Echo + The Bunnymen
Prince of Wales Conference Centre
YMCA London
August 2, 1979

This is the first of two circulating copies of a soundboard recording made at the Prince of Wales Conference Centre below London's YMCA when the 3-piece Echo + The Bunnymen played support to The Teardrop Explodes, Joy Division and Essential Logic (they were also the last act to be added to the bill). It's the earliest extant live recording of the band with their drum machine, predating the first Peel Session by almost two weeks. Reportedly this was the night that Pete De Freitas saw the band play for the first time. Seymour Stein, head of Sire Records, was there, too, and went on to sign the band to Sire.

There were ten songs on the setlist, but this recording is incomplete, featuring the first eight songs only (the last one of which is slightly cut at the very end). This is a stereo copy of the original soundboard recording, quite low-gen but by no means pristine (there is tape hiss present). Many thanks to Stonecutter for sharing this recording!

The other recording, torrented in tandem with this one, features the last six songs played on the night. That one is in mono and has different sonic qualities, even though it must ultimately derive from the same master tape.

Taken together, the two recordings allow you to recreate the full set list of ten songs.

01 - instrumental
02 - Going Up
03 - Read It In Books (with People Get Ready quote)
04 - Ashes To Ashes aka Stars Are Stars (shambolic start, as acknowledged by Mac in his lyrics!)
05 - I Bagsy Yours aka Monkeys
06 - All That Jazz
07 - The Pictures On My Wall
08 - Do It Clean (outro slightly cut)

NOT on this recording:
09 - Happy Death Men
10 - Biting The Wool aka Villiers Terrace

There was hardly any need to clean this recording up. The little snap, pop & crackle that was there was removed wherever it occurred, all manually. I did also smoothen the beginnings of Ashes To Ashes and The Pictures On My Wall, which came with bursts of sound not present on the other tape copy. All of this editing was done in 32-bit; afterwards I downsampled back to 16bit.

Enjoy!

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