27.07.1988 USA, Los Angeles, Wiltern Theater Live At The Wiltern L.A. exc. Soundboard Disc 1: [54:22] 01. Someone To Watch Over Me [3:28] 02. Sister Moon [9:03] 03. The Lazarus Heart [6:34] 04. Too Much Information [2:08] 05. Englishman In New York [5:00] 06. Rock Steady [5:05] 07. Straight To My Heart [4:20] 08. Tempted [5:08] 09. One World [7:23] 10. If You Love Somebody Set Them Free [6:10] Disc 2: [57:38] 01. Bring On The Night [3:06] 02. When The World Is Running Down [8:39] 03. Lonely House [3:58] 04. The Idiot Bastard Son [2:23] 05. I Don't Wanna Be (performed by Dolette McDonald) [4:59] 06. The Promise (performed by Delmar Brown) [8:22] 07. Blasphemy (performed by Kenny Kirkland & Branford Marsalis) [5:05] 08. They Dance Alone [8:36] 09. Consider Me Gone [5:43] 10. King Of Pain [6:43] Disc 3: [1:00:09] 01. Be Still My Beating Heart [6:25] 02. Walking In Your Footsteps [4:52] 03. Fragile [6:23] 04. Little Wing / From Me To You [9:52] 05. The Secret Marriage [2:44] 06. Don't Stand So Close To Me [11:21] 07. Mackie Messer / Mack The Knife [3:11] 08. Caro Mio Ben [2:53] 09. Ne Me Quitte Pas [3:50] 10. Home On The Range [1:48] 11. Every Breath You Take [6:46] Lineup: Sting - vocals, guitar, synclavier Branford Marsalis - saxophone Kenny Kirkland - keyboards Delmar Brown - keyboards Jeff Lee Campbell - lead guitar Tracy Ann Wormworth - bass guitar Mino Cinelu - percussion James Taylor Lewis (J.T. Lewis) - drums Dolette McDonald - backing vocals ABOUT THE SHOW: This show was part of the second US-leg of the 1987/ 1988 Nothing Like The Sun tour. Most of the shows were performed in large arenas or at special summer festivals. On July 15 the Los Angeles Times reported: "For Sting fans: He's booked to play the intimate Wiltern Theatre on July 27. Tickets on sale today through the Chargeline telephone ticket service". Only about 2,300 people were able to attend this very special and long show. Sting and the band performed all the songs they did during the other dates of the tour, but many extra songs were added! The show also included several interesting covers (including songs by George Gershwin and Frank Zappa). This resulted in the longest Sting show ever! Some members of the band had the chance to perform some songs of their own: Dolette McDonald, Delmar Brown, Kenny Kirkland and Branford Marsalis provided some very high quality moments. During the tour Sting liked to perform songs in the language of the particular country. That night in California he sang all those songs in French, German, Italian and Spanish. "Well, thanks for coming to the Wiltern Theatre. One of the reasons we are here is that it’s a very small place. And someone like me can forget how to perform in a small place. It’s much easier to perform for 20,000 people than 2 I tell you. So this is me keeping in pratice for Las Vegas or... We are gonna play a lot of different songs tonight. Stuff that you couldn’t play in a stadium or football field or whatever. This song is called Englishman in New York, I apologize". Before Straight To My Heart: "Thank you. How do you feel now? I feel better. I feel better. Do this with me. People in the balcony do this as well. Come on". "This is one of my favourite songs. By a band called Squeeze. Song is called Tempted". "I [??] of you all there. Looks more than 2,000 people to me. This is called Bring On The Night". Before Lonely House: "OK, we have almost reached the halfway point of the show. So before we have a little break I’m gonna sing some strange songs. This first song is by a man called Kurt Weill. He is German. This song is called Lonely House". "The next song was written by Frank Zappa. It’s called The Idiot Basterd Son". "And now Dolette McDonald is gonna sing a song called I Don’t Wanna Be". "The thing about this band is that everyone in it could entertain you all night. Delmar Brown for example. He is gonna sing a song called The Promise". After Delmar’s performance: "OK, we are gonna take a short break. At 10 o’clock we’ll be back for more. Thank you". After