Tom Waits
Wiltern Theatre
Los Angeles, CA
November 9, 1987
RG Master Cassettes via JEMS
New Wave LA Series Vol. 48

Recording equipment: unknown stereo microphone and unknown cassette deck

JEMS 2020 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 Hang On St. Christopher
02 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six
03 Way Down In The Hole
04 Gun Street Girl
05 Cold Cold Ground
06 Yesterday Is Here
07 Telephone Call From Istanbul
08 Straight To The Top (Vegas)
09 I'll Take New York
10 I Wish I Was In New Orleans (In The Ninth Ward)
11 Train Song
12 Jitterbug Boy
13 Frank's Wild Years
14 Innocent When You Dream
15 Midtown
16 Underground
17 Clap Hands
18 More Than Rain
19 Singapore
20 Strange Weather
21 Rain Dogs
22 9th & Hennepin
23 Straight To The Top (Rhumba)
24 talk
25 Walking Spanish
26 Time
27 Big Black Mariah
28 Shore Leave
29 Blind Love
30 talk
31 Tom Traubert's Blues


JEMS is pleased to extend a range 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, Vol. 47)
True Believers (Vol. 45)
Uncle Tupelo (Vol. 46)
Tom Waits (Vol. 48)

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 early shows were often 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.

After a two-week hiatus, New Wave LA is back on track with Vol. 48 (wow) of our series and the inimitable Tom Waits playing the second of two nights at The Wiltern in LA. The tour was in support of Frank's Wild Years, released the prior August. The set draws heavily from an excellent album that for me relocated Waits from a seedy nightclub to tattered old concert hall in all the best ways. The result is a more theatrical musical event which features Waits backed by an excellent band. He would later release Big Time, a live album and concert film from the 1987 tour.

Like any Waits performance, the patter between songs is just as entertaining as the music itself, and Tom is in peak form here, hilarious, beguiling and straight up random. It is a charming, long set, which RG captured on two TDK AD-S cassettes. While RG isn't up close he manages to make a clear, you-are-there recording. 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

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