Heartland

Dear sisters and brothers! What are your favorite live bootlegs and audience recordings of Sisters?
For me (in chronological order):
1)Paard Van Troje, Den Haag, 26.05.1984 (for energy)
2)Melkweg, Amsterdam, 02.06.1984 (the first bootleg that I bought - about 20 years ago - it was polish "MG Records" cassette)
3)Kolingsborg Club, Stockholm, 17.05.1985 (for beauty)
4)Palladium, Cologne, 06.03.2001 (for strength)
5)Metropolitan Univerisity SU, The Stage, Leeds, 16.02.2011 (for festive mood)
6)Brewhouse, Gothenburg, 18.11.2011(for 24-bit)

dark christmas in London brixton ace 93(love the 93 sound)

The Darks Were in Milan
Floorshow
1984 June 5 - Nijmegen Doornroosje
24 November 1990, That London

For me the best sounding bootlegs are without a doubt Disguised in black, Amsterdam and Stonehenge.

I would love to hear that Nijmegen gig also, heard good things about it, but doesn;t appear to be on any bootlegs other than two tracks on rough Diamonds? Anyone be kind enough to share a link?

Paradiso '83 and Newcastle 85. I've always had a soft spot for Rough Diamonds too.
I had a tape of the first night from Leeds in 91 that I used to listen to almost continuously.

The Nijmegen 84 one is the best ever! Great gig, confident band, tons of attitude, well oiled but not yet going through the motions & some surprises in the setlist...

Other fave's are the Newcastle 85 & Pukkelpop 92 recordings (my first gig!), the one from Suikerrock 2008 (top quality, great gig, Good Things & the covers at the end) and the Roundhouse 2011 recording.

Limiting myself to 5, in no particular order

stuggart 84 (first boot on cassette - still have it. Great sound, nice bit of heckling & abuse)
NEC 92 (mindblowing gig)
Mera Luna 00 (great set list)
Paradiso 83 (the temple intro & a fantastic Sister Ray medley)
Suikerrock 08 (ditto what radiojamaica said)

Stuttgart 84
Hamburg 83
Nijmegen 84
Dublin 97
Near Meths 2005

New York July 1991 deserves mention.
And The Speed Kings in Dublin.
Trojan Horse will always be my favourite though.

In no particular order,

Dark Christmas '93
Budapest 2009 (rubbish sound on the recording, but it rocks)
Hildesheim 2010, Paris and Helsinki 2011 (fabulous gigs and nicely recorded)

Newcastle '85 for "Nine While Nine".
Edit: and Speed Kings in Dublin for a stonking WYDSM.
The second night of London 2001 is really good, more for overall grooviness than sound quality, though the only video I've seen lacks the last few songs.

By the way, can anyone recommend a good live rendition of "Rain From Heaven"? It seems whenever the guitars and the mix are really on point (Leamington, Helsinki), Eldritch bungles the words.

centurionofprix wrote:By the way, can anyone recommend a good live rendition of "Rain From Heaven"? It seems whenever the guitars and the mix are really on point (Leamington, Helsinki), Eldritch bungles the words.

I quite liked the one on the Lokeren recording actually.

centurionofprix wrote:....../The second night of London 2001 is really good, more for overall grooviness than sound quality, though the only video I've seen lacks the last few songs.

complete vid

Some of you mention the Stuttgart 84 recording. My first ever Sisters bootleg (in 86 or so) was an unlabeled one - the only thing written on the cassette was "Sisters of Mercy live"… - and for some reason I was led to believe it might be Stuttgart 84 (German-speaking audience, tracklist) , but could never find out for sure.
The only clue is that some members of the audience at some point inbetween songs are talking about gloves ("Handschuhe" in German). Does this ring a bell to any of you?

Anyway, my favourite are probably Trojan Horse and Disguised in Black.

You'll easily recognise Stuttgart by some of the between-song banter, heckling and abuse. Wayne being called "a puff". "We're not here for conversation so keep it quiet". "SHUT UP!" "You're going to regret this". Etc. Also had a Temple of Love tease before Train.

Nothing about gloves rings a bell with me, sorry. I would have thought the above were more memorable, so if they didn't come immediately to your mind, it probably wasn't Stuttgart.

possibly Hunky Dory? German, readily available in various guises, good quality - obvious identifiers: lots of whistling between songs Von repeats danke danke danke at the end of floorshow

Thanks to mh & paint it blackfor the useful information.

Is there anything on youtube of the famous NEC gig?

The Unmarked Door (Amsterdam '84) and Disguised In Black are both very good as is the unfortunately only 7 tracks long Floorshow lp/cd (soundboard recording of Fenders Ballroom, Long Beach '85). Personally, I also like Detmold Hunky Dory '84 (Sister Ray cd / Sodium Haze 2lp) very much but that is more because of the mood of the band that evening and that this was my first gig as because of sound quality...

paint it black wrote:possibly Hunky Dory? German, readily available in various guises, good quality - obvious identifiers: lots of whistling between songs Von repeats danke danke danke at the end of floorshow

Could be. Most of my copies have some Germans talking between songs.

The Detmold version of 'Anaconda' is the greatest.

For me, aside from the obvious (Royal Albert Hall 1985), the best live recordings are in reverse chronological order

Camden 2011 - an excellent recording of a great gig
Leamington 2010 - the band on great form
Pukkelpop 2001 - from my distant memory of a battered cassette, the band are fierce at this show, and do "Sugar Baby Love" and "I Wanna Be Sedated"
NEC 1993 - more historical, the last show of the Andreas Bruhn era however the recording has a very quiet left audio channel
NEC 1992 - great recording of the best Sisters show I ever saw
Fenders Ballroom 1984
Amsterdam 1983

If we get into video bootlegs, there is a stunning multicamera version of Brussells Feb 2011 on the Intertubes

centurionofprix wrote:By the way, can anyone recommend a good live rendition of "Rain From Heaven"? It seems whenever the guitars and the mix are really on point (Leamington, Helsinki), Eldritch bungles the words.

Leamington because it was the first; who cares if Eldo f--ks up the words (he did that in 85 for plenty of FALAA songs too), it was a magical moment.

2005 - Adam's last shows.

markreed wrote:
If we get into video bootlegs, there is a stunning multicamera version of Brussells Feb 2011 on the Intertubes

working full time on the 22, few more songs to finish off

few are online:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Mercifu ... rsOfMercy/

https://www.facebook.com/pascal.lasyboy ... 716&type=2


and regarding best recording, all mine