Hindu Love Gods- The First Show Athens 1984

 

The original 1984 Hindu Love Gods line-up, Mills, Berry, Cook and Buck.

 

The early success of R.E.M. opened the door to a lot of interesting and very creative music in the 80's. When I first heard the album, Reckoning, it blew my mind! This was music that appealed to my tastes, an alternative sound that wasn't new wave, punk or electronic dance music and it was different than the music that dominated the airways of commercial radio. As a guy that grew up on the sounds of AM radio and classic rock (funny it was already called that in the late 70's), this was fresh and exciting and definitely a musical turning point for me. I listened to bands from this era that would be termed as alternative rock and one of the few places to hear this music was on college music stations or MTV. Because we had no college with a radio station in our city, I bought a lot of records during the 80's, some were hard to find and many were considered "imports" at the local record shops. Listening to music from these bands it opened my ears to the possibilities and it branched off from there. Which led me to side projects, spin-off bands, super groups and collaborations, which led me to bands like, Hindu Love Gods.

The Hindu Love Gods were best known as a collaboration (and R.E.M. side project/supergroup) with Warren Zevon and 3/4 of the members of R.E.M. (Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry). They released a full length album, Hindu Love Gods in 1990 along with a couple of 7" singles. The album was a result of an impromptu late night session while the four were in the midst of recording Zevon's album, Sentimental Hygiene in 1986. The members of R.E.M. were Zevon's backing band and the material from those recording sessions were electric blues covers. It wasn't intended to be released, but it was in 1990, along with the single, Raspberry Beret, a Prince cover. Their first single, Narrator was recorded in 1984 (released in 86) with Buck, Mills, Berry, Zevon and Bryan Cook, who was a member of a couple local bands. 

 

The band performed under the name Hindu Love Gods four times (?). The first, the lineup with Cook (without Zevon), the second, two weeks later, with Zevon (without Cook) and the third, a gig in June 1984 with Cook (no Warren). One more show under the HLG name was a benefit show in 1986 for the family of D. Boon of the Minutemen with the line-up of Michael Stipe, Buck, Mills, Berry and Cook. The concert I'm posting is the first ever Hindu Love Gods show (pre-Zevon) with Bryan Cook on vocals (not my live recording). The set is mainly covers, except for Narrator, so it's very cool to hear instrumentals, an Alex Chilton song and NY Dolls and Replacements covers. The sound quality of the live recording is good, a decent soundboard recording. Nowadays, Buck continues to be the most active and occasionally plays alongside Mike Mills in the Baseball Project and the Minus 5. I've seen live videos with Berry guesting with both bands, while Stipe is supposedly working on a record after the 2020 release of a couple of songs. Glad to hear they're all still playing music!

Enjoy!

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HINDU LOVE GODS
40 Watt Club

Athens, Georgia, USA 

February 15, 1984

M?-SBD (48kHz/24bit files)

playback 2021-02-xx: low generation Maxell XLII-90 cassette on Nakamichi 680ZX cassette deck, Dolby B on, azimuth adjusted for individual tape, heads cleaned & demagnetized -> Sony Linear PCM Recorder PCM-M10 (48kHz/24bit wav file) -> computer -> Audacity [normalisation to remove DC offset, channel/phase alignment, fades, manual one-at-a-time glitch, bump, clap, pop, click, dropout & dullspot repairs, volume adjustments, +1.0% averaged pitch (speed) fix with single pass after frequency analysis, NO equalisation (except some notches between songs to lower equipment hum), NO noise reduction] -> CD Wave (track splits) -> 48kHz/24bit flacs (Trader's Little Helper) -> yr ears. Freed 2021-02-xx.

01. Bangkok
02. With A Girl Like You
03. Through With You
04. Walk, Don't Run
05. Personality Crisis
06. Narrator
07. Pipeline
08. Needles And Pins
09. California Sun
10. Government Center
11. Hippy Hippy Shake
12. (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
13. Permanent Vacation
14. Jump
15. Color Me Impressed

 Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Bill Berry & Bryan Cook (pre-Warren Zevon)

Total Time ::: 31:37

HINDU LOVE GODS- 1984-02-15 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA FLAC. rar