Joshua Tree Worcester (2)

Centrum

Worcester (Massachusetts), USA.

03 - May - 1987.

Attendance: 12.494 (sellout) - Support: Lone Justice

Disc 1 (55:41)

01. Where the Streets Have No Name

02. I Will Follow

03. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / Exodus

04. MLK

05. The Unforgettable Fire

06. Bullet the Blue Sky

07. Running to Stand Still

08. A Sort of Homecoming

09. Sunday Bloody Sunday

10. Exit

11. In God's Country

Disc 2 (51:30)

01. Trip Through Your Wires

02. C'Mon Everybody

03. Bad

04. October

05. New Year's Day

06. Pride (In the Name of Love)

07. With or Without You

08. "40"

Recording Equipment - History

Analog 2nd > Nakamichi CR-7A transfer > Peak 5.2 > DVD > Goldwave (delete silence and overlap, add fades, speed correction, file split) > FLAC

Transfer: JEMS

Speed fixing: Mike Duchek

Additional notes (by JEMS): Here's the second night of the Worcester run. Same person recorded both and the sound is pretty much the same. I obtained these tapes in 1988. I wish I could tell you who recorded or what gear; perhaps someone can shed some light. Regardless, based on available information, this should be an upgrade for most folks. This version is likely second generation (notes are incomplete), and the sound quality is very good though the incredibly boisterous audience does overwhelm in several spots.

Additional notes (by Mike Duchek): This is to me a good, but not great, recording. Not overly sharp or clear and a tad distant, but the music comes
through pretty nicely. I'd say Bono's voice comes through most loudly, more so than the music. Audience noise could certainly be worse but gets loud at times with occasional loud screaming.

This came to me as four WAV files from Butterking (he had received the tapes in a trade), corresponding to two sides of two 60-minute tapes. The show, however, had additional breaks, suggesting that this was originally on 90 minute cassettes. This resulted in the speed being different for each part. Part one (through "Bullet the Blue Sky"), in my estimation, had non-linear speed issues, meaning that as the show goes on, the speed gets slower. I read a remark that the speed of a walkman may have been changed as the batteries ran out, which may be one explanation for this. In any case, I did not try to correct for this, so I tried to kind of get it in the middle. As such I think "Streets" maybe is a tad fast while the
end of that part ("Bullet the Blue Sky") is a bit slow. Anything more accurate would have required some kind of variable pitch correction, and I don't even know if such a thing exists (another option would be to go through it song by song but that is pretty arbitrary). So this won't sound perfect but as good as I can get, and I think the rest of the show sounds pretty good. Thanks to Jeff Shrikey for helping with the speed/pitch correction. Hopefully some day a better source comes up.

Anyway, a decent show, but not the best. Some sloppy versions of a few songs, due mostly to Bono, but he still is clearly having a good time. After "C'mon Everybody" Bono says "another classic trashed by U2." Not their best cover (or worst, probably), but it's nice to know he had a sense of humor about it. He changes the lyrics a bit with a reference to the Paradise Club that they played in 1981 (he has referenced this often over the years while in Massachusetts). During "Pride," Bono apparently brings his cousin, A.J. onto the stage, and then mentions something about cameras.

Comments

Good recording of the second night in Worcester (MA, USA). The recording sounds very clear and strong overall, but also offers a good amount of crowd noise. Moreover, this source is tiny distant and the output is somewhat harsh.

There are a couple of edits that only affect to crowd noise, and they are located after the next songs: Bullet the Blue Sky, A Sort of Homecoming, Trip Through Your Wires, Bad and Pride.