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  1. Originally posted by melon51:[..]
    I cut the first 20 secs or so off because there was too much noise on the background and no singing yet.

    Didn't do much else other than changing the speed. I matched the whole soundcheck recording to SB bootlegs of Lovetown and this was a semitone up and 6% faster. So I matched it with their tuning for Lovetown, and it's now a proper jam in D#

    So here is the first time U2 played "Hearbeat" live!

    SoundCloud: U2 "Heartbeat" Soundcheck 08101989 Jam In E by BB
    Interesting. Definitely some Desire reminiscences there to my ears! Doesn't sound like there's a hit or even a proper song in there, but it's always interesting to hear their work-in-progress

    Damn, all this soundcheck/song origins talk has got me wondering about our ever-waiting Soundcheck section. We always wanted to have a dedicate section for Soundchecks but they're hard to tag and catalog properly - they're much harder to catalog than shows, that's for sure! Can we count on you if we eventually build that section, @melon51?
  2. Yeah they only had to tinker around with these jams in E major for 14 more years until they actually did
  3. Originally posted by LikeASong:[..]
    Interesting. Definitely some Desire reminiscences there to my ears! Doesn't sound like there's a hit or even a proper song in there, but it's always interesting to hear their work-in-progress

    Damn, all this soundcheck/song origins talk has got me wondering about our ever-waiting Soundcheck section. We always wanted to have a dedicate section for Soundchecks but they're hard to tag and catalog properly - they're much harder to catalog than shows, that's for sure! Can we count on you if we eventually build that section, @melon51?

    It's interesting because this jam/song was played just after they rehearsed Desire in that soundcheck... And it really starts as a separate “song” with a different tempo, so I'm guessing this is an idea they already had and wanted to give it a go.

    What the real interest/fun in this for me I guess is trying to discover some “hidden/buried” early demos/ideas. Which is quite a challenge because:

    - Loads of bootlegs that have jams like these aren’t really publicly accessible.
    - Some of them are on sites like u2torrents.com that I can’t download from
    - Some have terrible audio (like the strong wind in the Auckland one)

    I was lucky to find three soundchecks from Lovetown on Youtube that had interesting jams: Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne. And after a couple of days of fiddling with Audio-editing software I was able to correct pitch and take the worst noise out.

    So if you have any pointers or sources for me to look at/register etc... that would be awesome!

    PS. With the 14 years track you mean Vertigo? They (at least) sound checked a basic track of that during Elevetion somewhere..
  4. So here’s a quick summary of the interesting Lovetown demos/jams I could find so far, collected in one post for clarity:

    Melbourne Oct-7-1989:

    Early “Until the end of the world” sounding Jam in E, hear it in the bass/drum part mostly. If it's not that it's a demo they recorded for Limp Bizkit's version of "mission impossible" Quite rhythmic and bumpy demo, and has some pretty nice guitar improvs:



    Melbourne Oct-8-1989:

    Another jam in E (they sure love that!) that comes right after rehearsing bits of Desire. It sounds like they know what they’re doing/playing, so I guess they had this laying around. This sounds a bit like if The Fly were actually a cowboy Has a nice “rolling” groove and Bono repeats “heartbeat” a lot:




    Both these soundchecks are on Youtube in full, so that’s where I got them from. Weirdly they were both sped and a semitone too high, so corrected that back to their regular tuning (E-flat/D#).

    Auckland Nov-11-1989:

    1. Early “Trying to throw your arms around the world” jam/demo. Checked this against both Salome Outtakes versions (including the one that has Lanois/Bono singing on CD5) and musically it has the same structure/chords/bridges. This live jam is much more elaborate than that though, great build-up with some nice guitar/bass parts:



    2. Jam in E that has similarities with “I feel free” and “Blow your house down” (’87 beach version). Has jangling guitar that remind of Ultraviolet:



    For both of these I had to edit out very strong wind-rumble and tried to pull up the "middle frequency" so they sound quite “thin”.. Didn't correct the pitch for these, quickly checked with my guitar and sounded correct.

    —

    Haven’t checked for any “lyrical recognition” yet but maybe a native English speaker with good ears can give that a try
  5. But...

    There's also "Jams in G" apparently.. I found this drumbeat with a very vague bassline track on CD5 of the Achtung Outtakes which reminded me of the chorus of "Lemon" from Zooropa...

