Portsmouth Guildhall - October 5th 1990
Crowd Recording (Excellent Quality) A - Cassette bootleg 50/50 from Cassette and Minidisc ATRAC
MP3 samples at sproutology.co.uk
Paddy McAloon - vocals, guitar
Martin McAloon - bass
Neil Conti - drums
Wendy Smith - backing vocals
Jess Bailey - Keyboards
Paul Harvey - Guitars
Karlos Edwards - Percussion, backing vocals, voice of God
Set Listing
01. Michael
02. Appetite
03. I Remember That
04. Moving The River
05. Machine Gun Ibiza
06. We Let The Stars Go
07. Bonny
08. Faron Young
09. Nightingales
10. Hey Manhattan!
11. Carnival 2000
12. One Of The Broken
13. Wild Horses
14. Jordan:The Comeback
15. I Couldn't Bear to be Special
16. Goodbye Lucille N.1
17. The Golden Calf
18. Looking For Atlantis
19. Moondog
20. King Of Rock N Roll
21. Cruel
22. Cars And Girls
23. When Love Breaks Down
24. Doo Wop In Harlem
http://www.sproutology.co.uk/the-ultimate-prefab-sprout-gigography/
Lineage:
From 01 to 14 inclusive - Cassette unknown generation->Nakamichi CR2E->Sweex A/D->WAV->SOX high quality resample (speed correct)->Real Time VST hiss reduction and Eq->Audacity track and flac
From 15 on: Cassette Bootleg (unknown generation)->Minidisc ATRAC->Spdif interface->WAV->SOX high quality resample (speed correct)->Real Time VST hiss reduction and Eq->Audacity track and flac
I could have sworn I'd posted a less good version of this a couple of years ago, and was about to create a contrast clause to that effect, but it seems not. I searched the bot and my hard disk and found nothing.
Probably because up until recently the copy of this I had was blighted by severe hiss on the first half. That came from a 2 cassette bootleg set a friend had bought back in the day. She worked in Radio and copied the cassettes to minidisc on excellent gear, which was fortunate because at some point during a spell overseas she lost the original cassettes. The cassettes (of which I have a tantalising photo) were actually from two different sources, one a "Big Al" Camden Dayglo job, and another from presumably closer to the original source, because the "Big Al" one was made pretty much unlistenable by hiss from multiple generations of dubs. Also the minidisc copy of the second tape had a short dropout in Cruel, and both recordings ran very fast: quite common for cassette bootlegs presumably so they could be crammed onto a tape.
Anyway, recently I was given some cassettes, and these included one of the first half of the concert. It turned out that this was in pretty good quality, so I felt it was worth doing a job on. As the second minidisc wasn't bad at all I've combined the two so the full concert is available. The one problem is "Doo Wop in Harlem" which is hissy and cuts off early with a bit of applause tagged on, but it's not too bad: I've applied a very light dusting of hiss removal generally: anyone wanting a raw copy is welcome to one, just message me. I'm not a fan of hiss removal generally but in this case it makes the result a bit better and I used it sparingly. I also invisibly patched Cruel with a section taken from the "CD Fanzine" version of the same gig (generally poor quality, but ok for a fraction of a second). The results are very pleasing� it�s properly listenable now. Even Michael, which is very wow and fluttery on other versions sounds pretty good here, even if a peculiar choice as an opener. You almost expect Paddy to appear in Peter Gabriel style batwings, it�s very prog
Recordings of the Jordan Tour aren�t rare exactly, there are a few of them, but what exists in the public domain isn�t great quality, and this is about the best now I think. This was the first gig Paddy had played since 1986, and just about his first word to the audience was �nervous�, there�s the odd forgotten lyric here and there. But it was a great gig and the set list was varied from other recorded concerts, including �Couldn�t Bear to be Special�, uniquely for 1990 recordings I know of.
I just wish I�d gone: this was the one Prefab Sprout I might have attended and a couple of people I know did, but my interest had just lapsed.