Show 219 - Depeche Mode - Live At Shrine Auditorium Los Angeles - 12 Dec 1998

 

A quick request. If you plan on downloading this and putting it on your YouTube channel or your own bootleg page - I don't mind. But a credit to this website where you found it and a link back to this page would be really appreciated. It helps me gauge which artists are popular - ie more chance of other restorations coming. Don't just steal it, cut out the intro and outro and take the credit. Thanks.

The Show
It's been almost 3 years since I last did a DM show. I've done many others but this is the latest I've done in their long history, and dates from their first tour after Alan Wilder left. They were headlining KROQ's 9th annual "Almost" Acoustic Christmas Show in Los Angeles, towards the end of their tour. The text file with this described it as a very good soundboard recording. And so it was, although rather dull and muffled sounding with very little in the way of dynamics.

What Was Done
Azimuth adjusted, a tape dropout fixed but then it was straight to EQ and the usual studio toys to bring some clarity and space back to the sound mix, and then mastered to make it clearer and more powerful overall. The performance was already good - the sound now is far more impressive and powerful and does the band justice. Turn the sound up, you are in for a treat! And watch out for the encore, which features Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins.

The All Important Download/Stream Link

As always, the restored and remastered show is available to download or stream for free as a single 320kbps MP3. Just hit the link:

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD OR STREAM

Setlist
Barrel Of A Gun
Policy Of Truth
It's No Good
Walking In My Shoes
Sister Of Night
A Question Of Lust
Enjoy The Silence
In Your Room
Behind The Wheel
Personal Jesus
Never Let Me Down Again 

Be sure to check out the many other gigs from Depeche Mode I've restored HERE - all similarly available for free.

Supporting The Site

If you want to support the work I do on these recordings, and (if you wish to) obtain separate, fully tagged 320kbps MP3s of this restoration for less than the price of a coffee in return, or lossless FLACs - or even a lossless copy on CDR - head on over to the Rewards For Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site. There is NO OBLIGATION to do so of course - you can take the file on this page absolutely for free - but every single donation is appreciated and helps me do more shows and update some of the software I use as time goes by. Either way, enjoy the show.

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Show 186 - Runrig - Live At Alloa Town Hall - 30 May 1988

 

A quick request. If you plan on downloading this and putting it on your YouTube channel or your own bootleg page - I don't mind. But a credit to this website where you found it, and a link back to this page would be really appreciated. It helps me gauge which artists are popular - ie more chance of other restorations coming. Don't just steal it, cut out the intro and outro and take the credit. Thanks.

 

The Show

A debut on the site for a very talented live band hailing from Scotland - Runrig - who had a lifespan stretching from the 1970s to 2018. This was a fairly murky audience recording of the whole gig, recorded from quite far back, submitted by a listener and I was asked if I could do anything with it. I get quite a few requests like that but don't often think they're suitable for the website - but I haven't found any other Runrig recordings and this is a great live show, showcasing what a great live act they were, as well as just lively a Scottish crowd can be! So - I gave it a go.

What Was Done

There were a few sections where the volume dropped quite a bit, so those got leveled out, and also one spot where the tape was presumably flipped over - this had been edited by somebody already but I fiexed it so it fades out and back in more smoothly. I also removed a particularly LOUD bit of feed back at one point (my ears are still suffering a bit from that one!). 

Otherwise, in the main it was the usual with audience recordings - remove some of the venue ambience to bring back more of the band (but without making it sound unnatural), then get to work with EQ, compression and the usual studio toys to bring some clarity to the sound mix, bring out the drums, clear up the muddy sound as best I could, and make the vocals clearer. This is still very much an audience recording but I think it's far more listenable now. As often happens, the sound mix gets clearer after the first couple of songs or so.

The All Important Download Link

You can now download this repaired, restored and remastered version of this show exclusively for FREE by clicking right HERE and grabbing it as one 320kbps MP3 file. 

Setlist

Intro Tape
The Cutter
Protect and Survive
Lifeline
Hearts Of Olden Glory
Dance Called America
Rocket To The Moon
Our Earth Was Once Green
Cnoc Na Feille
The Only Rose
Tuireadh Iain Ruaidh
Alba
Pride Of The Summer/The Twenty Five Pounder/An Toll Dubh/Nightfall On Marsco
Skye
Loch Lomond
Dust
What Time?

Supporting The Site

If you want to support the work I do, and this site, and obtain separate, fully tagged 320kbps MP3s of this restoration for less than the price of a coffee in return, or even lossless FLACs, head on over to the Rewards For Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs. There is no obligation to do so of course - you can take the file on this page absolutely for free - but every single donation does go towards this site and domain/storage costs, and helps the site stay open, and helps me do more shows. Either way, enjoy the show.

Subscribe And Share

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW FREE NEWSLETTER so you never miss news on which new gigs are going to be restored and uploaded here; any news will be delivered to your inbox.

And if you like this recording, please spread the news and share the page link to anyone you think might be interested - facebook fan groups, web forums, Mastodon, Twitter, Instagram are a great way of spreading the word - that way, I always find out which bands are popular and can do more shows by them in the future. Many thanks.

Show 173: Jean Michel Jarre - Docklands London - 8 October 1988

 

A quick request. If you plan on downloading this and putting it on your YouTube channel or your own bootleg page - I don't mind. But a credit to this website where you found it, and a link back to this page would be really appreciated. It helps me gauge which artists are popular - ie more chance of other restorations coming. Don't steal and take the credit. Thanks.

