The Alarm were musically at their peak as a live band when they toured the Eye of the Hurricane album in 1987 and 1988. There had been some cracks in the band relationships during the making of the album, particularly when it came to selection of material related to how they were working in two separate songwriting factions. They seemed to overcome this as they went on tour. By focusing on the strength of the sound that the four of them created together as a musical unit, it was all brought together on stage.
Why is the show in Boston in April 1988 significant? For one, because it formed the basis for the Electric Folklore Live EP which was released later that year, but also because something very special happened during the band’s performance of Rescue Me. The band shared a moment with their audience that resulted in a particularly passionate speech by Mike Peters that would end up defining the band’s legacy in the eyes of many fans. We’ll get back to that in a bit.
As 1988 got underway, the band was still touring behind their third album Eye of the Hurricane, originally released on 19 October 1987. It did well enough in the charts (#23 in the UK, #77 in the US), but the album was no longer charting at the start of 1988 – a year when the band had planned to tour extensively behind it, especially in America. The band did not have any singles in the charts either at that point, although the second single Rescue Me got some extraordinary exposure in the US due to the song’s appearance on the original soundtrack from the then new TV series 21 Jump Street.
Perhaps the idea of a live EP where Rescue Me was put as the first track was a way to capitalise on this? The record company was keen to boost the band’s presence, and new product had the potential to put them in the music press and create a buzz while they were touring. It might even lead to some chart activity, although expectations were likely moderate as to what a live EP could manage in that particular regard.
What the EP did, however, was showcase the strength of The Alarm as a live band. The performances on Electric Folklore Live are nothing short of phenomenal.
It is one of life’s little mysteries why the record company didn’t just go ahead and release a full length concert album, because the band was in sensational form on this tour.
The EP featured six tracks from their still ongoing Eye of the Hurricane tour: Rescue Me, Strength, Rain In the Summertime, Spirit of 76, Permanence In Change, Blaze of Glory. Three songs from Eye of the Hurricane, two from Strength (the previous album), and one from their debut Declaration. It was the right emphasis – half new material, half older favourites.
The mentioned special moment from this show, fully captured on the EP, arrives in the song Rescue Me. In reality this song was played as the 13th track out of the 18 they played that night. By starting off the EP with it, the EP kicks off straight into a turbo-charged atmosphere where the band is on fire and audience is similarly fired up from the get-go. It certainly starts the EP on a huge note.
The time stamps in the track list is also an indication that the song contains a few more moments than usual. This live version is nearly eight and a half minutes long – more than twice the length of its album counterpart. People might have suspected guitar or drum solos, but would in that case be surprised.
Peters introduces the song with the usual phrase, “You gonna rescue me tonight?” Based on the response, there’s no doubt that they will be trying their best.
The performance of the track itself is incredible – probably the best version I’ve ever heard. The band delivers a high-energy version with extra levels of intensity. Dave Sharp sounds particularly inspired, firing off small licks left and right. Twist also adds lots of drum fills and percussive details, propelling the band on alongside MacDonald who delivers a driving, engaging bass line. The band are on it.
The track develops pretty much as expected at first. The band covers the first few verses and choruses, and the audience is totally into it. The same goes for the band. Everybody in that hall are excited and fired up. Sharp continues to fire off small solo licks before going into a great solo that reflects the excitement of the moment. Peters is in the front clapping and shaking hands. The band gets ready to take the song into its post-solo section.
At that point, a fan throws a jacket up on stage.
Peters walks over to the jacket and picks it up. It is an Alarm fan jacket, featuring the band logo and poppy symbol on the back as well as several patches with references to the band’s music. It had clearly been lovingly crafted out of passion for the band. Throwing it onto the stage was all about the fans showing the band how important their music was to the people who followed them.
Mike Peters looked at the jacket. He seemed very touched by the work that had gone into it, and after a short moment, he spontaneously decided to put it on. He then went to face the part of the crowd where the jacket came from.
The rest of the band kept playing behind him, sensing that a cool fan interaction moment might be unfolding. They were keyed into it and kept things going with no faltering of hesitation.
Who knows if Mike Peters had planned to go out into the crowd. This was always a possibility with Mike, but the decision would always come out of the moment. If it felt right, it could happen. Just as the audience sought a closeness with the band, the band sought to get close to their audience. That night saw a genuine moment of breaking down the barriers between performer and audience.
