The Darkness Tour Rehearsal Upgrade

Recordings from the May 19, 1978 rehearsals for the Darkness tour have circulated since the late ‘70s in various forms. The essential collector resource Brucebase lists no fewer than 36 known songs rehearsed that day and recorded by ambient microphones set up somewhere in the house to presumably provide the band or crew with reference tapes of the performances.

It seems fair to say that the versions of those recordings traded, burned to disc and posted all these years have been mediocre at best, suffering from considerable hiss, pitch problems and overall varying fidelity to the point where listening was a bit of a chore. If you’re like me, you’ve played this stuff once, maybe twice, registered it in your mind, and very likely never played it again.

This might change that. In the wake of the passing of our partner Jared (the J in JEMS), the JEMS Archive has moved south, giving me the opportunity/burden of going through thousands of tapes. Why this particular DAT jumped out at me, I’m not sure, but I’m very glad I played it. While only running a little over an hour, this recording of the Darkness rehearsals is a material sonic upgrade to any version I had heard prior, to the point where I felt I was hearing these renditions for the first time. This tape now feels like a solid audience recording of the proceedings, clearer and fuller fidelity without a lot of hiss in the way or pitch problems.

As I started to research what was on this tape vs. what’s logged on Brucebase, I recognized that it contained what I might call the sweet spot of the rehearsals, including the three-song run of at-the-time unreleased songs, “Spanish Eyes,” “The Brokenhearted” and “The Way.” It also contains a previously undocumented version of “Rosalita” from the rehearsals, along with a previously unknown bit of piano playing that seems to vaguely echo several songs of the era. Let us know what you think it sounds like.

Unmercifully, the stunning performance of “The Promise” is cut here, but what is there is stunning.

It’s all quite fun to hear, from the bit of samba noodling before “Candy’s Room” to a heartfelt “The Promised Land” that closes things up. Samples provided.

Thanks to Jared for obtaining this recording in the first place and preserving it on DAT for me to find decades later. His original notes say he did a lot of work on the tape with outboard Dolby units and EQ. We thank him for that. We also thank mjk5510 for his continuing role in post-production support on nearly all JEMS releases.

R.I.P. Jared

BK for JEMS