1990 World Violation tour backing tapes

The backing tapes for the 1990 World Violation Tour have been circulating in poor quality on unknown generation audio cassette since the early 90s. DM Live had the opportunity to transfer a very good sounding second-generation stereo cassette copy of the backing tapes, of which two minute excerpts of each track are provided below for your listening enjoyment. Many thanks to a kind collector for his generously lending his tapes to transfer.

Background

The second-generation cassette tapes this audio is sourced from.

Some info regarding what is audible on the backing tapes and how they came to circulate fairly publicly is at Shunt Q&A - LIVE - live albums / versions / performance:

On the 'World Violation' backing tapes, one can hear drums on 'Clean' and a guitar on 'Personal Jesus' mixed very low. Were they there for back-up or to flesh out the live sound or have I been imagining things?

Alan: The extra sounds you heard were never audible through the P.A. system. They were back-up sounds in case of breakdown.

You've answered questions regarding the 'World Violation' tour backing tapes before but what has always puzzled me was how / why they made available to the public. I know they weren't officially released, so how were they 'leaked' to whoever distributes them? Even *I* have a copy! ;-)

Alan: I have absolutely no idea. It is usually necessary for a few cassettes or Dats of the backing tapes to be made for various people to listen to (same applies to demos etc.). These inevitably get left lying around before falling into the wrong hands.

Backup sounds (such as those mentioned in their question above) would not generally be audible through the PA system during a live concert except in the event of equipment failure. These sounds are audible on cassette-sourced copies of the backing tapes as they are stereo mix-downs of the multi-track backing tapes without any tracks being muted as they would have been during a live concert. The original source is presumably multi-track DAT (or ADAT), or possibly multi-track analog reel tape.

Excellent sounding snippets have previously been shared online, but these have been created using the available partial multi-tracks of the songs (from the Rock Band or Guitar Hero video games) and are not genuine backing tracks. These snippets are available to listen to at the bottom of this page for comparison purposes.

The full backing tapes are not made available on this wiki so as to avoid potential issues resulting from the audio being derived from studio content.

90 second excerpts of six tracks from the 1993 Devotional tour backing tapes are also available for listening. The sound quality is excellent with very little hiss. Furthermore, some very short snippets of seven tracks from the 1987-1988 Music For The Masses tour backing tapes are also available for listening.

Track list

Note that starting with Policy Of Truth there is more audible tape hiss stemming from a normal bias cassette tape having been used to record the copy of those tracks, compared to a high bias cassette used for the first half of the tracks. Some songs are more hissy than others as well due to volume differences. No noise or hiss reduction has been applied to this audio.

Handwritten track listing bundled with the above tapes.

Handwritten track listing bundled with the above tapes, back side.

1. Play Kaleid
2. Play World In My Eyes
3. Play Halo
4. Play Shake The Disease
5. Play Everything Counts
6. Play Master And Servant
7. Play Never Let Me Down Again
8. Play Waiting For The Night
9. Play Clean
10. Play Stripped
11. Play Policy Of Truth
12. Play Enjoy The Silence
13. Play Strangelove
14. Play Personal Jesus
15. Play Black Celebration
16. Play A Question Of Time
17. Play Behind The Wheel
18. Play Route 66

Recreations created from video game multi-tracks

• Never Let Me Down Again:

• Policy Of Truth:

• Personal Jesus: