1981-10-23 Something Else, BBC2, London, England, UK/Source 1

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Notes

A good sounding soundboard recording. This audio is significantly better quality than any previous version available, except for the two tracks that were broadcast on BBC2 (Tora! Tora! Tora! and Photographic) and appear on the Depeche Mode Television Archives TVA-81-1 DVD. The first 45 seconds of Television Set are messed up on the tape so there's noticeable speed variation, there are some occasional slight dropouts throughout, and the hiss is a bit loud, but otherwise this is a nice upgrade. I hard limited some loud claps and loud beginnings of songs so the recording would normalize better overall, and applied automatic click removal since there were some clicks and pops on the tape.

This audio is sourced from a time-coded VHS tape. It is most likely a working copy used by BBC2 during editing. The rumor is that the tape was "borrowed" by an employee and copies were made - and here we are again, 35 years later. Tora! Tora! Tora! and Nodisco are repeated at the end of the tape.

Nodisco is a unique performance because different keyboard mistakes are made during each take. Compare both takes at 1:28 where Dave sings "this ain't no disco" - the keyboard melody starts off on the wrong note but is corrected on the first take, but is correct from the beginning on the second. Also, on the second take at 1:25, someone fat fingers a couple keys, but the first take is fine.

Tora! Tora! Tora! is the same as the first performance, just shot at a different camera angle. The version broadcasted on television uses the second take.

Unfortunately, the video on this tape didn't fare so well: there are red and green horizontal lines any time there's bright red or green lighting used, and it's very detracting to the video. For now, it seems like the horribly low-resolution video with bad audio is still the best video source available for this specific tape - that's available at Source 2.

Depeche Mode Television Archives included the two broadcast tracks, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Photographic, as part of their TVA-81-1 DVD. The video and audio quality is superb, other than a very loud ringing noise in the audio.

This recording is sometimes mislabeled as 1981-11-06 University, Liverpool, England, UK because that was the original broadcast date. Find more info at the main page for this date.

I am still working on tracking down a low-generation VHS copy of this tape, or at least one that is not affected by the red and green lines throughout the video. Stay tuned!

Many thanks to Andrew for lending me this VHS tape.

Listen

You can listen to this entire recording below.

Track list

The tape's handwritten inlay describing the entire tape's contents.
  1. [3:45] Play Television Set
  2. [3:30] Play Photographic
  3. [4:02] Play New Life
  4. [3:38] Play Puppets
  5. [3:57] Play Just Can't Get Enough
  6. [3:10] Play Tora! Tora! Tora!
  7. [3:50] Play Nodisco
  8. [3:09] Play Tora! Tora! Tora!
  9. [3:45] Play Nodisco
  • Total time: 32:45

Lineage

The source tape.
  • unknown generation Maxell E-180 PAL VHS tape -> Philips VR1000 (built-in time base corrector enabled), S-Video output -> DataVideo TBC-1000 time base corrector -> S-Video in to ATI Radeon 9600XT All-In-Wonder capture card -> VirtualDub (720x576 HuffYUV lossless capture, 16-bit 48khz LPCM audio capture via stereo RCA cable connected directly to computer's Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi sound card line in) -> AVI container -> WAV demuxed -> in Adobe Audition CC 2015.0: hard limited several loud first notes of songs and loud claps, automatic click remover (heavy reduction), normalized to -0.1dB and any DC bias removed -> WAV -> tracked using Audacity 2.1.2 -> WAV (16/48) tracks -> FLAC 16-bit 48khz using FLAC 1.3.1 64-bit (level 8 compression) and foobar2000 v1.3.11
  • VHS tape photos, handwritten info sheet scan, and auCDtectTaskManager log included

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