound relies as much on rhythm as on Yorke's woozy melodies and Jonny Greenwood's thickets of effects. But by joining forces with alternative rock's favorite bassist (and Clinton's friend) Flea, as well as drummer Joey Waronker and Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, Yorke is aggressively reaching for the bottom in his own sound.

Thom Yorke is a great dancer. This talent doesn't come up too often in his day job fronting the transcendently dispirited quintet Radiohead, where long, simmering songs tend to cover topics like wolves at one's door, impending ice ages and God being unamused by a videotape of your life.

But at Friday night's debut of his still-unnamed solo-project/ensemble at the Echoplex, he moved like Busby Berkeley at the end of days -- jerky robot twitches, stoned head-rolls, teenage sock-hop bouncing. For a man who leads what's likely to be the last rock band considered the best and best-selling at the same time, there was a sense of a previously untapped emotion in the onstage performance: Joy. For the few hundred vigilant souls at the Echoplex who managed to sneak onto Ticketweb before it exploded Friday, the feeling was absolutely mutual.

So there's a hot rumor that Thom Yorke and his new assembled band will be performing a clandestine show at the Echoplex Friday night before their two-night stand at the Orpheum this weekend. We reached Yorke's publicist by phone just now, and this is the current official line on the show's factual existence.

"We cannot confirm nor deny it, but we will confirm or deny it by tomorrow morning."

So coy. So cryptic. So Thom Yorke. We're not saying to get your camping gear out just yet, but there is a very conspicuous empty slot on the Echoplex's show calendar for Friday night. Maybe you should keep your Sterno in an easily reachable place, if, say, you need to grab it before claiming a spot on a Glendale Boulevard sidewalk in the next 24 hours.

[Update @ 9:49 p.m.] According to the official Radiohead website, the show will happen Friday at the Echoplex:

so yes that band thats doesnt really have a name that im working with at the moment??????
have decided to do a warm-up show on Friday Oct 2nd around 9pm at the Echoplex in Los Angeles
Its not that big, it'll be total chaos and its kind of a rehearsal but .. if you are near by..
below is a link to get tickets.
hope you get lucky with it.

Tickets will go on sale tomorrow at noon via Ticketweb.

-- August Brown

Photo by Herbert P. Oczeret / European Pressphoto Agency