There are several recordings of Jean Michel Jarre at Docklands - including an official release including excerpts of the concert, with edited tracks. There are also 2 different FM radio recordings I know of - both have very strange sound mixes with delay and so on - I can only assume this was an anti piracy measure at the time. Both would be fairly pointless trying to improve. But a listener to Live and Loud! also sent me an audience recording on CD, which he kindly sent to me for appraisal.

It sounded as you might expect a cassette recording at a large outdoor event might sound! Rather thin, overly bright at times, muffled at other times; the music levels were up and down, crowd noise and fireworks sometimes overtaking the music, wind noise. Lots of wind noise. Consequently I spent the longest time I've ever taken on a restoration, splitting the work over several months. Removing booming wind noise alone was a painstaking (and rather boring) manual process that took many hours - but was worth doing as it was very intrusive. It's not gone completely in places but you will not hear 95% of it and now get far more of the music. 

Another thing I noticed in the original recording, which I'd forgotten when I attended the gig myself - there were long pauses sometimes between tracks. So I spared you 6.5 minutes altogether of audience noise and chatter taken from between tracks. Again, not gone completely - it just helps the concert flow better I think. Hopefully you won't always spot the edits!

For an outdoor audience recording I think this one has come up really well; I hope you enjoy it. But bear in mind with such variable sound quality, some tracks inevitably sound clearer now than others - sometimes the fireworks still get in the way and there are a couple of distorted drum hits during Ethnicolor which couldn't be fully fixed -  but it is still a good improvement over the original recording I started with and well worth your time.

So sit back, turn it up...and if you want to recreate the wet and windy 2nd night instead, turn a desk fan on while spraying water onto your face. Job done. ;-)

You can now download this restored show exclusively for free, right HERE as one 320kbps MP3 file.

If you would like to have separate, fully tagged 320kbps MP3s or lossless FLACs of the restoration, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs. Absolutely no obligation to do so of course - you can take the file on this page absolutely for free - but every single donation does go towards this site and domain/storage costs.

Either way, enjoy the show! And if you like this recording, PLEASE spread the news and share the page link to anyone you think might be interested. Many thanks.

And finally... don't forget to SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEW FREE NEWSLETTER so you never miss news on which new gigs are going to be restored and uploaded here; any news will be delivered to your inbox and I guarantee you no spam - and of course you unsubscribe at any time.

Setlist
Part 1:Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution: Overture
Industrial Revolution (part 1-3)
Equinoxe 5
Ethnicolor

Part 2: Swinging 60’s
Computer Weekend
Magnetic Fields II
Oxygene 4
Equinoxe 7
London Kid

Part 3: The 90’s
Third Rendez-Vous
Tokyo Kid
Revolutions
Souvenir of China
Second Rendez-Vous
Fourth Rendez-Vous

Part 4: The Finale
September
The Emigrant

Show 122 - Duran Duran - Live At Wembley Arena, London - 23 December 1988

This was (as you will hear) originally a live FM broadcast on London's Capital Radio, recorded by a listener at the time.A digital copy was sent to me last year by a listener (and donater - thank you again!) to Live and Loud!. It was very thin and flat sounding, with little bass and not a lot of upper end either. The sound quality was variable in places too but overall - a great candidate for the Live and Loud! treatment.

While there was only so much I could do with the variances in sound quality, the whole recording has benefited a lot from hiss reduction and a lot of time spent with the old 30 band EQ.  What you hear now is a far clearer and better record of this gig, I think.

The radio presenter talks through the whole show unfortunately (at the beginning, at the end of songs, at the end of the show) - and rather than try to edit all that out (which would mean losing chunks of music!) I've left it in; So for once, it really is like listening to the radio back in 1988, for this one! And with it being from 23 December, Xmas is only 2 days away, too. Bonus ;) Incidentally, the radio guy does mention Wild Boys being played before Drug - it wasn't in the recording I was given (guessing it was where the tape needed turning over, was incomplete and someone deleted it).

You can download this improved recording for free here as one 320 kbps MP3 file.

Or, if you would like to support the site with a very small donation towards storage and internet costs, in return you can have the show as separate, properly tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format; head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can do this.

Either way - enjoy the show!

Setlist
God (London)
Big Thing
I Don't Want Your Love
Hungry Like the Wolf
Do You Believe in Shame?
All She Wants Is / Planet Earth
Winter Marches On
Palomino
Too Late Marlene
Girls on Film
Notorious
Skin Trade
Is There Something I Should Know?

Drug
Save A Prayer
The Reflex
Rio

Paper Toys - The High Touch

 

A bit of a one off for me this one. Many many years ago (1988) I played in a band and at our first gig, the support was a duo called Paper Toys. We've known them on and off ever since. They went through other incarnations and several personnel changes, including being known as Desire and Eden's Rage, before splitting up in the mid 1990s.

In 1988 they went from supporting my band to supporting Gary Numan on his UK tour that year. This tape is a recording of that tour, recorded at The Astoria, London, 12 October 1988.

The lineup at that time featured founder members Joe Quinton on guitar and lead vocal, Paul Nichols on bass and vocals, with Jenny Startin on keyboards and also Ultravox drummer Warren Cann who came on to play guitar on their last song.

Originally released officially by the band at the time, I was approached by Paul and asked if I could tidy it up a bit.  So with a fair bit of 30 band EQing and a bit of noise reduction, and a little editing here and there, here's the result.

With the band's permission, it now exists for download as 1 MP3 here.

Side 1
Too Much Of A High Touch
Love Off The Rebound
When There's Two Of You
Someone Like Myself
Roman*

Side 2
Cold Surrender
Truth Unblessed
Feeling Good Now
Love In Me
When There's Two Of You (Double Mix)**

*4 track demo
**Mix produced by Warren Cann