Peters said, “Do you think that I could become one of you tonight with this song? Can I come in there?” We can hear the band playing away while the audience gets excited.
With that, Mike Peters jumps into the crowd. The audience would lift Peters up, carrying him above them, giving him a few moments of crowd surfing.
Afterwards, still in the audience, Mike Peters would stand among the fans, get his hands on a microphone, and talk about the importance for himself and the band to have that kind of connection with their fans. He says:
“You know… with everything we’ve ever done, it’s always been to try and bring us as close as it’s humanly possible with the people who come and see The Alarm.”
The crowd cheers. Peters smiles, but there is also a seriousness there as he has more on his mind. Previously on this tour, he has spoken about how the music he hears on the radio in 1988 doesn’t resonate with him. After coming to America, he had used a quote by Woody Guthrie to explain how he felt. This evening, he expanded on it, and gave it an emotional heft that took it to another level.
“I’ve always believed, and they say it here in America, that music should be by the people, for the people and of the people.
And something… when I turn on the radio in this… in 1988, I just don’t feel anything off the music anymore.
It reminds me of something Woodie Guthrie once said in 1945:
I hate a song that makes you feel like you’re no good.
I hate a song that makes you feel like you’re born to lose, makes you feel like you’re bound to lose.
Makes you feel like you’re nobody and you’re no good to nobody. You’re too thin or you’re too fat, you’re too old or you’re too young, you’re too this, or you’re too that.
I’m out to fight those songs with every ounce of breath in my body!
Because I’ve always believed that the future of rock’n’roll is gonna come from the people. And the people tonight are the future of rock’n’roll!
The speech is passionate. You can hear something in Peters’ voice as he speaks that is missing from other speeches on the tour, and it’s definitely missing if you read this emotionless transcript without feeling the words as they were spoken there and then. It’s a speech that needs to be listened to rather than read. He tapped into something unique. He is speaking directly to the people who are there and feeding back from them. More than that, it speaks directly to anyone listening to the recording, which does an excellent job of capturing the energy and excitement of the moment. The moment is brought alive again to anyone listening to it.
At the conclusion of the speech, Peters launches a call-and-answer section with the fans, dancing around with them. As Dave Sharp launches into yet another guitar solo, Peters finally climbs back on stage, having spent several minutes out there with the audience.
The band do a few more outro chorus repeats, and finally wrap up the song after nearly eight and a half minutes.
Mike Peters’ speech is incredible. A lot of the credit needs to go to Woody Guthrie, whose words still ring true all these years later, but the way Peters delivers them is easily as important as the words themselves.
It becomes interesting to look at Guthrie’s original quote in this discussion. It comes from a script that Guthrie wrote and used during a time when he had a 15 minute radio show on the WNEW radio station in New York. His show ran for a 12 week period in 1944-45, and the quote became something of a mission statement for his radio show where he talked and sang songs.
During one of his broadcasts, Guthrie said the following, of which at least the first part should be recognisable: “I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.”
At this stage, Guthrie was 32-33 years old, and had made a name for himself especially in California in the late 1930s and in New York in the early 1940s, where he was championed by the ubiquitous-promoter-of-anything-folk Alan Lomax (who had recently turned Lead Belly into a sensation).
By 1944-45, he was established in New York folk music circles, had put out the iconic Dust Bowl Ballads album, and had been recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. He had become a very important voice and the mentioned quote was well known and (partly) repeated by many.
In other words, Mike Peters and The Alarm are far from the only people who have quoted Guthrie’s speech, but it was starting to become less known at that point. Peters obviously did not repeat the full speech, and what Peters used was tweaked and paraphrased somewhat to fit the message he is trying to get across, but he does not betray the meaning behind the original statement. He gives it new life in the setting he was in – a thriving rock concert in the latter half of the 1980s. The words were no less relevant some 43 years later at the time, and are still relevant 35 years later (as I type this). Those words will likely always ring very true, as long as music is created.
The Alarm always seemed to have a speech during Rescue Me during the Eye of the Hurricane tour. At first it did not contain the Guthrie quote and was generally shorter and less developed than it would turn out to be, but it kept developing and would get sections added to it or replaced as Peters figured out what worked and how to best say what he wanted to express.
