These are the final two performances of founding member and original guitar player, Gary Marx, with The Sisters of Mercy. The final concert he played was the last night of the UK tour, on April 1st, 1985, at the Top Rank Suite in Brighton. The next day, he performed his very last rite in front of the BBC TV cameras for the Whistle Test, the band turning in rousing renditions of two songs from their first LP.

The Brighton part of this torrent is a flawed, but nevertheless enjoyable soundboard recording taken from discs 2 & 3 of the triple vinyl bootleg set, "Through The Years". I've cleaned it up thoroughly, but here and there some surface noise remains. I chose not to go to extremes in trying to get rid of the extraneous noises, lest I should compromise the sound quality of the actual recording. There's a sample from "Train" that should give you a good idea of what to expect. The performance is excellent throughout, with particular highlights being Amphetamine Logic, the trip down Memory Lane with Floorshow/Alice/Body Electric completely seguing into one another, and the juggernaut ride through Sister Ray/Ghostrider/Louie Louie (too bad the sound quality of the final encore is inferior to the rest of the gig - but still!!! Too bad it's hard to make out whether Gary Marx really did throw his Anaconda-guitar to the stage standing on top of the stacks...)


Top Rank Suite, Brighton
1985-04-01

01. First and Last and Always
02. Body and Soul
03. Train
04. Marian
05. No Time to Cry
06. Possession
07. Walk Away
08. Burn
09. Emma
10. Amphetamine Logic
11. A Rock and a Hard Place
12. Floorshow
13. Alice
14. Body Electric
15. Gimme Shelter

encore 1
16. Knockin' on Heaven's Door

encore 2
17. Sister Ray/Ghostrider/Louie Louie

_________________

The Whistle Test tracks come from a very clean vinyl bootleg 7". Sound quality is excellent and the performances are complete; I have even restored the beginning of First and Last and Always (check out the sample).

Whistle Test Studios, London (BBC TV)
1985-04-02 (transmission 1985-04-04)

01. First and Last and Always
02. Marian

As a bonus I've included video footage of the Whistle Test performance. Because it came with very muffled sound, I have synched the images up with the excellent audio recordings from the bootleg 7" - to very good effect, I might add. The picture quality is great, too (courtesy of Solitude - many thanks, P.!), though occasionally there's some static and picture travelling (but never do sound & vision go out of synch). Also, the beginnings of both tracks and the end of Marian are truncated. Still, there's plenty left to give you a fine impression of the band in full action! See screenshots.

technical data for the mpg-file:

Aspect Ratio: 4x3
Resolution: 704x576
Video Type: Interlaced MPEG2
Video Bitrate: 9.578 Mbps
Audio Type: MPEG Audio
Audio Bitrate: 256 Kbps


Enjoy! (and if anybody has the complete Whistle Test performance to share, feel free to do so...)