In 1996, a friend and I had heard about a Magnetic Fields show happening in Chicago. They were flying in from NY for one show and this was the first time that Magnetic Fields had come anywhere close to the midwest, so there was no way we were going to miss it. The morning of the show, we hopped in the car and set out on the 6 hour drive from Minneapolis to Chicago. When we made it down there and got to the club, we found out that Stephin Merritt had gotten sick so they canceled the show. Heartbroken, we went back to our friend’s house and decided to just stay the weekend and go record shopping instead.
The next day, we wake up and head out to Chicago’s best record store, Reckless Records. When we get there, I see that Jessamine is doing an in-store later that afternoon so we decided to hang around and see them play. I had a couple of 7″s (the one on Silver Apple and the one on Sub Pop with the rivet through the middle) so I was familiar with them I had no idea what to expect. Luckily I grabbed my tape recorder and recorded the show. This past weekend I finally got around to digitizing it and here’s one of the tracks. It’s not the best recording, but I doubt you’re going to find too many live Jessamine shows out there.
[audio: http://thesoundofindie.com/archive/2006/20061011/Jessamine-UnknownTrack.mp3|titles=Step Down (Live) |artists=Jessamine]
Download: Jessamine – Step Down (Live)
This is “Step Down” from the freaking awesome album The Long Arm of Coincidence. Nice version, thanks for making it available.