An early example from the UK tour at the Apollo in Manchester (2 February 1988) reveals a much more tentative delivery. Peters starts with “There’s something that’s been bugging me. It’s 1988. We’re in 1988, and whenever I turn on the radio and the TV, and I hear the music that is being made by the groups in the charts in 1988. What is it? It’s like all the bands, they’re all computerized and synthesized. They just don’t come out to play any gigs any more. And me, I come to rock, to Manchester. Tonight I am looking for the future of rock’n’roll. And I know where it is. The future of rock’n’roll is out there tonight.”
The first thing we notice is that the speech is significantly shorter. It comes at around the same point in Rescue Me, but there is no build-up and does not tap into a particularly special moment. Peters seems to go into the speech cold, with little build-up, which is hard to do. There are no Woody Guthrie references yet, and no mention about songs that made you feel bad, unwanted, or too anything. This would come later, possibly in time for the American shows.
It has always been more true to The Alarm to attack negativity with positivity rather than having a go at other genres that people may or may not like. The “computerized and synthesized” line does not come across too genuine, and hasn’t aged well either, but I think we all understand what he was trying to say. Fortunately he found a better way of saying it.
In 2000, the Electric Folklore Live EP was remastered by Mike Peters and expanded into a full live album, finally doing what they should have done all those years ago. Unfortunately we’re not getting the full and complete Boston gig, which has been high on my wantlist ever since the EP was released. In fact, no additional songs from the Boston gig are used, which I take to mean that the recordings simply weren’t available. Instead, Peters used eight additional tracks from The Vic Theatre in Chicago, recorded on 15 December 1987, to create an approximation of a full show. There seems to be a thought behind the track listing, possibly placing them in the order they had in the show back then, so the EP tracks are spread out amongst the others. This is unproblematic sonically as they all sound similar and blend well – possibly a reason why the Chicago show was chosen.
The reissue still acknowledges the special moment contained in Rescue Me. The full centre spread of the CD booklet contains a framed stage image which includes a timeline showing how everything unfolded. This timeline is respectfully reproduced here:
Timeline for Rescue Me
0:00 Rescue Me begins
1:05 First Chorus
2:05 Dave Sharp guitar solo
2:50 Rescue Me re-intro
3:16 Mike Peters picks up Alarm jacket throw onto the stage by fan
3:38 Jumps off the stage into the audience
4:00 Held up above the crowd by fans
4:11 Speech
5:01 Mike Peters quotes Woody Guthrie
5:56 Speech
6:11 Audience call and answer
6:39 Dave Sharp guitar solo, Mike Peters climbs back onto the stage
6:58 Outro Chorus
8:20 Rescue Me ends
After the memorable show in Boston, the band only had a further four dates left of their current North American tour, which ended in early May. The band would go home for a short break, but returned to America in June to go on tour with Bob Dylan as his special guests for a few months until August 1988. Dylan is obviously someone else who has quoted Woodie Guthrie at several points in his career, and was in many ways seen as his heir apparent when he first started out in the early 1960s.
The Alarm would be on the road with Dylan for two solid months, even appearing with him on stage a few times. Twist later stated that they learnt a lot from Dylan – including how to play Knocking On Heaven’s Door in a different key every time. Dylan was (and is) infamous for changing things around continuously, frequently just calling out the key he wants any given song to be played in on that day before starting it. His band has always needed to pay attention and be able to follow those leads.
Electric Folklore Live was given a spiritual successor in 2020 with the release of Celtic Folklore Live. Released for Record Store Day, this release is a vinyl live album from the 1988 Eye of the Hurricane tour. There is no Rescue Me in sight on Celtic Folklore Live, which in fact only features songs not already represented on the expanded 2000 release of Electric Folklore Live. In other words, what we get is ten new songs from this particular tour, the first five being from Hammersmith Odeon, London on 9 Feb 1988 and the rest from the Cabaret in San Jose, California on 17 March 1988.
The best way to look at this release is as a companion piece to what we already have rather than a new or upgraded version. As that it really succeeds, giving us even more recorded work from what probably is the best tour that the original version of The Alarm did.
I still have hope that those complete Boston tapes will be found and/or used to create a release for a complete, unedited show. Maybe one day…
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