The Jam- Live At Rockpalast 1980

 

This week, our old house is under-going a thorough updating of our ancient knob & tube to modern electrical systems. This means, at least for a couple of days, that most of the electricity is unavailable and it prevents me from functioning like a typical 21st century drone. The loud drilling, banging and lack of lighting (and internet!) has driven me from the house to my local library, laptop in hand to get some "work" done. Libraries are one of the few places you go to use internet, use their electricity (to charge stuff), use their ultra-clean unisex toilet facilities and hang out for hours without buying anything. They even allow you bring in your own food and drink, so I can chill with headphones on while checking emails, searching the web and updating my website and this blog...way better deal than Starsucks! A bonus is that I can actually make multiple blog posts in one week. I probably would if I got paid, but it's something you gotta do, right? Yay!

 

This has given me an opportunity to listen to a backlog of music on my computer. The Jam is one of those ear-candy bands I like to listen to while writing, so here's a show that's been around for a while and probably popular enough to have been heard already, but it's so good not to share if you haven't. There are at least a couple live DVD's of the Live at Rockpalast concert from 1980, including a Japanese version from 2006 and a compilation video from 2015, About The Young Idea, which featured the full Rockpalast show. One of the versions of About The Young Idea, includes an audio version CD and this is the source for the show I'm posting below. The sound quality is near perfect and since most live concert videos bore me, the audio only is an excellent addition. This is the Jam at their peak, with an amazing setlist, before Paul Weller became too self-aware, went solo and began to write boring songs. Get it while you can!

Enjoy!

 

Please do NOT sell or profit from this recording!

Do NOT convert to lossy formats, except for personal use.

Please share!

 

 

THE JAM
Live At Rockpalast
Westfalenhalle, Dortmund, Germany
November 30, 1980

1 Dream Time
2 Thick As Thieves
3 Boy About Town
4 Going Underground
5 Pretty Green
6 Man In The Corner Shop
7 Set The House Ablaze
8 Private Hell
9 Liza Radley
10 Dreams Of Children
11 Modern World
12 Little Boy Soldiers
13 But I’m Different Now
14 Start
15 Scrape Away
16 Strange Town
17 When You’re Young
18 In The City
19 To Be Someone
20 David Watts
21 The Eton Rifles
22 Down In The Tubestation At Midnight

 

THE JAM- Live At Rockpalast 1980 FLAC. rar 

 

If you are having trouble with the above link, Try this one from my DropBox:

The Jam- Live at Rockpalast 1980 FLAC. rar

 

Weezer- Opposite Sides Of The Same Good Ol' Fence (Aka: The Kitchen Tape)

 

A couple months ago, I was scrolling news stories on my phone and came upon a click-bate looking article, "100 most valuable cassette tapes" (or something like that?). It listed several pedestrian bands from the 80's and 90's, as well as cool stuff like, Prince's, The Black Album cassette (advance promo copy of withdrawn album) and U2's 1979 demo, with Bono's personal information. Surprisingly, Nirvana's, Nevermind was on the list and if you have an early pressing (which I own) before they made a gazillion copies after it broke, it's worth a bit (aka: not a lot of cash). What caught my attention was an extremely rare copy of Weezer's, The Kitchen Tape demo which Rivers Cuomo made a personal copy to give to sound engineer, Paul De Gru. There were only 15-20 copies made and that particular copy sold in auction for $4350.00, partially crowd-sourced via donations from Weezer forum members. The fan promised to rip a copy of the tape and share it with fans. (Thanks!)

Instead of writing in my own words about the tape or rely of AI writing (haha! never!!), I'll quote from the notes in the music file. By the way, this copy of the tape is available for download (in 24-bit) also on archive.org, a truly amazing source for live music recordings and rare recordings.

 

The Kitchen Tape is the name of Weezer's second demo tape and first proper album. It was recorded in an attempt to create a "serious" demo to hand around local clubs in attempts to generate "a buzz."

Rivers Cuomo made a personal copy of The Kitchen Tape (a demo of which only 15-20 were made) for an engineer named Paul DuGres. He recently auctioned the tape off on ebay. The labels of the tape reveal that Rivers named the tape Opposite Sides of the Same Good Ol' Fence as a reference to his previous band Zoom, serving as an introduction to the sound of Weezer before the first chords of Say It Ain't So begin.

