Foxboro  22-August-1992  D3/Aiwa CM-30

Foxboro Stadium

Foxboro (Massachusetts), USA.

22 - August - 1992.

Attendance: 49.578 (sellout) - Support: Primus, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

Disc 1 (53:26)

01. George Bush Rap (PA)

02. Zoo Station

03. The Fly

04. Even Better than the Real Thing

05. Mysterious Ways

06. One

07. She's a Mystery to Me

08. Until the End of the World

09. New Year's Day

10. Wild Rover

11. Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World

12. Angel of Harlem

13. Dancing Queen

14. When Love Comes to Town

Disc 2 (60:50)

01. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

02. Stand by Me

03. So Cruel

04. Sunday Bloody Sunday

05. Bullet the Blue Sky

06. Running to Stand Still

07. Where the Streets Have No Name

08. Pride (In the Name of Love)

09. Desire / Phone call

10. Ultraviolet (Light My Way)

11. With or Without You

12. Love is Blindness / - Can't Help Falling in Love (PA outro) -

Recording Equipment - History

Aiwa CM-30 mic + Sony WM-D3 > Master cassettes (Maxell XL-II) > Nakamichi CR-7A playback (azimuth adjust) > Peak 5.2 > .wavs > DVD > Goldwave (file join, speed fix, fade in/out at beginning/end of show, file split) > FLAC

Taper: Brother KM, in association with JEMS

Additional comments (by JEMS): Calling this tape "the lost master" might be going a little too far, but suffice it to say Brother KM's Foxboro recording had certainly been lost to history. If memory serves this is the last time KM taped U2 himself (he has seen many many shows since then, right up through Honolulu, but after Foxboro he left the chores to myself and JH), and upon his return from the Boston area to Seattle almost 15 years ago, this tape was deemed to have too much audience chatter to be considered one of our/his best. We did a lot of masters along the Zoo TV tour and this one was prematurely viewed as a lesser effort and confined to a shelf at KM's house never to be thought of again.

But newly motivated by this tracker, I've been rounding up all our masters anew, and on a visit to KM's house in February, I pulled this tape out and was pleasantly surprised by the quality. Sure it is a little distant, and sure there's more chatter than I'd like, but not half bad. So I took the masters home with me and a couple of weeks ago I did a fresh transfer on the newly tuned up Nakamichi CR-7A. Brother KM used the same set up he had since Tempe 4/4/87: the shockingly decent Aiwa CM-30 mic and the trusty Sony Walkman WM-D3 (on Maxell XL-II cassettes if you must know).

I transfered three cassette sides to three .wav files and given a recent focus on checking speed/pitch accuracy, I sent the three files to Mike Duchek on a DVD to correct them before converting to FLAC and posting. He has done so graciously as ever and I thank him once again.

Additional comments (by Mike Duchek): This came on a DVD in three WAV files, corresponding to three sides of the master cassettes. I joined the three parts together, deleted unnecessary silence, added a couple of tiny fades, and adjusted the speed, which was too fast, before splitting the file and converting to FLAC level 8. This recording is otherwise unaltered, and I would reccomend maybe turning up the treble a little bit when listening; the bass is just fine.

I received this from Butterking of JEMS, though this was not a JEMS recording. This was taped by Brother KM, who on other occasions taped using their DAT equipment, but did this one on his own with analog equipment. I think it turned out quite nicely. Although not as crisp as you might like, I think it is an excellent recording, with one small break after "Tryin'" (no music cut) and the other only sacrificing time between the main and encore sets. Although it's maybe not quite as close and sharp, I'd compare this to the analog master of 9/18/92 Chicago posted on U2Torrents.com a while back (no clipping on this one though!). Based on what I'd heard about the Boston crowd, I was expecting a ton of audience noise, but this was not really the case, and although it is loud at times (there are individual talkers, but they don't really sing, which is good, and I found them easy to tune out), it never drowns out the music as far as I'm concerned.

This is a nice show and they clearly seem to be having fun in Massachusetts. That said, the one really notable thing about this show is the inclusion of "So Cruel." Bono had done a snippet at the end of "Bad" in Milan some months earlier, but this was the first time he did a free-standing performance in a concert, although it was only up to the first refrain. Supposedly, the song was performed, in full, two times after this performance. For both of those shows, however, there is no known complete audience recording, and so I don't know if anyone can actually verify that this is true beyond what is in Pimm's book and fan recollections (both of which have proved to sometimes be inaccurate). Nonetheless, it's nice while it lasts.

The Edge seems to have technical difficulties with the keyboard during "New Year's Day," but it is otherwise a mostly usual show. The band still has a coordination issue here or there as it was early in this leg, and Bono throws the Edge of maybe a couple times, but there are no major screw ups.

Finally, most setlist sites, which I assume use Pimm's book as a starting point, have "Can't Help Falling in Love" listed as ending this show. After "Love is Blindness" in this recording there is something that sounds like it is a loose mic that could have been a break in the recording, but then you hear the Elvis recording over the PA. Why would KM have stopped the recording, only to pick it up exactly where the Elvis version began? In addition, other recordings of this show all list "Love is Blindness" as the last song. So I am left to believe that "Can't Help Falling in Love" was not played, although it was pretty much played every night after this night (there are a few notable exceptions) on the ZOO TV tour. I believe this
has been confirmed based on a listen to the other recording(s).

So, overall, this is a nice recording of a nice show, and I'd reccomend it. Thanks to Butterking of JEMS for acquiring this one and of course the taper for giving us a rare recording of "So Cruel" along with the rest of the show.
 

Comments

This recording documents the second night in Foxboro (MA, USA), and it was transferred from the master cassettes, then speed fixed. The recording is excellent in terms of sound quality, but it has a good amount of crowd noise with individual voices near the taper, what detracts quality a bit on occasion, so some may rate this as "Exc-". However, when people calm down, this item sounds brilliant, although tiny distant.

To my ears, this is an upgrade to 'U2 - Foxboro 22-08-1992' (Scott Zumsteg's first gen cassette transfer to FLAC, from Ted Driver's source -Sony WM-D6 + Sony ECM909-). I think Ted's source offers a less clear sound and even more crowd noise, although his master is less boomy than Brother KM's as Ted's taping location was slightly better.

The acoustic set is quite long and amazing, with the rare addition of So Cruel. Bono did lots of attempts to this song during the evening soundcheck. The band delivered a more spirited performance with a very solid set. Note the piano malfunctioned during New Year's Day.