The Birthday Party - A Social Gathering... Bootleg

The actual name of this bootleg of a radio broadcast in 1982 is "A Social Gathering for the Celebration of the Anniversary of Someone's Birth", it's a stupid long name and it is credited to The Birthday Party AND Lydia Lunch even though all she does is yap a bit on Funhouse. Anyone that has read anything about The Birthday Party knows that they were a live band and their albums really don't live up to seeing them play, I was still listening to my mother singing from inside her belly when they first came to the UK so I, like many of you, have to rely on bootlegs and the great officially realised CD. There is also the incredible "Pleasure Heads Must Burn" video which I won't say much about cause I'm gonna try and find it online and post it some other time.

I first got into Nick Cave when I was 18, I remember the first time I tried playing "From Her To Eternity" I had to turn it off cause it was just noisy noise, it didn't take long for me to get a grip on myself and love it like it should be loved (A Box For Black Paul!!!). I got a shit load more Nick Cave albums before I got The Birthday Party stuff. I had "Junkyard" as my alarm clock CD for about a year, fuck knows what Hasan and Wendy upstairs thought every morning! I used to hear them getting jiggy up there, he was all "ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh" and she was all like "ooh, ohh, ohh" so I reckon they got off lightly, he could barely speak a word of English, I remember hearing her trying to explain Spiderman to him once and he had no idea what she was on about, two 40 year olds, married with no obvious form of communication, making Spiderman noises outside my door, welcome to Swansea...

Anyway, this bootleg was released in 1987 and is from a German radio broadcast in 1982, the gig was in Bremen. The sound quality is good and the content kicks ass, the setlist is pretty short but sweet as a nut:

Big-Jesus-Trash-Can
Dead Joe
The Friend Catcher
A Dead Song
Six-Inch Gold Blade
Junkyard
Hamlet (Pow, Pow, Pow)
Pleasureheads Must Burn
Funhouse (with Lydia Lunch).

Download from any of these links...

http://sharebee.com/027f042d
http://www.badongo.com/file/8832733
http://rapidshare.com/files/107413302/the-birthday-party-a-social-gathering.zip.html
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WUQ3XNGB
http://www.zshare.net/download/10526227c83c9725/

I would suggest that when you click on any of the download links you shout "BLAST OFF! BLAST OFF!!!" at the top of your lungs, it will enhance your enjoyment of the recording tenfold.

There's a load of cool info on The Birthday Party here: http://www.fromthearchives.com/ if you are bored in work.

Ch-ch-check this out too:

Buy The Birthday Party albums on Amazon, the Boxing Duck! gets a percentage of whatever you spend so get your hands in your pockets!

Amazon USA Amazon UK