The Cure
The Beverly
Beverly Hills, CA
August 7, 1983
RG First Generation Cassette via JEMS
New Wave LA Vol. 58 (Special Edition)
Recording equipment: unknown microphone to unknown portable cassette deck
JEMS 2021 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 The Figurehead
02 In Your House
03 M
04 Cold
05 The Hanging Garden
06 Siamese Twins
07 Primary
08 Three Imaginary Boys
09 At Night
10 One Hundred Years (tape flip cut)
11 Play For Today
12 A Forest
13 Pornography
14 The Walk
15 10.15 Saturday Night
16 Killing An Arab
17 Forever including Let's Go To Bed
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.
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, emerging alternative artists and a few others of merit outside of those lanes. Some of the artists RG taped include:
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. Often, 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 25+ years.
New Wave LA Season 2
We recently visited RG again and picked up more tapes to continue the New Wave LA series. We're pleased to report a number of intriguing recordings were borrowed, both from the New Wave heyday of the late '70s and '80s and from the alt-rock years of the late '80s and early '90s. We plan to resume our regular weekly release schedule this spring, but one tape from the second batch felt like it couldn't wait, hence this special, one-off edition of the New Wave LA series between seasons.
The Cure played the The Beverly theater in Beverly Hills as part of a short U.S. tour that only hit a handful of markets on the east and west coast, same as they had done on their US tours in 1980 and 1981. The band played Perkins Palace in Pasadena the night after this show, their only other SoCal date, a tape of which remarkably appeared on DIME for the first time in December 2021 to the delight of Cure collectors, one of whom commented:
"This is major find and [verifies] this is not a fake as it matches my memory of the gig as I was there! Attached is my ticket. I've been looking for a recording of this and previous night at The Beverly, Beverly Hills for over 38 years. I was caught by security with my Sony TC-D5 deck both of these nights and am delighted someone had better success at sneaking in their gear. Now, if only Beverly Hills show would surface which has the most intense and dark version of Forever I've ever heard that includes some lyrics to Let's Go To Bed. Cheers for sharing this!"
Incredibly, the day I read that comment was the same day I went to see RG and picked up the very Beverly Hills show this person was looking for.
RG's recording is the only one to surface from this Cure set. As noted above, RG often recorded on the best tape he could buy (TDK SA or SA-X), then copied over to a cheaper tape (TDK AD) for archiving, and reused the better tape for another master recording. So this isn't the master, but a first-gen made by RG and the best available copy of the recording available. The good news is it is a very good capture, one of RG's best of the period, and better quality than the newly surfaced Perkins Palace set. The sound has plenty of punch and wide fidelity. Samples provided.
The setlist is almost identical to Perkins Palace, omitting "The Drowning Man," but with one other more significant change, which is that the encore closer "Forever" is remarkably different to the Pasadena version to the point of being a different song. Cure experts can do a better job of explaining the various elements of it, but one obvious one is Robert Smith starting the with the first two verses of "Let's Go To Bed" which may make this "Forever" quite special. Smith says goodnight after a nine-minute version of "Forever" in a manner which suggests it was the final song, meaning "Lament" was might not have been played this night, but we cannot confirm that.
We hope Cure fans and collectors enjoy RG's recording. Special thanks to SZ for his help with the track list, Professor Goody for checking the pitch and to New Wave LA series post-producer cpscps who has come to be one of JEMS' most reliable allies. Last but not least, huge respect and gratitude to RG for recording so many important shows in the last 40 years and being so generous with sharing them.
BK for JEMS
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