The Cure - Live Denver - Sept. 4, 1989

Robert Smith was saying that the Disintegration tour was going to be the last of The Cure. I guess he was technically correct because it seems that after this, they dropped "The" from The Cure and all the releases were simply by "Cure".

Anyway, when we heard that they were playing in Denver, we started hatching schemes to go and see them. Somehow, Denver was deemed too far for me to stray and mom insisted on going with. Kevin's mother packed him a lunch- it was cute.

Mom was going to sit in the car for the show. We had Heather's ticket with us, with instructions to scalp it. After driving to Denver the long way (I-70), it seemed silly to make mom sit in the car and the effort of scalping the extra didn't just didn't seem worth it. Heather was kind of peevish about this once we'd returned to Salt Lake, but I think I hooked her up with a copy of this recording and she calmed down a bit. So, we brought mom into the show and she proved useful in that she snuck the blank tapes into the venue by placing them in her bra.

This was an amazing bill- the Pixies, Love and Rockets, and the Cure. Wish I'd brought batteries and tapes to record the other 2 bands as well as the sound at Fiddler's Green was simply amazing.

Track Listing:

1. Plainsong
2. Pictures of You
3. Closedown
4. Piggy in the Mirror
5. A Night Like This
6. Just Like Heaven
7. Last Dance
8. Fascination Street
9. Love Song
10. Charlotte Sometimes
11. The Walk
12. A Forest
13. Inbetween Days
14. The Same Deep Water As You
15. Prayers for Rain
16. Disintegration
17. Lullaby
18. Close to Me
19. Let's Go to Bed
20. Why Can't I Be You/Everybody Wants to Be A Cat/Lovecats
21. Homesick
22. Untitled
23. A Strange Day
24. Three Imaginary Boys
25. Boy's Don't Cry
26. 10:15 Saturday Night
27. Killing An Arab

[Download]

The Sundays - Live @ The Speedway Cafe - Aug. 5, 1990

This show at the Speedway was an amazing treat. The Sundays are amazing and seeing them live is something that I will never forget. This was on the tour for their debut album "Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic". I think most of the tracks from that album are represented here as well as "We Don't Mind" and another to which I have no idea what the title is. Hope you enjoy listening to it.

Track Listing:

1. Can't Be Sure
2. I Won
3. I Kicked A Boy
4. A Certain Someone
5. Joy
6. What Do You Think
7. Skin & Bones
8. We Don't Mind
9. Something
10. My Finest Hour
11. Hideous Towns
12. [Unknown Title]
13. Here's Where The Story Ends
14. Can't Be Sure

[Download]

Peter Murphy - Mar. 14, 1990

Here's another oldie but goody. Peter Murphy playing in March of 1990 on the campus of the University of Utah in the gorgeous old Kingsbury Hall. It's such a great setting for shows, not only is it old and ornate, but the acoustics in there are phenomenal as well. Peter and his band definitely put on a great show that night. This was during the tour for the "Deep" album. Not only did he play a Bauhaus, tune- "Kick In The Eye, but he mixed things up a bit by melding "Bela Lugosi's Dead" with "Final Solution". Enjoy.

Track Listing:

1. The Line Between The Devil's Teeth
2. Deep Ocean, Vast Sea
3. Seven Veils
4. Cuts You Up
5. I've Got A Miniature Secret Camera
6. Kick In The Eye
7. Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem
8. Roll Call
9. His Circle And Hers Meet
10. Final Solution/Bela Lugosi
11. Strange Kind Of Love
12. All Night Long
13. The Light Pours Out Of Me
14. Dragnet Drag

[Download]

Cocteau Twins - Live Las Vegas - Dec. 11, 1990

I own three Cocteau Twins bootlegs. Two that were purchased on CD and this one that I recorded myself. Of the three, this is the second best in terms of sound quality. But, more than that, this is the Las Vegas show from the "Heaven Or Las Vegas" tour.