the break Kenny and Branford performed Kenny's instrumental Blasphemy. To introduce Consider Me Gone, Sting told the audience: "Welcome back. I was singing this next song, I think in San Francisco last week and while I was singing it I couldn't help thinking of George Bush, so I want you to think about George as I sing this song." Bush was running for President for the Republicans and eventually won the election. Before Mackie Messer: "We just came from a tour of Europe. At this point of the show every night I come on and I do a song in the language of the country I was performing in. For two reasons. One, it shows some kind of respect for the culture and the people you are playing to, and also they go fucking crazy when you do. So tonight, just for the fun of it I'm gonna do a song in German, a song in Italian, a song in French, and then I'm gonna play you what I play in the mid-west of America. You'll be surprised". Before Caro Mio Ben: "What I'm not gonna play here tonight is an awful version of the William Tell Ouverture which we fucked up in Switzerland. This song is Italian. You'll like this if you like pizza. Shut up". Before Home On The Range: "So, you wanna know what we do in America, right? This song drives people out there fucking nuts!". Because of the heavy touring Sting had some serious voice problems (listen to the final song: Every Breath You Take). The next night (July 28, 1988) Sting performed at the Inglewood Forum in Los Angeles. During this show also a few rare songs (Idiot Bastard Song, Someone To Watch Over Me and Ne Me Quitte Pas) were added. Does anyone out there have a proper recording of this Inglewood Forum show?... ABOUT THE UNRELEASED OFFICIAL LIVE ALBUM: In 1988/ 1989 there were serious plans to release a live album of (parts of) this show. The artist Robert Gligorov already made artwork for the album. In May 1989 the German magazine "ME Sounds" published an article which contained some of the artwork by Gligorov. The article is included in this torrent! Somehow the whole project was withdrawn by the record company and the official album was never released. ABOUT THE PREVIOUS UNOFFICIAL SOURCES: Although the official live album never saw the light of day, several sources with a recording of the complete show have surfaced over the years. It's not known how this recording got leaked! The first recording appeared on the 3CD-bootleg "The Art of the Heart" (Phantom Red label; RPBX 009/010/011) in October 1992. This recording came from an analog source and has quite a lot of hiss. In 2004 another source appeared on the Japanese 3CD-bootleg "LOS ANGELES 1988" (label: Watchtower). This source doesn't have any hiss and sounds much cleaner compared to "The Art of the Heart" recordings. This bootleg is missing the last 90 seconds of "King of Pain". The splits of the show over the three discs is also different compared to "The Art of the Heart"! ABOUT THIS RECORDING: This "new" source is a major upgrade to all previous sources! It was taken from a DAT-tape (obtained in a trade in the early '90). Source: soundboard > ? > DAT (32 kHz; 3M DDS-90) Lineage: DAT (32 kHz; 3M DDS-90) > Sony DTC-57ES > WAV > Cool Edit Pro > WAV > Trader's Little Helper 2.4.1 (Build 160) > FLAC (level 8) Editing steps: Resampling 32 Khz to 44.1 Khz. Correcting offset, removing dropsout's, editing. On several locations pass band- and stop band, application of 6th order Butterworthfilter. Range +/- 1600 Hz to 1800 Hz Gain +1.6 db. There are a few minor distortions in this recording (which remained unedited): - during the intro of Sister Moon (around 0.10 and 0.21) - during the piano solo of One World (around 3.28) DAT-tape (32 kHz; 3M DDS-90) provided by: "Shoey" (Thanks for this gem!). Editing by: "N.M.H." (Thanks for the 40 to 50 hours of hard work!). Golddigging and research by: JtB. FLAC-ed and seeded by: steepike. Is there anyone out there who has another source of this recording? Maybe a 48 kHz version?... ENJOY AND PLAY IT LOUD!!! Dimeadozen.org: Torrent 413618 (by steerpike)