Robyn Hitchcock McCabe's Guitar Shop Santa Monica, CA July 29, 1988 RG First Generation Cassette via JEMS New Wave LA Series Vol. 53 Recording equipment: unknown microphone to unknown portable cassette deck JEMS 2021 Transfer: RG First Generation Cassette > Nakamichi CR-7A (azimuth adjustment) > Sound Devices USBPre 2 > Audacity 2.0 capture > iZotope RX6 > iZotope Ozone 6 > CD Wave > ffmpeg > FLAC 01 intro 02 Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl 03 Tonight (Soft Boys) 04 Tower Song 05 talk 06 Veins Of The Queen 07 I Got The Hots For You 08 I Used To Say I Love You 09 talk 10 Superman 11 Raymond Chandler Evening 12 Bass 13 The Man Who Invented Himself 14 Executioner (cut) 15 Human Music (Soft Boys) 16 Mr Rock 'N' Roll 17 My Wife And My Dead Wife 18 talk 19 The Bones In The Ground 20 Glass 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) Neil Young (Vol. 49) Mudhoney (Vol. 50) The Lemonheads (Vol. 51) Bob Mould (Vol. 52) Robyn Hitchcock (Vol. 53) 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. We extend our stay at the wonderful and tiny McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica this week, rolling back the clock a year and the first in a series of four solo shows performed by Robyn Hitchcock. He played early and late shows on July 29 and July 30, and RG was there to record all four of them. Hitchcock is one of RG's all-time favorite artists and he recorded him dozens of times over the years, this being among the earliest gigs he captured, with Robyn playing solo guitar and a little piano. Given there is no setlist for this show on the definitive Hitchchock history site Robynware, it is possible this is a previously uncirculated show and/or recording. The setlist differs considerably from the late set with a couple of Soft Boys songs ("Tonight" and "Human Music") and very different selections from Robyn's solo work. Of course, much of the magic of a Hitchcock show is not just the songs but the wonderfully imaginative stories and intros Robyn gives. There's plenty of that here. As for RG's recording, it is a bit cooked, with some light distortion we've attempted to clean up, but still very listenable. 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 App\Http\Controllers\Api\FileDownloadController::download(): Return value must be of type string, none returned