R.E.M.
Roy L. Patrick Memorial Gym
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT
October 31, 1986
RG Master Cassette via JEMS
New Wave LA (In Vermont) Series Vol. 42
Recording equipment: unknown stereo microphone and unknown cassette deck
JEMS 2021 Transfer: RG Master Cassette > Nakamichi RX-505 (azimuth adjustment) > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 capture > iZotope RX6 > iZotope Ozone 6 > CD Wave > ffmpeg > FLAC
01 These Days
02 Moral Kiosk
03 Maps And Legends
04 Hyena
05 Femme Fatale
06 The One I Love
07 Feeling Gravitys Pull
08 The Flowers Of Guatemala
09 Riders In The Sky
10 I Believe
11 Swan Swan H
12 Superman (cut)
13 Can't Get There From Here
14 Old Man Kensey
15 Pretty Persuasion
16 Auctioneer (Another Engine)
17 Life And How To Live It
18 Fall On Me
19 Cuyahoga
20 Spooky
21 We Walk
22 1,000,000
23 Oddfellows Local 151
24 Begin The Begin (cut)
25 (Don't Go Back To) Rockville >
26 Born To Run
27 Lightnin' Hopkins
28 Moon River
JEMS is pleased to extend a series of historic recordings made by our longtime friend and diehard music collector RG. He was on the scene in LA as a teenager, began recording shows in 1977 and continued on well into the 2000s. Our series will focus on tapes he made between 1977 and 1987.
What sort of music was he into? Well, one simple way to put it is KROQ music, meaning the bands that LA’s “world famous” new wave radio station was playing were the bands he saw and recorded. First wave if you will, with forays into indie and punk(ish) artists. The early years are dominated by UK artists breaking in the US. Over time his work expands to US bands in the second wave. Some of the artists RG taped include:
Siouxsie & the Banshees (Vol. 4)
Madness (Vol. 8)
The Specials (Vol. 6)
OMD (Vol. 10)
The Damned (Vol. 25)
The Stranglers (Vol. 1)
Public Image Limited (Vol. 3)
John Cale (Vol. 9, Vol. 30)
Magazine (Vol. 21)
The Buzzcocks (Vol. 7)
Orange Juice (Vol. 13)
U2 (Vol. 28)
Wreckless Eric (Vol. 27)
The Cramps (Vol. 22)
Johnny Thunders (Vol. 18)
Talking Heads (Vol. 24)
Iggy Pop
XTC (Vol. 2)
The Jam (Vol. 31 and Vol. 40)
The Only Ones (Vol. 19)
The Undertones (Vol. 17)
Boomtown Rats (Vol. 5)
The Birthday Party (Vol. 15)
Penetration (Vol. 26)
The Bluebells (Vol. 12)
The Plimsouls (Vol. 11)
Athletico Spizz '80 (Vol. 29)
Killing Joke (Vol. 14)
Jonathan Richman (Vol. 16)
The Records (Vol. 20)
Robert Fripp (Vol. 23)
Bram Tchaikovsky (Vol. 32)
Peter Gabriel (Vol. 33)
R.E.M. (Vol. 34 and Vol. 42)
Elvis Costello (Vol. 35)
Hüsker Dü (Vol. 36 and Vol. 39)
Alex Chilton (Vol. 37)
Style Council (Vol. 38)
The Replacements (Vol. 41)
Later on he caught The Smiths, R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, The Replacements and many more.
RG used good, not Millard-level recording gear, which means his tapes are mostly solid and listenable, with the occasional very good one and also sorta crappy one. What makes his tapes compelling is that RG was recording in a particularly vital window of time. In many instances these were the first or second times these acts played Los Angeles. Some never did proper US tours, only playing select dates in key markets like LA or NYC. Also, for many of these gigs, RG was the only taper. He grabbed a few local radio broadcasts along the way, too.
Because these shows were almost exclusively at clubs like The Whisky and The Roxy, the sets are generally short, 45 to 60 minutes because that's what you did at The Whisky. On occasion, RG would copy his own masters to save tape and we have done our best to distinguish what’s a true master and what’s a first generation copy. If there’s a doubt, we will note it. Regardless, the series will offer the lowest generation copies available of his recordings, digitized directly for the first time from RG’s tapes which had been stored in boxes for the last 15+ years.
