John Cale
McCabe's Guitar Shop
Santa Monica, CA
July 31, 1983
RG First Generation Cassette via JEMS
New Wave LA Series Vol. 44

Recording equipment: unknown stereo microphone and unknown cassette deck

JEMS 2021 Transfer: RG First Generation Cassette > Nakamichi RX-505 (azimuth adjustment) > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 capture > iZotope RX6 > iZotope Ozone 6 > CD Wave > ffmpeg > FLAC

01 Ship of Fools
02 Leaving It Up to You
03 Amsterdam
04 Child's Christmas in Wales
05 Antarctica Starts Here
06 Buffalo Ballet
07 Paris 1919
08 Chinese Envoy
09 Thoughtless Kind
10 Cable Hogue
11 I'm Waiting For The Man
12 Heartbreak Hotel
13 Fear Is a Man's Best Friend
14 I Keep a Close Watch
15 Dead or Alive


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, Vol. 44)
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)
The Smiths (Vol. 43)

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 presents its third John Cale recording and it is a sweet one indeed. RG first taped John Cale at McCabe's in 1979. This is from Cale's return visit in 1983, where he plays solo on guitar and piano, but even more of the latter than in '79.

I"m fairly confident no recording of this performance has ever surfaced before and fortuitously, this is one of RG's better recordings: clear, close and rich. I could listen to Cale on piano for hours and this tape really delivers. Samples provided.

We're grateful to RG for letting JEMS dig through his tape boxes and pull out the assets for this series. He witnessed amazing LA 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

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show:

JohnCale1983-07-31MccabesGuitarShopSantaMonicaCA (1).jpg
JohnCale1983-07-31MccabesGuitarShopSantaMonicaCA (2).jpg