Tom Waits
WESU Radio Special
Disk 1
1. Virginia Avenue
9/21/73
“Folk Scene” KPFK Radio
Los Angeles, CA
2. Semi Suite Intro
3. Semi Suite
1/11/74
Folk Arts Rare Records
San Diego, CA
4. Heart of Saturday Night Intro
11/16/73
Folk Arts Rare Records
San Diego, CA
5. Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night
1/11/74
Folk Arts Rare Records
San Diego, CA
6. Please Call Me Baby
10/8/74
Ebbets Field
Denver, CO
7. Joking with Frank Zappa
11/9/74
Orpheum Theatre
Boston, MA:
8. Fumblin With the Blues
1/12/75
“Folk Scene” KPFK Radio
Los Angeles, CA
9. Nighthawk Postcards From Easy Street
2/19/75
Ebbets Field
Denver, CO
10. Car Stories
4/22/75
Bottom Line
New York City
11. Ol 55
4/22/75
Bottom Line
New York City
12. Shiver Me Timbers
13. Better Off Without a Wife Intro
14. Better Off Without a Wife
12/3/75
Ebbets Field
Denver, CO
15. Emotional Weather Report
1/3/76
The Main Point
Bryn Mawr, PA
Disk 2
1. Saturday Night Fish Fry
2. Diamonds on My Windshield
5/26/76
Hotel L’American
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
3. Bad Liver Intro
4. Bad Liver and a Broken Heart
10/2/76
West Chester Jazz Festival, West Chester University
West Chester, PA
5. Eggs and Sausage Intro
6. Eggs and Sausage
7. Ghosts of Saturday Night
11/9/76
Shaboo Inn
Willimantic, CT
8. Midnight Lullaby
9. The One That Got Away
4/26/77
Post Aula
Bremen, West Germany
10. Muriel
11. Jack and Neal
10/10/77
My Father’s Place
Rosslyn, Long Island, NY
12. I Never Talk To Strangers
13. Step Right Up
10/24/77
Agora Ballroom
Cleveland, OH
14. New Coat of Paint
2/17/78
California Theatre
San Diego, CA
Disk 3
1. Small Change
2/17/78
California Theatre
San Diego, CA
2. I Wish I Was In New Orleans
3. When The Saints Go Marching In
4. Since I Fell For You
5. Christmas Card From a Hooker In Minneapolis
6. Burma Shave
7. Tom Traubert’s Blues
5/2/79
State Theatre
Sydney, Australia
8. Invitation Intro
10/24/77
Agora Ballroom
Cleveland, OH
9. Invitation to the Blues
10. Eggs and Sausage
7/3/81 Expo Theatre
Montreal
Quebec, Canada
11. Looking For the Heart of Saturday Night
10/8/79
Uptown Theatre
Kansas City, MO
themidnightcafe.org 
Pretty good collection. I think a couple of the dates are incorrect, but the quality is pretty good. A couple of the songs are from shows I have but not in as good condition.
What the…? Is this from an FM broadcast. Forgive my ignorance but I’ve never heard of WESU. It’s basically a few trax from most of the classic Tom boots of the 70s, pretty much all of which I have in complete form.
Not knocking it or anything, just wondering if it’s from some kind of illicit student radio broadcast or something. Over here we have no tradition of broadcasting ROIO trax at all. I remember one or two jocks having a go at smuggling the odd track in here and there back in the 80s and 90s. Never amounted to much and soon died out (or got stamped on by some fretting exec!)
Anybody know anything about this?
WESU is a college station. I don’t know how it works in the UK, but here universities often have their own radio stations and anymore those about the only places not overtaken by giant corporations who play the same songs over and over and over again.
I got this from someone who recently contacted me wanting to share a bunch of shows he has taped. Obviously he didn’t tape this, but if I understood him correctly he is a DJ for that college station and compiled this collection of songs for his show. Included in the download is a web page that includes more notes on the selections and why he chose them.
Thanks Mat, the way it works here is that pretty much nobody but the BBC and a few private commercial ‘media groups’ have their own radio station! Leaving aside a few internal hospital stations (not recommended) and the true pirates with FM aerials on top of old public housing apartment blocks that’s it! There is no tradition of local true community FM stations. The UK was much later than the US in going to FM at all.
This is the reason I love my RadioSure pc app so much. That’s the one the corps worked so hard to get taken down from all the net download sites. The thing that really gets them is that you can pick up 32,000 global stations without having to navigate their dreadful home pages or use their dreadful embedded ‘radio players’ or be cookied and tracked. Of course it also allows rec, but i’ve never been interested in that. Just like to listen to dedicated roots and jazz stations etc in the early hours of the morning. It’s surprising how many you can find streaming at 192, 256 or even 320kb/s, that’s way better that than dab radio in sound qual terms, never mind the vastly superior content!
Anyway, thanks for clearing that up. I guess they are boot pre-FM kind of!
I have a lot of live Tom Waits and I really enjoyed this collection. Highly recommended for the casual listener and essential for the fans IMO.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Mat.