Tom Verlaine - 1990-06-18, live, solo acoustic, Vancouver, BC, (AUDIO) Full set: 14 songs
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- Опубліковано 3 січ 2025
- The venue was The Ridge Theatre. I attended this 1990 show and this is my own recording.
01 Kaleidoscopin'
02 At 4AM
03 Song
04 Man in the Backyard
05 One Time at Sundown (with long spoken word intro.)
06 Smoother Than Jones
07 Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain (cover)
08 Stalingrad
09 Shimmer
10 Words From the Front
11 O Foolish Heart
12 Ancient Egypt
13 Let Go the Mansion
Encore:
14 Johnny Cash covers "medley": I Walk the Line, Ring of Fire - but mostly it's lots of Tom's spoken word
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The audio is taken from my (analog cassette) master tape. I recorded it using an Aiwa walkman-style recorder and a Sony mic that was better quality than the Aiwa mic but which was unfortunately not 100% compatible with the Aiwa recorder, as I belatedly learned. The mic recorded well - except the mic created unexpected prominent background noise that marred the recording. The end result was listenable but I viewed it as largely a failed recording due to the loud background noise.
But thanks to audio software easily accessible today, I was able to significantly reduce, though not eliminate, the irritating background noise (I used Audacity's noise reduction). So, this digital version sounds better than the cassette.
The song "Shimmer" has some audio problems specific to it. It has a couple of short gaps, plus a repetitive "thump" noise that seems to have been created by a temporary problem with the recorder.
I was able to reduce the thumping some by adjusting EQ on that song.
The venue was a movie theater built in 1950 which showed (mostly repertory) movies but did not typically book music or other acts. Before Tom's gig, I'd never heard of a music act playing there.
You can hear Tom say near the start "This is a funny place".
The audience was tiny, but enthusiastic. I doubt there were more than three dozen people attending. But the applause between songs sounded thunderous on the recording. It still sounds fairly loud though I did significantly lower volume of the applause sections.
The bit of background noise that still remains is hopefully more than made up for by the fact the audience is attentive and respectful enough there's zero audience chatter audible during songs, and barely any between songs, even.
The opening act was a local band, No Fun. One of the songs they played was "Blank Generation," the Richard Hell song Hell first sang when he played with Tom in Television.
A few tracks here seem more rare than others. I checked info I could find on bootlegs, including an extensive collection known as "The Big One", and found just one other example of Tom playing
"Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" (1990-06-19, San Francisco, Slim's) and two other examples of his long Johnny Cash medley/spoken word piece (1990-06-19, SF, Slim's; & 1990-00-13, Long Beach, CA, Bogarts)."Man in the Backyard" he played at quite a few solo acoustic shows.
For the youtube slide show, I could find online only one photo of Tom playing acoustic guitar, so it recurs several times in the slide show.
I recall at the time feeling disappointed after this show as it was Tom's electric guitar playing I'd been wowed by, and Tom on acoustic didn't seem nearly as interesting. But 27 years on, I like what I hear on the recording now better than I liked it hearing it live back in 1990.
Anyone interested can download an audio file of this same show in lossless FLAC format from a file hosting site, here: mega.nz/#!bQNH...
-Hermesacat / Bob B.
Me and a few friends were among the three dozen. After the show, one of them said, "I wish I had a recording of that." Twenty-nine years later, we find out there is one. Thank you for posting this!
tom is one of my favourite musicians & one of the most utterly interesting people iv ever had the honour of falling in love with, but it's very hard to find many clips of him speaking. no live tom verlaine performance is quite the same iv noticed, he adds funny little acting bits & idiosyncrasies into line deliveries, its amazing. but hearing this acoustic set, especially the last spoken word johnny cash piece, as been amazing !!! so very often you only ever read tom describes as demure or bitter, maybe even mean, but hearing an audience arise with laughter is so much fun ! these types of things are treasures, thank you so much for uploading this x
Wow just came across this. Saw him in Los Angeles shortly before this and always wanted a recording. Thanks
Thanks for posting. I have a few shows from the 1990 acoustic tour, but not this one. Sounds great.
No knowledge of this tour until now. What a gem!!
Thanks for uploading this! Interesting setlist. I've always looked for live recordings of Tom's acoustic tour.
Buen cantante y guitarrista con televisión y solista
I'm a Tom Verlaine fan, and I recognize his musical significance. But parts of this performance sound like Jandek.
Tom often got attentive & quiet audiences
I made 2 great audience tapes from the 1992 tour if youre interested. The one from Philly is a gem
Thanks for mentioning those recordings you have. I checked "The Big One" boots collection. If it's the 1992, Dec. 2 Philly (Theatre of the Living Arts) show you have, it appears I have good audio of that one ripped from a bootleg CD. I have other 1992 tour ones. What's the other 1992 one you have, I wonder?
The other is New York City, forgot the name of the Venue. A few weeks before Philly.
I’d like to know who opened for him as I saw him in Brussels and there was this duet right before but I don’t know who they were. It was a great show btw
If you click on "show more" under the video, you can read my long video description which says who opened. It was a local band, and I'm certain it was a one-off, and they did not accompany Tom on tour. I couldn't try to guess who the duo at the Brussels show was, maybe another local band?
@@Bobjb999 Thank you. I see that as indeed very likely at this point. It was very long ago, and for some reason I thought it might be the front man (Steve Kilbey) and the lead guitarist of The Church on a sort of "duo" tour, but I couldn't confirm it. (I knew nothing about them back then, and very little about Tom for that matter). But yesterday I saw that The Church were on their own tour at the exact same time. It's great to revive this concert. Not what I expected, and his playing on the acoustic instead of the electric impressed me. I remember he had a "little book" which he took out of his pocket to "check" what was the next song (a sort of joke, I think, especially at the end: "oh... the little book says this is is the last song!"). I'm still listening but I haven't heard it mentioned here.
My group NO FUN opened for him.