The Modern Lovers
Cambridge Boathouse (?), late 1971 / early 1972
lineage: cassette (unknown gen) > HD > Audacity (tracking) > flac 6
Warning - strictly for diehards! This recording is swathed in hiss, so while there's some great music hidden underneath it all, the casual browser might be more at home with the Harvard, Radcliffe and Stonehenge Modern Lovers torrents that are elsewhere on this tracker.
1. Someone I Care About (intro only)
2. Cambridge Clown
3. Fly into the Mystery
4. Astral Plane (intro only)
5. Such Loneliness
6. Womanhood
7. Dignified and Old
8. Pablo Picasso
BONUS 1: New England Summer Song
BONUS 2: unknown song
This recording has circulated on cassette for many, many years. There's never been much clarity as to where the tracks actually originate from - it has been labelled as part of the same Harvard 1971 show that was partially torrented here; it's also been labelled as "Cambridge Boathouse 1973". After much discussion with Doug (dclubok, who we have to thank for much of the great ML stuff that's surfaced here), I think we've roughly pinned it down to Cambridge Boathouse, late 1971 or early 1972. Here's why:
- John Felice isn't featured, which puts it at either between summer '71 and September '72, or after March '73. The material and sound here seems a little too 'early' to be from 1973.
- The final track on the tape (not featured here) is the same version of Plea for Tenderness that's included on the official CDs Precise Modern Lovers Order and Live at the Longbranch Saloon. These releases credit it as "Cambridge Boathouse 1973". As suggested above, the date seems a little out, but we can probably trust them on the venue.
- At one point during the show Jonathan addresses "Danny", asking if he can hear everything clearly. This is probably Danny Lipmann, the Modern Lovers' manager from early 1971 to mid 1972, who was also responsible for recording many of these early shows (see Doug's comments on the Harvard torrent).
- Such Loneliness is announced as a song "that we haven't played in a long time" - this suggests that it slightly predates the early 1972 Stonehenge show which also features this song.
There are at least two other songs in circulation that are probably from this same show: Plea for Tenderness is officially released (see above), and Roadrunner is on the Songs of Remembrance boot CD. There may also be versions of Modern World and Someone I Care About floating around - and of course all the songs that we only have the intros of here!
Why are several songs cut out after the intros? I have no idea. Interestingly they all seem to be the ones that appear on the debut LP. Maybe someone originally put this together as a companion piece to the first album.
A word about the bonus material. New England Summer Song is an instrumental version of a song also known as Winters Get Hard in New England, recorded in rehearsal - possibly at the house they shared in Cohasset in late 1972, or possibly in pre-production for the ill-fated John Cale sessions in Spring 1973.
The other 'unknown' song seems to travel on copies of this tape - in my case, it was sandwiched between a few songs from Harvard '71 (not included here as they're officially released in infinitely better quality) and the Cambridge songs here. It may not be Jonathan - the song doesn't really seem to be his style, but it kind of sounds like him. But of course there's such an obscene level of hiss it's hard to hear anything.
I'm uploading this at 24/48 as that's the format my HD recorder samples at. I figured that if I shared it in the best available quality, that might help preserve what little music is still left under all the hiss. If anyone wants to downsample it to 16/44 and re-upload, feel free!
Needless to say, if anyone has a better sounding version of anything from this tape, please share!