    So I captured that bit and tried to enhance/pull out the bass on the (unnamed) Salome track. The key already matched with Lemon and the tempo only differed slightly so that was a small adjustment.

    Result is a short track (+/- 35 secs) that is first 17 seconds Salome, and then Lemon glued to that bit at (almost) the right point in the chord sequence. See what you think, haha:


  6. Wow, great!
  7. Originally posted by melon51:But...

    There's also "Jams in G" apparently.. I found this drumbeat with a very vague bassline track on CD5 of the Achtung Outtakes which reminded me of the chorus of "Lemon" from Zooropa...

    So I captured that bit and tried to enhance/pull out the bass on the (unnamed) Salome track. The key already matched with Lemon and the tempo only differed slightly so that was a small adjustment.

    Result is a short track (+/- 35 secs) that is first 17 seconds Salome, and then Lemon glued to that bit at (almost) the right point in the chord sequence. See what you think, haha:


    https://soundcloud.com/180167443/u2-ab-outtakes-drumbass-track-matched-with-lemon-zooropa
    That is some very impressive train spotting! Many thanks for finding this
  8. Haha,

    It is right? You have to listen with headphones to also hear the bass-part (I'll see if I can fix that).

    The first (and prob last) time I suffered the torture that is the last 4 of the 7CD outtakes.. And by coincedence I stumbled on that beat with very vague bassline. I just recognized that bit, must be the "music memory" My guess is that it's a bit that Edge wanted to keep for reference. Maybe it's the chorus of another song-demo..
  9. Had this other idea of trying to strip the voice-over from "Sick Puppy" on FTSD, so that we can hear more of that track. Shall I give that a go?
  10. Originally posted by melon51:Had this other idea of trying to strip the voice-over from "Sick Puppy" on FTSD, so that we can hear more of that track. Shall I give that a go?
    It's pretty much an early version of MW with 2 bridges that never made it into the final song (and one of which became the verse structure of One, of course), isn't it? I doubut there's much "hidden" in there But yeah, taking the voiceover off sounds like a good idea - do you use iZotope RX for that?
  11. Originally posted by melon51:But...

    There's also "Jams in G" apparently.. I found this drumbeat with a very vague bassline track on CD5 of the Achtung Outtakes which reminded me of the chorus of "Lemon" from Zooropa...

    So I captured that bit and tried to enhance/pull out the bass on the (unnamed) Salome track. The key already matched with Lemon and the tempo only differed slightly so that was a small adjustment.

    Result is a short track (+/- 35 secs) that is first 17 seconds Salome, and then Lemon glued to that bit at (almost) the right point in the chord sequence. See what you think, haha:


    https://soundcloud.com/180167443/u2-ab-outtakes-drumbass-track-matched-with-lemon-zooropa
    That's a very nice find! It's definitely the genesis of Lemon's rhythm section. At the beggining I thought the drums sounded like Some Days Are Better Than Others too, don't you hear a similarity?
  12. Originally posted by melon51:[..]What the real interest/fun in this for me I guess is trying to discover some “hidden/buried” early demos/ideas. Which is quite a challenge because:

    - Loads of bootlegs that have jams like these aren’t really publicly accessible.
    - Some of them are on sites like u2torrents.com that I can’t download from
    - Some have terrible audio (like the strong wind in the Auckland one)

    I was lucky to find three soundchecks from Lovetown on Youtube that had interesting jams: Auckland, Sydney and Melbourne. And after a couple of days of fiddling with Audio-editing software I was able to correct pitch and take the worst noise out.

    So if you have any pointers or sources for me to look at/register etc... that would be awesome!
    Yeah that's exactly what we are trying to build: a comprehensive list of all the soundchecks that exist, hopefully with a list of songs/jams and with download links that make them readily available - just in the fashion of our immense show collection. Why can't you download from U2torrents?

    Originally posted by melon51:[..]PS. With the 14 years track you mean Vertigo? They (at least) sound checked a basic track of that during Elevetion somewhere..
    Yeah I meant Vertigo (it was more like 15 years from the point we were talking about in late 1989, but still ). I'm rather sure I had heard about them rehearsing Sopa De Tiburón in 2001 too, but right now I can't remember where or when.
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Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.