1998-12-12 KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA, USA/Source 1

Notes

A very good pre-FM soundboard recording.

Unfortunately, this recording is inherently lossy due to MPEG delay used at both the soundboard and FM broadcast feeds for this concert.

According to a post by BRAT (official depechemode.com webmaster) on the fan-site Home, both the soundboard feed and the FM broadcast feed were run through MPEG delay, causing MP3-like sound. The post is quoted below:

The disc I sent out to people was off the air.

I have a copy direct from KROQ's broadcast board, but it still sucks because BOTH the board feed, and the broadcast feed were run through a MPEG delay. MPEG delay (for any possible profanity) = crap, MP3-like sound.

The only good copy I have heard is the KROQ video that is on depechemode.com. All others are horrible.

Even if you knew people at KROQ (like I did), you could not get a flawless copy. It still had sh*tty artifacts through it. The only reason why my copy might sound better is because I was using a $400 Radio Shack antenna (hacked into a neighbor's antenna). ;)

BRAT

Also please be aware that despite the fact that this bootleg silver CD claims to be from "BRAT Productions", even including a phone number, BRAT had absolutely nothing to do with this bootleg. Plus, the catalog number used by the bootleg label for this release (LCDMUTEL5) is one for a box set that includes "The Singles 81>85" and "The Singles 86>98".

Sister Of Night, A Question Of Lust, and Enjoy The Silence were performed as acoustic renditions. Before this show, A Question Of Lust had only been performed one other time in this manner on the Singles tour, at 1998-12-09 Sacramento. You can find a recording of the band's soundcheck at the 1998-12-02 Boise, ID concert, where these acoustic versions were rehearsed.

During Never Let Me Down Again, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins joined to sing lead vocals and play the guitar. The Smashing Pumpkins covered the song for the 1998 Depeche Mode tribute album For The Masses.

An MP3 of a bit of relevant post-show radio chatter is included as a bonus in the archive download.

Source 2 from this concert is a very good sounding FM broadcast recording, but it has very little dynamic range compared to this version.

Listen

You can listen to this entire recording below.

Track list

1. [0:42] Play Introduction
2. [5:46] Play Barrel Of A Gun
3. [5:02] Play Policy Of Truth
4. [4:42] Play It's No Good
5. [8:00] Play Walking In My Shoes
6. [4:31] Play Sister Of Night (*)
7. [3:57] Play A Question Of Lust (*)
8. [4:01] Play Enjoy The Silence
9. [5:23] Play In Your Room
10. [5:41] Play Behind The Wheel
11. [7:33] Play Personal Jesus
12. [7:22] Play Never Let Me Down Again (With Billy Corgan)

• Total time: 1:02:40

Bonus tracks:

1. [1:44] Play Postshow

Lineage

• Silver CD bootleg KROQ Acoustic Christmas 1998 + ("LCDMUTEL 5") -> Exact Audio Copy (good, but sub-optimal settings) -> FLAC level 8
• Artwork and Exact Audio Copy log included

Download

• Download ZIP - FLAC 16-bit 44.1KHz - 365.21MB