1987-1988 Music For The Masses tour backing tapes

Notes

A cassette tape of the backing tapes from the 1987-1988 Music For The Masses Tour as well as the light-show cue / tour rehearsal tape from the 1986 Black Celebration Tour were sold on eBay in 2011 by a New Zealand eBay seller. He purchased a leather jacket from the lighting director of the 1990 World Violation Tour and the tapes were included with the jacket. View the original listing here.

The complete track listing is unknown - presumably it includes Pipeline and Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth. Short snippets of several tracks were uploaded to DM_Best_Bits' Soundcloud (now an empty account) and are available to listen to below. Short excerpts of several tracks from tour rehearsals of the 1986 Black Celebration Tour were also uploaded along with these snippets, and you can listen to those at 1986-03-00 Black Celebration Tour Rehearsals, Nomis Studios, London, England, UK. The rehearsals are probably from March 1986 given that "Here Is The House" is part of the rehearsal.

Please note that I do not have any more audio from these backing tapes other than what appears on this page, since all of these excerpts were publicly posted on Soundcloud in the past. I do not know who owns the full audio of these backing tapes.

On a related note, 90 second excerpts from every track of the 1990 World Violation Tour Backing Tapes are available for listening, and furthermore 90 second excerpts of six tracks from the 1993 Devotional Tour Backing Tapes are also available for listening.

Excerpts

Original eBay listing photo

• Something To Do:

• Blasphemous Rumours:

• Things You Said:

• Nothing:

• Never Let Me Down Again:

• A Question Of Lust:

• Everything Counts:

Fan recreations

• Never Turn Your Back On Mother Earth:
  • This is not a genuine backing tape / sequence, but it is a very convincing recreation. The clicks & pops during the middle synth pad sequence likely result from the transfer process of the original sample ZIP disks - it's definitely possible the magnetic media degraded somewhat over time and caused the pops & clicks to be present in the samples, which were then used to create this recreation. The fact that some samples from other ZIP disks also have similar pops & clicks indicates that this audio is a recreation.

• The Soundcloud user Michigan-Sweden recreated very faithful sounding "live instrumentals" of many tracks from the MFTM tour and other tours using the original sample disks from Alan Wilder's EMAX setup. Listen to them on his Soundcloud here.