New Wave LA moves outside of LA this week as RG takes a trip east and records R.E.M. at the University of Vermont on the Pageantry tour, one of the band's best.
RG became friendly with R.E.M. in the mid '80s and had a standing offer to be added to the guest list for any show and he took them up on it for this gig. The Burlington set is a good representation of the core tour set, which featured the key songs from Life's Rich Pageant, contributions from the three albums and EP that preceded it, and some fun covers including Classic 1V's "Spooky" (presumably a Halloween special), "Femme Fatale," "Moon River," "Riders in the Sky" and even a bit of Springsteen's "Born to Run." We also get previews from what would become the band's fifth album, Document: "Oddfellows Local 151," a rare "Lightnin' Hopkins" and future breakthrough single "The One I Love."
The sound quality definitely bears the signature of a college gymnasium, but with some mastering we wind up with a relatively clear capture and good fidelity. Samples provided.
We’re so grateful to RG for letting JEMS dig through his tape boxes and pull out the assets for this series. He witnessed amazing SoCal music history. Tip of the hat as well to cpscps who volunteered to handle post-production on our series which is a huge help to us and makes it possible to get more music in your hands. Stay tuned for more New Wave in LA.
BK for JEMS
Notes:
-After Moral Kiosk MS "Good evening. Happy Halloween".
-After Maps & Legends, MS "We have a situation up frontbecause everyone is trying to move forward. So everyone step back 1, 2, 3, 4. OK, that didn't work. You guys on the chairs there just pick them up and make a big pile or something. Just hand them back. This isn't New Hampshire you know! Speaking of which, this is a song about dogs".
-After Hyena MM "OK we really gotta move back some or there's going to be no show". MS "You guys are going to have to ove back somemore. Let's have some anarchy here; just take the chairs and pass them to the sides. We can do this in a peaceful manner. You guys aren't going to budge are you? Think I can't see you huh?" BB leads a chant of 'move back, move back' with his kick drum.
MS "Just get off the chairs! There's nothing up here! Look, I realize some of you people paid for these seats and some of you just moved forward, but it's a holiday, you know. I'm not justifying anyone moving forward when they're not supposed to, these guys probably stood in line for a long tmne, but these songs...if I have to stop all the time, it kind of breaks my concentration. If we all work together, everyone can see the show and everyone can have a great time and we can just get up here and play. So You guys let's cut back on SDI, you guys, let's lose 100 missles a year for 10 years. So let's work together. Come on, I'm not going to walk out there. For everyone else who can't understand what's going on up here, it's kind of like anchovies and it's not very pretty. So just hang in there, we'll get back to the show." (crowd starts chanting 'move back, move back' again This makes up track 5 on disc one.
-Before Femme Fatale, MS "See that flag up there? Ignore it."
-Before Auctioneer, MS sings nonsensically for about 90 seconds in flasetto, intespaced with his Elvis voice, and his old southern man voice, and throat clearing.
-MS issues a "don't drink the water" alert during 1,000,000
-Before Rockville, MS thanks The Feelies, the backup guitarist, and the crowd (for being patient and working together). He goes on to say "I don't have a problem with New Hampshire as a whole...which it is". He also thanks the guy who gave them directions, the socialist mayor, and says "suck it I'm proud" about something I didn't catch.
-Before Lightnin' Hopkins MS "Juanita is this woman, she lived in Alabama. She made monsters out of mud and hair and blood and straw and anything she could find because she lived way out in the country. And she had this log cabin. You would walk into it, it didn't have electricity, just a fireplace, and the flue on the fireplace was permanantly closed. So every winter all the smoke and soot that would go into the fireplace regularly, just came out into the room and covered all the monsters made of mud and straw and blood and hair. Juanita died two years ago, but we found a painting of hers and put it on the back of the record, where you can see it now".
Grade: A
-There is a dropout in Superman that last a few seconds