Show 215 - Japan - Live At Rock City Nottingham - 7 May 1981

 

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
This is a fairly muffled and "distant" mono audience recording of the first night of the "Art of Parties" tour of the UK in May 1981, featuring the first live appearance of their new single at the time - The Art Of Parties. It was sent to me by a listener, asking if it could be cleaned up. I was initially dubious (quality really wasn't too good) but after sending him a free sample of 1 of the tracks done, this was then done as a private commission. My client was so pleased with the final result he offered it for the website as well, so that others could enjoy it! So here it is.

What Was Done
The recording was, like many old audience recordings, muffled and sounding quite far away, with a few odd cuts and gaps here and there. Quite a bit of feedback in places too.

All those gaps and cuts were removed and blended, so the recording is whole again. Feedback I was able to remove for the most part. A big part of the hall ambience was then reduced, which gave me more of the band sound to work on. I could then get to work with EQ and my box of studio tools to make the band clearer and far more audible. Once that was done, I mastered the whole thing to give the recording some power and width.

The result is a big improvement. I hope fans of the band will enjoy it as much as my client has.

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
Intro (Burning Bridges)
Swing
Gentlemen Take Polaroids
Alien
...Rhodesia
Quiet Life
My New Career
Obscure Alternatives
Taking Islands In Africa
Methods of Dance
Ain't That Peculiar
The Art Of Parties
Halloween
European Son
Life in Tokyo
Sometimes I Feel So Low
Fall In Love With Me

Be sure to check out the other gigs from Japan I've restored HERE - all similarly downloadable for free.

Supporting The Site

If you want to support the work I do on these recordings, and the site, 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 does go towards this site and helps me do more shows and update some of the software I use as time goes by. Either way, enjoy the show.

Subscribe And Share

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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, Bluesky, Mastodon, X, Threads, 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. So please tell ya mates about the site and this page! Many thanks.

Show 154 - Japan - Live At Newcastle City Hall - 1 Jun 1978

After the last Japan show I restored (HERE), I was contacted by Rob Dean, from the band and asked if I could have a go at restoring this recording, which had recently come to light. He put me in touch with Stephen Holden, who had been gifted a copy of the recording by the original owner. Stephen has recently written a book about his time following the band in their early days - see below for details on how to obtain a copy of that.

This is a recording of Japan, supporting Blue Oyster Cult on their UK nationwide tour in mid 1978. The band's first taste of playing larger venues, I guess. Their set includes tracks from their recently released first album, and their upcoming second.

The original mono recording itself was a typical 1970s cassette recording, quite murky, slightly distorted in places but also with a few weird fadeouts - during Suburban Love and the intro to Don't Rain On My Parade in particular. Fadeouts in particular I can't do much about but I tweaked them as much as I dared and they're less extreme than they were, now.

Otherwise plenty of work went into correcting sound imbalances, trying to make the sound mix clearer so you can hear the drums, bass etc clearer, and so on. I also created a pseudo stereo version from the original mono file and restored that separately - so I effectively did this show twice. Lots also went into that too and its a bit clearer to listen to (to me) but you get the choice - mono, stereo, or both. All in all, this all took a bit longer than usual but was more than worthwhile, given some of the awful recordings out there.

You can safely download this restored, unique recording for free below as one 320 kbps MP3 file with no nasty pop ups or ads getting in the way:

Mono restoration

Pseudo-stereo restoration

The remastered shows are also available as separate, properly tagged MP3s or lossless files in FLAC format; head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can support what I do and donate towards storage and web costs for less than the price of a coffee.

Absolutely no obligation to do so though; the free files will always remain free. Either way - enjoy the show!

Setlist
Love Is Infectious
Communist China
Obscure Alternatives
Heartbreaker
Suburban Love
Suburban Berlin
Don't Rain On My Parade
Adolescent Sex
The Unconventional



How to obtain a copy of Adolescent Alternatives by Stephen Holden

"Orders for my book are now being offered. There will be a limited run of 500 softback issues and 50 hardback issues available. Each book is full colour and has 144 pages.