Liz and I were living in Phoenix when this show happened. Liz had just been picked up as a Christmas/Holiday temp at a Wherehouse Music & Video store and I think that it was there that she caught wind of the fact that the Cocteau's were playing in Vegas. There really was no way that we were gonna miss this show. So, we drove through the Arizona and Nevada desert in her trusty little Pontiac T1000 (yeah, just slightly fancier Chevette).

When we got there, we were surprised at how many people from SLC that we knew that had trekked to the show as well. And, of course, I was going to sneak in the trusty little Sony recorder. If you listen carefully, you can hear someone telling Mike (a guy at our table) to be a bit more quiet in his appreciation of the band since I was recording. It helped a bit, but he still is moaning orgasmically at the end of nearly every number- just less noticeably so.

The cassette version of this was very listenable, so much so that 20 years ago I was selling copies to a local record store in Mesa, AZ. The condenser mic of the Sony did a decent job with the inside acoustics of the Bagdad Showroom of the Aladdin Hotel. At times the drums and bass cause a slightly noticeable clipping- but I'm still very pleased with this one. This was digitized in 2001 or 2002 with Roxio CD Spin Doctor. I've been meaning to put this online for a long time now as I would like other Cocteau Twins fans have a chance to listen to this historic and amazing show.

Track Listing

1. Dials (pre-recorded intro)
2. Blue Bell Knoll
3. My Love Paramour
4. From The Flagstones
5. Orange Appled
6. Iceblink Luck
7. Cico Buff
8. Wolf In The Breast
9. Crushed
10. Pitch The Baby
11. Whales Tails
12. Road, River, & Rail
13. Aikea-Guinea
14. A Kissed Out Red Float Boat
15. Heaven Or Las Vegas
16. Cherry Coloured Funk
17. Pink Orange Red
18. Akea-Guinea

[Download]

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Live Salt Lake City 1990-02-06

Astute readers might notice that the flyer pictured is for a show in Las Vegas, NV on Feb. 4, 1990. Somehow I have multiple flyers for this show- a show I couldn't not get into because I was only 17 at the time. I had driven to Las Vegas at the invitation of my dear friend Tina. She had moved there a few months prior and knew I loved the Mary Chain. She had failed to notice that the show was 21 and over. In St. George, UT, I had picked up my friend Nathan, and his friends Yukiko and one other Japanese exchange student whose name I can no longer remember.

I think Yukiko was the first one to notice that the tickets said '21 and over' on them. This was after picking up Tina and her boyfriend and then going to a Smith's Tix to get more tickets for everyone. We went to Calamity Jane's anyway and tried to get in. There was a doorman who told us to 'go 'round back', but then probably thought better of losing his job by letting minors in. We sat out back for a while, but couldn't really hear anything. After an hour or so, we gave up and savored the bitter taste of defeat.

I hurried back to Salt Lake City the next day and then on Tuesday of that week took my sweetheart (and now wife of 20+ years) Liz to her first live music gig. That sweet, innocent, mormon, student body officer and Seminary Council member didn't tell me until years later how freaked out she was by the whole experience. Lucky for us, the gig at the Speedway Cafe in SLC was all ages.

Some people might also notice on the picture flyer for the Las Vegas show that the openers were Nine Inch Nails. This might make the wonder if they were also the openers at the Salt Lake show? They were. Now, if you're wondering why I recorded the Mary Chain and not NIN, it's because I love the Mary Chain and have never really cared for NIN. Well, that's not entirely true. I really like "Head Like A Hole" when I first heard it, but then made the mistake of picking up "Pretty Hate Machine" and just could not cotton to the rest of the album. Sorry.

Anyway, I was, and still am, very pleased with how this taping turned out. I digitized this back in 2001 or 2002 using Roxio's CD Spin Doctor to remove tape hiss and bump the sound. Anyway, I hope some Mary Chain fans will find it and enjoy it. Please leave a comment if you do.

The cassette covers I made for this back in 1990.

