Pittsburgh 21-04-1981

The Decade

Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), USA.

21 - April - 1981.

Disc 1 (48:59)

01. The Ocean

02. 11 O'Clock Tick Tock

03. I Will Follow

04. I Fall Down

05. An Cat Dubh

06. Into the Heart

07. Another Time, Another Place

08. Cry / The Electric Co. / Things to Make and Do

09. Stories for Boys

10. Boy/Girl

11. Out of Control

12. - encore break -

13. A Day Without Me

14. - encore break -

15. I Will Follow

Recording Equipment - History

Analog 2nd (Maxell UR60 normal bias tape) > Sony TC-WE805S stereo cassette deck > Aiwa XC-RW700 CD/CD recorder > CDR-Master (TDK 80 min.) > Cakewalk Pyro 2005 (giant wav file onto HD here) > Cakewalk Pyro 2005 (split wav file into tracks here) > Trader's Little Helper (encode wav to flac, level 8, align on sector boundaries)

Transfer: jojogunne

Additional comments (jojogunne): Quality - 8.5-9.0/10 very good plus to excellent minus audience recording. I was NOT present at this show, although I had been to the Decade many, many times before and after this concert. I was given this tape by a long-time Pittsburgh
resident/friend/tape trader about 19 years ago. He told me that it was a 2nd gen tape and I have no reason to doubt that statement. That's about all that I know. Here is a brief synopsis of the recording, good points and bad.

Good points:

1) This should be a COMPLETE recording of the show.
2) There is almost no distortion or hiss in this recording.
3) There's not much talking at all around the taper. There's no whistling or shrieking. There ARE comments shouted out from the crowd but only after each musical selection is finished.
4) All instruments and vocals are clearly heard. Bono is very easily understood. Some woman is shooting Bono with a squirt gun during the show.

Bad points:

1) There are speed problems in tracks 7 and 8. They're not bad and are not a warble or a speed-up/slow down situation. They speed up & then seem to return slowly to normal speed. I have no explanation for this.
2) It's not a bad point but I didn't quite know where to track the start of the song The Electric Co, so I just left The Cry and The Electric Co songs combined as one track. There was a tape flip at ~ 4:03 of Track 8 and I fused the 2 pieces of music together there. I hope that's OK with any purists out there.
3) The drums and cymbals sound a little distorted to me when I listen to this on headphones, but they don't sound that bad. Remember that this recording is over 26 years old and the recording technology back then wasn't what it is today.

I believe this to be the first time that U2 ever played in Pittsburgh, PA. This is a recording of a new band playing in a small, intimate club some time before they became rock superstars. The Decade hosted some acts that went on to become very famous; examples include Springsteen, The Police, The Ramones, U2, The Pretenders, Albert Collins as well as others.

Comments

Very crisp recording that should feature the complete concert. As mentioned above by 'jojogunne', sound quality places in the borderline between VG and Exc rating. The tape is pretty clear with vocals and music well upfront. Individual members of the audience can be heard shouting here and there near the taper, but generally between songs. And there are speed problems on tracks 7 and 8, especially on The Electric Co. which is a bit ruined. Note there's a dropout at 0:22 in The Ocean. However, this low-gen transfer represents a big upgrade to what it's on circulation.