Crowded House @ London, England 1996-06-03

LIMITED TIME / LAST TIME

https://pixeldrain.com/u/C6mdnGmQ

Crowded House 
Hanover Grand
London, England
Monday 3 June 1996

Support: Nut

Eckythump remaster series Volume 16

Audio Lineage: Unknown equipment and taper. Received on cassette in a trade from a 1st generation DAT sometime around 1996-98. Transferred from cassette by Matt Jones.

Video Lineage: VOB file converted to mp4 using https://cloudconvert.com/vob-to-mp4. Video taken from Finn Brothers Collection Volume 16 created by A FogOnTheTyne Production found at http://torrent.janemusic.org/details.php?id=53. Video recorded by Peter Green from the balcony. Audio likely taken from the soundboard.

25th anniversary edition audio remastered by eckythump in May 2021: iZotope RX8 Advanced -> Ozone 9 -> Audacity 3.0.2 (split tracks and FLAC Level 8) -> Foobar 1.6.5 (Files tagged)

00 - Intro
01 - Everything Is Good For You
02 - There Goes God
03 - Nails In My Feet
04 - Not The Girl You Think You Are
05 - Hole In The River
06 - Banter - paper airplane
07 - She's Abover A Mover (Sir Douglas Quintet cover, Mark Hart lead vocals)
08 - Instinct
09 - Don't Dream It's Over
10 - Fall At Your Feet
11 - Banter
12 - Jam
13 - When You Come
14 - Banter - Rocky Raccoon
15 - Into Temptation
16 - Weather With You
17 - Lester
18 - Distant Sun
19 - Recurring Dream
20 - Locked Out
21 - Banter
22 - Private Universe
23 - Encore break
24 - Banter - Neil 'looks forward to the future with great relish'
25 - Pineapple Head
26 - She Goes On
27 - Bomb Scare (my title - improv?)
28 - Four Seasons In One Day
29 - Encore break
30 - In My Command
31 - It's Only Natural
32 - Love You 'Til The Day I Die
33 - Better Be Home Soon

Bonus content: Video (mp4 format) of 3 songs from the show captured by Peter Green - Private Universe, Pineapple Head and She Goes On. Between song banter and encore break not included. 

Neil Finn - Guitar, vocals
Nick Seymour - Bass, vocals
Mark Hart - Guitar, keyboards, vocals
Peter Jones - Drums

Show notes: Crowded House came to Europe in June 1996 to promote 'Recurring Dream: The Very Best Of Crowded House' with a series of TV and radio performances. Neil had only made the decision in May to break up the band, and a public announcement had not yet been made. There had been a 'secret' gig organised for 3 June to launch 'Recurring Dream', with many UK fanclub members lucky enough to get invited to the event. From the book 'Something So Strong' by Chris Bourke (first edition, pages 336-337):

"Monday, 3 June, was the day of the 'secret gig' to launch Recurring Dream. Crowded House club president and PR man Peter Green had also come over from Australia. At 10.30am he was called into a meeting with Thomas and Cullen. Green wrote in his diary, 'By midday my world was picked up and thrown about - Crowded House are calling it a day. We work out our battle plan - and Neil arrives. He sounds excited, happy, fired on adrenaline and probably needs a good sleep. We work out a rough press release'.

The Hanover Grand, a small club off Oxford Circus in the heart of London, was the venue for the concert [my note - looks like it closed down in the early 2000's]. Thanks to Green, of the 600 people squeezed in, fans outnumbered the media and industry freeloaders by two to one. That day, the decision had been announced to Parlophone staff. But among the audience, very few were aware of the press release that had just been sent out:

'Neil Finn of Crowded House will announce tonight at their show in London that the band as it currently exists is not to continue after their present three-week promotional tour... Neil feels that after a highly successful 10 years with Crowded House, it is time for a change creatively and [he] is excited about continuing his recording career within a new context. It is too early to say whether this will be under a new name or under the Crowded House banner.'

Crowded House took the stage in lurid Polynesian shirts [my note - looking at the video, it looks like only Neil came out in such shirt]. The band took quite a while to gel, then it became like an exorcism for them. The jams at the end of songs became longer and more aggressively cathartic as the evening went on. 'Don't Dream It's Over' was greeted with screams, and faded out to the Beatles 'I've Got A Feeling' [my note - I can't hear that on this recording]. Mark Hart emphasised the raw passion of 'When You Come' with power chords; 'Distant Sun' concluded with a improvised rant; the confidence of 'Locked Out' was bloodletting. By 'Private Universe', they were playing like a band proving it had a reason to live.

Neil stopped the show for a chat [my note - this is track 24]. It was time to announce the breakup of the band. He spoke of Recurring Dream, saying it was 'both a blessing and a curse...we are looking forward to the future with relish'. But he couldn't bring himself to go any further. They went on with the show, which turned into an epic of improvisations, musical quotes and noisy extended codas. Afterwards, the 'meet-and-greet' was so packed that most in the room didn't hear the news".

Neil sent out another press release the following day, admitting he couldn't bring himself to be that dramatic and break the news on stage, but admitting he came close, which you can hear on the recording. With today's technology people would have seen the news on their phone while they were at the gig, but back in 1996 there were no such luxuries. People would have gone home thinking they'd witnessed a tremendous gig, then woken up to the news the next day the band was over.

As Chris Bourke's book describes, it was a tremendous show, with jams, improvs and classic banter we come to expect from a Crowded House show. A great show to close out their European chapter, until 2007 anyway.

Remaster notes: I received this recording on cassette from someone whose name I've long forgotten sometime between the show happening and 1998. I noted that my copy was a first generation cassette that was taken from a first gen DAT, so tape hiss is negligble. My good mate Matt Jones converted my cassette to the digital world during the lockdown of 2020, and with the 25th anniversary of the show upon us I figured it was a good time to share it to commemorate the event. While a recording of this show has been shared on Jane in the past (likely the same source), the version I'm sharing here is the complete show, with that one missing the last few songs. It's not the best recording you'll ever hear and it's not one to listen to if you just want to hear a pristine soundboard or FM recording or even a great audience capture, but it's still listenable and captures an historic moment in time. I did my best to clean it up using the wizardry of iZotope, but it's still a recording limited by the source. Apparently it was also extremely loud in the venue, which probably didn't help with the limitations of whatever equipment was used. I've included a scan of the ticket (thanks to Peter Green's book 'Ghost Cars On The Freeway'), as well as a fanclub invitation letter to the show, and finally an article from Melbourne Australia newspaper The Sunday Age in August 1996 detailing the break up of the band, which is an excellent read.

Because of the sound quality this won't be one you'll listen to every day, but it's a document of an important historical moment in Crowded House history, worthy of at least one listen in your lifetime.

I've also included video of 3 songs from the show, Private Universe, Pineapple Head and She Goes On. I took this from the Finn Brothers Collection Volume 16 by A FogOnTheTyne production, and converted the VOB file to mp4. I believe these songs were made available by Peter Green to fanclub members at the time. Reading Peter's 'Famous For 16 Minutes' diary he noted he recorded the video from the balcony. Presumably he didn't record the entire show, or if he did the complete show has never been shared. I also presume the audio came from the soundboard, as I can't believe a video camera from the 90's would capture such pristine audio, particularly with no audience noise nearby (there's a great story from his diary that he told one woman to get out of the area, which turned out to be Belinda Carlisle). So there's probably a soundboard recording of the entire show in Neil's archives, but if we haven't heard it by now, chances are we will never get to, so this is as close as we'll get. Enjoy!