Track Listing:

1. Penetration (pre-recorded intro)
2. Rider
3. Everything's Alright When You're Down
4. The Hardest Walk
5. Head On
6. Halfway To Crazy
7. Coast To Coast
8. Her Way Of Praying
9. Taste The Floor
10. Nine Million Rainy Days
11. The Living End
12. Who Do You Love
13. Take It
14. April Skies
15. Blues From A Gun
16. Sidewalking
17. "Country Interlude" (not really a song, but I tracked it seperately when I digitized this)
18. Gimme Hell
19. Kill Surf City

[Download]

The Church - Live Salt Lake City - Aug. 16, 1988

It was a beautiful August evening for this outdoor show at the "Triad Center" in Salt Lake City. The Church were in heavy rotation on our local modern rock station that summer with "Under The Milkyway" and "Reptile" from the "Starfish" album. The show was a triple bill- Tom Verlaine, Peter Murphy, and The Church. I didn't tape Tom's or Peter's performances- now I wish I had. I was with my friends Jason and Kathryn. You can clearly hear Jason tell me to "Fuck off" as the music was starting. I was probably trying to tell him to shush since I was recording.

This tape has sat dormant for over 22 years because of dismal sound quality. It was recorded on a small handheld Sony recorder with a built in condenser mic. I say small, but by today's standards that thing is/was a behemoth. Luckily, I was a skinny little bastard back then and could hide it in the front or back of my shorts where the security didn't necessarily check. This kind of sneaking of a recorder into a show seems quaint in our modern age of mobile phones. Seems like at shows now if you look around you will see at least 6 people recording with their phones during any given song. (Which is cool because now, if you miss a show, or a band skips your town, you can watch most of it on YouTube- thank you internet gods.) And the signs at venues no longer read 'no recording equipment allowed', they've had to change them to 'no professional recording equipment allowed.'

Anyway, this tape has too much hiss and the vocals and the guitars were buried under the drums and the hiss. I've been holding onto it all these years but basically considered it unlistenable. After finding some other live Church recordings on music blogs recently, I went looking for this tape. After finding it and literally wiping the dust off it, I piped it into my laptop and then started playing with the graphic equalizer in Sound Studio. I pushed the frequencies from 500 Hz to 1 kHZ and did a really sharp drop off after 10 kHZ to minimize the tape hiss. This significantly bumped up the vocals and guitars. This is the first time that I have enjoyed listening to this taping. Although, now that you can hear the vocals and guitars, I can't decide if it's done too many strange things to Steve Kilbey's voice. Still I'm enjoying listening to it and would like to give other church fans a chance to as well.

Track Listing

1. Constant In Opal
2. Blood Money
3. Myrrh
4. In This Room
5. A New Season
6. Destination
7. Hotel Womb
8. Unsubstantiated
9. Under The Milkyway
10. Tristesse
11. Spark
12. North, South, East, and West
13. Reptile
14. Tantalized
15. It Doesn't Change
16. Cortez The Killer (w/ Tom Verlaine)
17. You Took (w/ Tom Verlaine)

[Download]

Things you might notice:

• "In This Room", from the (once upon a time) hard to get Sing Songs ep, I didn't know the title of this for years until this ep got a nice, affordable CD reissue
• "Unsubstantiated", from the (forgettable?) "Tequila Sunrise" soundtrack, -or- the deluxe release of "Priest = Aura" if you happen to be lucky enough to have that one (I'm not that lucky)
• Multiple insane guitar effects feedback flare-ups during the latter part of "Hotel Womb"
• "Spark" and "North, South, East, and West" sound 'interesting' due to my little Sony struggling to pull the tape at the correct speed after I turned the tape over at approx. 45 minutes into the set. (The more I listen to it, it's becoming apparent that my recorder was having trouble pulling the tape at a constant rate throughout the entire show.)
• Tom Verlaine came out and played during the encore with the church for 2 insanely long numbers, a cover of Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer" and then the Church's own "You Took", which unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) gets cut off due to the tape running out, but it does sound like the song was just about to end at that point

Other live Church you might like:

• The Church - live at Studio 54, Barcelona, Spain 5/23/86
• The Church - Live At The Palace Melbourne (1991) Ex SB