CD 1 &2 : Minneapolis (MN) - May 22nd, 1983

Taper's comments :

I was surprised to hear recently that this tape apparently hasn't seen the light of day until now; I would have sworn I had probably traded it a few times back in the day, but perhaps I'm wrong about that. This is a direct 1st-gen copy of the original tape, as I shared a collection with my girlfriend at the time, and as she was a bigger U2 fan than I was at that point, I believe I made a copy for myself, and let her keep the original cassettes. I don't believe I applied any EQ to the copy I made, as the mix was pretty clear already, and the bass was already overdriven, but there is a bit of hiss on this copy, which may have been a result of the brand of tape the original cassettes were recorded on. There doesn't seem to be any problem with the music itself, just a higher level of hiss than I would have expected. It's fortunate that the bass is the only distorted signal on this recording; I didn't notice it in the venue, but sometimes these decks will pick up distortion in signals that we don't hear in the room. I don't recall what deck I was using at the time, but I think it would have been an old Sony model with built-in mics, and most likely with a built-in limiter as well. Not really high-end enough to be recording directly in front of the stacks, but I didn't know that at the time. Listening back to it after all these years, I think it actually turned out fairly decent. I got lucky.

Dream Syndicate was the opener, and I remember that they were not received very warmly, to put it mildly. I recall thinking that their live sound bore little resemblance to their records I owned, but I didn't think they were that bad; someone near the front kept shouting, "You're not Lou Reed!" I had started to record their set, but changed my mind. Fortunately, someone else recorded it,and it was posted on DIME within the last year, which is how I learned that no one had ever heard a copy of the U2 set. Since then, I've heard that there is apparently a tape of the U2 set floating around in some circles, but not very widely circulated, and presumably a few generations removed from the original source tape. I haven't heard that recording, so it's possible that it could actually be a copy of my own tape, or someone else recorded U2 as well. At any rate, this marks the first time I've digitized my copy, which in this case, also benefits from Azimuth optimization. Other than balancing the levels better than they were on the tape, I haven't tampered with the music at all, for this transfer.

We were originally seated about 10 or 15 rows back from the stage, but everyone kind of rushed up front during the first song, so naturally, I thought it would be a good idea to move up front as well. This allowed me to record the show from the 5th row, pretty much in front of the right stack. This resulted in some pretty crisp vocals, acoustic guitar, and keyboards; also a pretty overdriven bass signal.

We got to hang out with U2 a bit at their tour bus, after the show, and my friend had a piece of original art she created - a 3D cutaway portrait of the band - signed by all four band members.