The Kitchen Tape was mostly recorded on August 2, 1992 in The Garage, but the drums were recorded in the kitchen of the Amherst House. Accordingly, it was nicknamed The Kitchen Tape. The demos were recorded using frontman Rivers Cuomo's 8-track tape recorder. According to Karl Koch's article in Weezine Issue #3, the recordings of "Thief, You've Taken All That Was Me", "Let's Sew Our Pants Together" and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" originate from Weezer's first demo and were simply added to the tape. Bootlegs of this demo have surfaced, however only five were surfaced through a copy of the original. Two other songs from the tape (Undone - The Sweater Song and Only in Dreams) were released officially on The Blue Album Deluxe Edition bonus disc, Dusty Gems And Raw Nuggets. The Kitchen Tape's versions of "Say It Ain't So" and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" have not been bootlegged or officially released. 

Definitely worth a listen, especially if you're a hardcore Weezer fan. An interesting comparison to what was released on their debut album.

Enjoy!

 

Please do NOT sell or profit from this recording!

Do NOT convert to lossy format, except for personal use.

Please share!

To be perfectly clear, I do not own this cassette, not my photo.

 WEEZER
Opposite Sides Of The Same Good Ol' Fence (1992)
(Aka: The Kitchen Tape)

A1        Say It Ain't So
A2        The World Has Turned And Left Me Here
A3        Paperface
A4        Undone (The Sweater Song)
A5        Thief, You've Taken All That Was Me
A6        My Name Is Jonas
A7        Let's Sew Our Pants Together
A8        Only In Dreams

 

WEEZER- Opposite Sides Of The Same Good Ol' Fence (16-bit) FLAC. rar 

 

Weezer Plays The Blue Album- The Lodge Room, LA, CA, March 15, 2024

 

 

Yet another "classic" album is getting the anniversary tour treatment with Weezer celebrating the 30th anniversary of their debut album, the self-titled, the "Blue Album". The band is embarking on a huge arena tour with the Flaming Lips and Dinosaur Jr., starting in September and running until mid-October ending in L.A. The band will play the album in it's entirety followed by favorite's from the band's long successful career. Sounds like an epic event, so if you live select cities in the US or two cities in Canada (Toronto and Vancouver), tickets are on sale (maybe, might be sold out already?). 

 

As a warmup for the tour, Weezer played their first pre-tour show in March in front of a small (500) enthusiastic crowd at the Lodge Room in LA. The idea for this tour kick-off show was to recreate the first ever Weezer show 32 years ago, at Raji's in Hollywood. They opened (actually they played the closing set after most of the fans left after Keanu's band's set) for Dogstar (Keanu Reeves band), it was also Dogstar's first show. Interestingly, Weezer played only 2 songs that would appear on Blue. Thirty two years later to the date, Weezer once again played with Dogstar with a short set of only the Blue Album in it's entirety. Not the same venue, but at least it was an intimate smaller room. Would have been amazing to have been there! Below is Weezer's set from the show, recorded from the crowd and the sound is outstanding and an excellent document of the concert.

Enjoy!

 

Please do NOT sell or profit from this recording!

Do NOT convert to lossy formats, except for personal use.

Please share!

Note: The music FLAC files are 24-bit, so it's larger (better quality?) than usual. To respect the taper/original poster, I left the files as they were originally offered. It's playable, but if you want to burn to disc they might need to be converted to 16-bit. There are many good file conversion apps/software online, but in a pinch I can convert it for you on request.

WEEZER
Lodge Room
Los Angeles, CA, USA
March 15, 2024
 

-- Source --
DPA 4081 > MMA-A > 24bit/48kHz

-- Processing --
iZotope RX (editing/mastering) > CD Wave (tracking) > Trader's Little Helper (encoding)

-- Setlist --
01 - intro
02 - My Name Is Jonas
03 - No One Else
04 - The World Has Turned and Left Me Here
05 - Buddy Holly
06 - Undone — The Sweater Song
07 - Surf Wax America
08 - In the Garage
09 - Say It Ain't So
10 - Holiday
11 - Only in Dreams
12 - outro (Mykel & Carli)

-- Notes --
Performing the blue album. Dominic Fike joins on guitar and vocals during Say It Ain't So. Dogstar opened.

Length: 47m00s

 

WEEZER- 2024-03-15 Lodge Room, LA FLAC24. rar