Cry God for Harry, England, and… err… Bradford!

UPDATE: this recording is now improved. Due to an error in the digitisation process it was previously mostly mono. Now presented in Stereo, and if it was good before, it is brilliant now. Seriously.

It’s been quite a long time since a “new” live tape appeared, so this would have been a marvellous discovery even were it not for the fact that it’s an amazingly good one.

This came out of a discussion on the Facebook “Prefab Sprout and Paddy Mcaloon” page, where someone was asking about Sprout gigs people had been to. There were a curiously high number of people who had been to the 1990 gig in St George’s Hall, Bradford. And amongst those, Rob, who had a tape of the concert, recorded with a Walkman with mikes dangling over the balcony.

The result is a really excellent recording. Minimal crowd chatter because of the mike location, and great sound. “One of the Broken” is split by a tape flip, “Cars and Girls” and “When Love Breaks Down” are both truncated because of lack of remaining tape, and “Doo Wop in Harlem” is missing for the same reason.

Download a set of MP3 Files here, and FLAC files here.

And should this find anyone with other tapes or minidisks of gigs, please do get in touch.

9 thoughts

    1. I see this captures Paddy changing the lyric in “Hey Manhattan” to “just to think the Trashcans have been here too”.. I am guitarist with the Trashcan Sinatras and we had the pleasure of being support for this tour, great to finally hear evidence of this lovely moment.. Thanks Paddy !!

  1. Thank you for posting! This is not meant as a critique — just curious: is there a chance this audio is slowed down a bit in pitch? The tempos sound uncharacteristically plodding at times.

  2. Thanks so much for this! It’s a wonderful audience tape, enough atmosphere to show how great it must have been to be there, and excellent sound. Paddy and the band are on top form and the setlist is jaw-dropping. What a gig to have been at, and I’d have made sure to be there early enough to see the likewise underrated Trashcan Sinatras.

  3. The version of Wild Horses here is phenomenal!!! My neighbors are lucky because I am blasting it loud over and over. ..ha ha ha. This is the best live version I have heard of this song. Does our moderator have an opinion on another killer live version?

  4. I felt guilty for years for recording this without permission because as a musician I would hate someone to record one of our gigs and distribute it (not that there was ever a chance of that happening!) But I’m really pleased that I did because sharing it all these years later has bought pleasure to other PS fans. We started the gig at the back on the balcony during the Trashcan’s set then moved so that we were actually over the top of the band on the balcony and I hid the walkman mic in the sleeve of my jacket draped over the balcony rail. Thank you to Tim for digitising it and improving it, and apologies to Martin, Paddy, Wendy and Neil.

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