U2
Cow Palace
Daly City, CA
April 25, 1987
JEMS Master
24/96 Audio DVD

Gear: Teac M-100 mic (same as Nakamichi 300) > Sony Walkman D6-C

Transfer: Maxell UD-XLII master cassette > Nakamichi 670ZX azimuth-adjusted transfer (February 2008) > Nakamichi NR-200 external Dolby noise reduction processor > Wavelab 24/96 capture > Audio DVD Creator

Cool edit pro extract audio from DVD> convert 44.1 @ 999> WAV

01 Where the Streets Have No Name (microphone rumble at start)
02 I Will Follow
03 Trip Through Your Wires
04 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
05 MLK
06 The Unforgettable Fire
07 Bullet the Blue Sky
08 Running to Stand Still
09 Exit
10 In God's Country
11 Sunday Blood Sunday
12 The Electric Co.
13 Bad
14 October
15 Springhill Mining Disaster (AKA "The Ballad of Springhill," written by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger)
16 New Year's Day
17 Pride (In the Name of Love)
18 Mothers of the Disappeared
19 With or Without You
20 40

Special shows deserve special releases, take 2.

As I wrote with the release of the April 24 show, over the years we've had many requests to transfer and torrent our Cow Palace '87 masters. These shows are among the best U2 shows I ever saw and I'm not sure the 25th--this night--was ever topped. Our ol' pal Mark Persic was also there and his tapes are excellent. Ours are too.

Night two was recorded from behind the stage on Edge's side, the result of a ticket miracle I outlined in the notes for the first night. There were speakers aimed at us behind the stage and the distance between us and the PA was short, hence the quality of this recording. Having seen many of my favorite bands play multiple nights at the same venue, I've noticed a trend where people tend to favor the show where they had the best seats. So you have to know that if I consider this to be the greatest U2 show I ever witnessed and I was sitting behind the stage, it must have been something special. The surprise inclusions of "Springhill Mining Disaster" and "Mothers of the Disappeared" were obvious highlights, but the whole night glided on a plane of its own. In the comments left on the April 24 torrent, someone noted that the band had just hit number one, was on the cover of Time magazine, etc. and this stand might truly have been their coronation as the best band in the world at that moment.

Anyway, we've been very pleased with the response to the release of these master transfers in the 24/96 Audio DVD format (see below for the explanation on what it is and how it works). Thanks for all the comments. We love reading them.

Enjoy Cow Palace '87 Second Night.

Butterking for JEMS

AUDIO DVD NOTES (REPEATED FROM APRIL 24 TORRENT): When we started planning to transfer the masters anew a few months ago we figured it might be wise to do a 24/96 capture to preserve this for future uses and to get the most out of the masters while they are still playing back without issues. Burning to DVD Audio would preserve the 24/96 fidelity for playback, but for those of you who know about DVD Audio, the quality is amazing, but the problem is that you need a DVD player that is specially enabled to play the DVD Audio format and many players aren't.

We had long looked for a solution that would allow us to burn a high-resolution 24/96 DVD that could play back in any DVD player. That's when we stumbled across a cool little program that does just that: Audio DVD Creator.

With this program you can author a gapless, 24/96 audio disc playable in any DVD player, a true high-fidelity disc that holds nearly four times the digital information of a standard CD. You can't hear these masters in any better quality than this.

And as it yields a standard VIDEO_TS file, it burns just like a regular DVD. The one small concession is that while you can skip track to track, the authored disc CANNOT be fast-forwarded or rewound. Don't know why. But it seems a small concession.

I'm sure some of you will want us to do a standard audio version, at 44.1 and ready for CD burning. And at some point we will so please don't post asking for it.. But we thought these shows and recordings deserved the higher quality presentation and the format might encourage you to listen on a real stereo, not just your computer.

AGAIN, JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: THIS IS A 24/96 AUDIO ONLY DVD AND YOU CAN BURN IT AND PLAY IT JUST LIKE ANY OTHER NORMAL DVD YOU DOWNLOAD FROM HERE.