STING : THE SOUL CAGES CONCERT EXTENDED

Disc One

  1. Intro
  2. All This Time
  3. Jeremiah Blues (Part 1)
  4. Mad About You
  5. Why Should I Cry For You ?
  6. Roxanne
  7. Bring On The Night
  8. When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around
  9. King Of Pain

Disc Two

  1. Fortress Around Your Heart
  2. The Wild Wild Sea
  3. The Soul Cages
  4. When The Angels Fall
  5. Purple Haze
  6. Games Without Frontiers (Peter Gabriel)
  7. My Special Child (Sinead O'Connor)
  8. Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel & Sinead O'Connor)
  9. Walking On The Moon
  10. Message In A Bottle
  11. Fragile

Label : This Place Records

Venue : Statenhal, Den Haag, The Netherlands

Date : May 9th, 1991

Quality : soundboard recording (A+)

Comments : On May 9, 1991, Sting's concert in Den Haag was recorded and filmed for a future video release. During that show, after having performed Purple Haze, Sting invited his "tennis partner" Peter Gabriel on stage, to perform Games Without Frontiers. Sinead O'Connor then came to sing My Special Child, and Peter Gabriel came back to perform his hit Don't Give Up with O'Connor singing the female vocals (that Kate Bush sang on the studio version). The appearance of Peter Gabriel and Sinead O'Connor as guests was arranged in order to raise money for the Red Cross during a big charity event that was scheduled 3 days later, for the Kurdish refugees. This charity show was called "The Simple Truth" and reunited a lot of artists, some of them performing live in Wembley, others (like Sting) being represented by the broadcast of live performances filmed some time before. On the evening of May 12, during "The Simple Truth" event (broadcast on TV and FM radio in different European countries), four songs filmed during the May 9 show in Den Haag were broadcast: the 3 songs with Gabriel and O'Connor, and Purple Haze. In November that year, "The Soul Cages Concert" video was released in VHS and LaserDisc format. It featured most of the show performed in Den Haag on May 9, but curiously the appearances of Gabriel and O'Connor were not included. The present 2-CD set is an extended audio version of the concert released in VHS and LaserDisc in 1991 (it has never been released in DVD), adding the 3 songs with Peter Gabriel and Sinead O'Connor from "The Simple Truth" broadcast and injecting them in their correct place in the show, right after Purple Haze. The original soundtrack from the LaserDisc was a bit dry and harsh, therefore a careful remastering was done in order to have a warmer, more natural sound. A dozen small audio drop-outs that were present on the LaserDisc were manually corrected (it can be noted that some songs from the concert were also available in CD format on various 1993 and 1994 CD singles, but they had the same drop-outs). Last but not least, a bad edit occurring during Why Should I Cry For You was slightly improved (this edit was apparently done on the video release in order to delete a part when Sting performed an extract from If I Were A Carpenter). The 3 songs from the FM broadcast were also carefully remastered, in order to attenuate FM noise and avoid the "bassy" sound of the original broadcast. All FM broadcasts from these songs suffered from an annoying high frequency whistling that appeared at the end of Games Without Frontiers and lasted until the end of the broadcast. This whistling noise was removed. This release comes just in time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of this historical concert. Enjoy!