Live in Tokyo (1985) (2003 - audio)Vocals: Geoff Tate
Guitars/Vocals; Chris DeGarmo
Guitars/Vocals: Michael Wilton
Bass/Vocals: Eddie Jackson
Drums: Scott Rockenfield
Remember in the post about
The Warning, where we talked about Queensryche completing the sessions for the album and heading to Japan? Those shows were captured for what would become the band's first live concert recording,
Live in Tokyo. The dates were Aug. 4 and Aug. 5, 1984, at Nihon Seinen-kan in Tokyo. The band also performed Aug. 7, 1984, at Mainichi Hall in Osaka, Japan. It is unknown whether that show was recorded.
Not surprisingly, given the year, there is a huge lack of information on this release. It was put out officially on VHS, and later on laserdisc in Japan, and the video has been out-of-print ever since. While there are a bunch of pirated versions on DVD and even Blu-ray, for the most part, most of those were taken from the VHS release, which we'll discuss here.
Live in Tokyo captures Queensryche performing some of its first headline shows as a band (they did a couple on the EP tour). The staging is fairly primitive, with a big “Q” and “R” set up. Setlist-wise, the band performed the following:
NM 156
Prophecy
Deliverance
The Lady Wore Black
Warning
Before The Storm
No Sanctuary
Child Of Fire
Nightrider
En Force
Roads To Madness
Take Hold Of The Flame
Queen Of The Reich
See
www.anybodylistening.net/8-4-84.html.
However, the tracklist for the release is the following:
Nightrider
Prophecy
Deliverance
Child of Fire
En Force
Blinded
The Lady Wore Black
Warning
Take Hold of the Flame
Queen of the Reich
Knowing that, when you watch the video, you can absolutely tell where the edits happen. The performance speaks for itself. It's not as tight as people have come to expect of Queensryche, but it really showcases the band's energy. There is some debate whether both shows in Tokyo or both were recorded, and what was used in the final video release. But other than that, not much else is known about the release.
The audio from
Live in Tokyo was remastered and re-released in 2003 as an addition to the Queensryche
EP. Unfortunately, it was just the
Live in Tokyo tracks, and not the full show. But unless Capitol has the full video and audio recording and has a lucrative reason to put them out, it is highly unlikely in my opinion it will ever surface officially.
As an aside, I have both the Aug. 4, and Aug. 7 shows as bootlegs. At least on the audience recordings, there's nothing amiss with how the band performed the songs left off the Live in Tokyo release. However, that doesn't meant there wasn't something wrong with the pro-recorded audio/video, of course.
Next up...the mighty
Rage for Order...