Show 149 - Japan - Live At The Budokan, Tokyo - 16 March 1980

**MARCH 2021 PLEASE NOTE**

This free show has now been taken down the new boxed set release of the Quiet Life album has included 1 of the bootlegs I used for this show - and as such, that now being an official release (even if it hasn't been enhanced in any way) means this has to come down. I never knowingly offer free copies of commercially available gigs. They're still saying its from 27 March apparently but nobody's perfect...

So the information below is now for information only. Thanks to the 1129 of you who downloaded the show before it got taken down.

An overdue return this time for Japan, and hopefully clearing up some badly identified bootlegs in the process. If you don't care about all that - just head down to the last paragraph and click on the link - for the rest of you, read on...

There are a few recordings (I had been sent 3 different ones) of gigs from the Quiet Life tour of Japan in March 1980 - some say they're from The Budokan, 16 March; others are labeled as 27 March at "Mito Hall, Tokyo". Most also purport to be FM recordings...which they're not.

There was only one gig recorded, that is known for definite - and that's the Budokan gig on 16 March. Those bootlegs labeled Mito Hall and 27 March are ALL the same Budokan gig from 16 March. There is actually NO SUCH PLACE as "Mito Hall"; although the band did indeed play a venue in the city of Mito on 27 March, no genuine recording has ever come to light of that one. My thanks to Paul at the excellent Nightporter site for confirming all this for me recently. Perhaps blame it on a naughty bootlegger trying to sell more copies by giving 1 recording different names...

There are also at least 3 different circulated versions of this gig (under it's different names!) - a really quite unlistenable audience recording which contains the intro tape (Despair), a 12 track setlist and a full 15 track setlist - neither having Despair and running at slightly different speeds in widely varied sound quality. I concentrated on the 15 track set and have restored that, with the addition of a restored (as best I could) intro "Despair" tape at the beginning from the one that had awful quality; so you will notice the sound quality improves quite a bit once Despair finishes.

ALL the recordings of this gig are from the audience and NOT FM radio broadcasts, whatever they might say in any notes accompanying them. With that in mind, I got to work and several hours over several days later, here we are:

I reduced the ambient reverb on the recording to bring out more of the music; fixed the tape faults that I could; brought down the piercing screams of several excitable Japanese girls (!), improved the stereo image a little and then got to work with EQ. Large hall audience recordings generally swim in distorting midrange mud which masks everything - I cleared a lot of that away, tightened up the low end, so Mick Karn and Steve Jansen are more audible, reduced selected mids and boosted some of the higher frequencies so Rob Dean, Richard Barbieri can be heard and finally made David Sylvian's vocals and intros clearer too. For those interested, all sources used were lossless audio files and all work done, was also done in lossless.

All that said, don't expect this to sound like a crystal clear radio broadcast - but it's now far better than any of the bootlegs I've heard. I hope you enjoy this much improved complete restoration of this concert.


Setlist
Despair (intro tape)
Alien
...Rhodesia
Quiet Life
Fall in Love With Me
Deviation
All Tomorrow's Parties
Obscure Alternatives
In Vogue
Life in Tokyo
Halloween
Sometimes I Feel So Low
Communist China
Adolescent Sex

Encore:
I Second That Emotion
Automatic Gun