Today I want to share with you one of the rarest Goo Goo Dolls concerts out there. Why rare? Because anything that is 1992, 1994, or 1997 is extremely hard to find.
A user on YouTube uploaded this show in January 2023. The band performed in their native town at the Edgefest on June 28th, 1997. This was a memorable concert, just look at the track listing. Most notably, their longtime friend and collaborator Lance Diamond was present and sang with them on three tunes.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of small issues with this release. I will talk about them further down this post. For now, let’s briefly analyze the concert:
- A total of 22 songs, clocking in at almost 90 minutes of music
- To my knowledge, this is the first and only show where they opened with “Lazy Eye“
- Lance Diamond joins them on stage for three songs: A David Bowie cover, a Psychedelic Furs cover, and a Prince cover which originally appears on their 1990’s album “Hold Me Up”
On YouTube it exists a video of this performance, specifically the one for the Psychedelic Furs songs. Watch it below. Quality is really scarce, but this is one of the rarest material one could find hence worth enjoying despite the lack of visual emancipation.
Now, onto the disappointing part. I was very excited and curious when I noticed someone had uploaded a 1997 show. The problem with uploading stuff to YouTube is that its compressing algorithms tend to reduce both the audio and video quality of a given file. As a consequence, the final outcome, in a way or another, is always lesser than the original files. Therefore, I got in touch with the uploader and asked them if they were willing to share with the fans the original files, in order to distribute among them the best possible quality available. The poster asked for money (lol).
So, in the end I decided to utilize a program that can extract the audio of a YouTube video. This resulted in three negative outcomes:
- Because this process is basically a rip (conversion) of an already compressed (converted) audio material, quality is further deteriorated
- The resulting rip ends up as a long, single audio file. In order to preserve quality as much as possible, I decided not to doctor it in any way. Consequently, you will download a single, long file featuring the entire concert, rather than 22 files each featuring a song
- The file I created with the rip is a .m4a file, which is quite uncommon and may not play on certain players. Again, I opted not to convert it to an .mp3 one in order to avoid further deterioration. Remember: each conversion deteriorates the overall quality
At the end of the day, unless you own a very good, top notch audio system, I doubt you will notice that many differences between the version uploaded on YouTube and the one I ripped and distributed with the download links below. If you’re an audiophile like me, you may complain a little. Until we get our hands on a better, original copy of the show, this is what we can enjoy. Nevertheless, like I mentioned above, we are dealing with amazing and rare material.
You can listen to the whole show below. Download links are provided as well. On a final note, thanks a lot to the original poster for unearthing this piece of history with all the Goo fans worldwide.
TRACK LISTING:
- Lazy Eye
- Hey
- Lucky Star
- Fallin’ Down
- Somethin’ Bad
- Eyes Wide Open
- Flat Top
- Long Way Down
- Only One
- String Of Lies
- We Are the Normal
- Impersonality
- Cuz You’re Gone
- Name
- Modern Love (David Bowie Cover) – Featuring Lance Diamond
- Heartbreak Beat (Psychedelic Furs Cover) – Featuring Lance Diamond
- Never Take the Place of Your Man (Prince Cover) – Featuring Lance Diamond
- Naked
- Burnin’ Up
- Disconnected
- Another Second Time Around
- Girl Right Next to Me
Temple Of Goo - The rarest Goo Goo Dolls releases, for real Goo fans only 