I have self funded and I am self publishing the book which will feature lots of never before seen photos of the band both onstage and offstage. With a foreword by Rob Dean, and an afterword from tour manager, Nick Huckle ..... the book tell`s of a two year road-trip between 78-80 taken by myself and my best friend, Phil Lockett, and an essay by JAPAN biographer, Anthony Reynolds
Book design by Dominic Brookman.

Softback version @ £27.50 + £5.00 P&P (UK)

Hardback version Sold Out

 Europe P&P £12.00 ROW £16.00

Paypal friends & family to srholden01@hotmail.com or alternatively on eBay:

Please note the costs are as low as I can make them being a self funded project.

I sincerely hope you will enjoy the trips!"

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

Show 58: Japan - Live at Budokan, Tokyo - 6 March 1979

The new 2016 season of Live and Loud! kicks off with Japan, who were touring the country of Japan after releasing their first 2 albums Adolescent Sex and Obscure Alternatives, in 1978. They were already looking ahead and starting to introduce a more electronic sound into their demos for what would be their 3rd album Quiet Life, released at the end of 1979. You can start to hear that influence in the early version of European Son, included in this live set, which otherwise consists of songs from their first 2 albums.

Someone had already applied far too much noise and hiss reduction to the recording I had access to but I've done what I can to lessen the impact of the noise that added. This has polished up a treat.

The show is available for download HERE as 1 MP3 file.

Or, if you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

Setlist
Don't Rain On My Parade
Obscure Alternatives
Love Is Infectious
Deviation
European Son
Suburban Love
Ballad-Suburban Berlin
Adolescent Sex
The Unconventional
Automatic Gun

Show 43: Japan - Their Final Concert - Nagoya, Japan - 16 December 1982

From the same tour that produced the Oil On Canvas list album, listen to this gig and compare it with the show from the Polaroids tour taken from the year before. Here they sound like a band worn out by their differences, keen for the adventure to end. And this night, it did. This is the very last gig Japan ever played together.

This is a soundboard recording but the quality isn't quite A1 - however, its responded pretty well to the fairy dust I've sprinkled on it so I hope you agree its more than listenable. The occasion was recorded and deserves to be heard.

Incidentally, die hard Japan fans will know 2 tracks are missing from the setlist here. There is an unofficial vinyl double album bootleg of this gig which is the only place you can find the final 2 tracks  played on the night - "Life In Tokyo" and "Fall In Love With Me". If anyone has a copy of that, do let me know!

The show is available for download HERE as 1 MP3 file. 

Or, if you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

Setlist
Sons Of Pioneers
Alien
Gentlemen Take Polaroids
Swing
Cantonese Boy
Visions Of China
Nightporter
Canton
Ghosts
Still Life In Mobile Homes
Methods Of Dance
Quiet Life
European Son
The Art Of Parties

Show 27: Japan - Hammersmith Odeon, London, UK - 7 February 1981

From the tour in support of their 4th album, "Gentlemen Take Polaroids", comes this FM radio recording featuring a selection of tracks from their live set. Its interesting to compare this performance with the later Japan show I did, from their last tour before splitting up. They have far more vibrancy and enthusiasm here, I think.

The recording needed a bit of repair but responded well to remastering and has proved very popular among Japan fans.

UPDATE: And now in 2018, I've made it sound better! While preparing this old show as separate files for a donator to the site, I found I could now improve the sound quality further, over what I’d originally done to the recording several years ago. 

You can now download this new version (as of 2018) HERE as 1 new 320kbps MP3 file.

If you would like to have separate tagged MP3s, or even lossless files in FLAC format of the new version, head on over to the Donations tab to see how you can obtain these for a very small donation towards the site costs.

Setlist
Swing
Gentlemen Take Polaroids
Alien
Rhodesia
Quiet Life
My New Career
Taking Islands In Africa
Methods Of Dance
Ain't That Peculiar
Halloween
European Son