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Daniel's Collection

Suicide   06/03/1978

Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, ON
Source The SF Tapes Volume Six via JEMS

(Likely) Recording Gear: Sony TC-110 and Unknown Microphone

JEMS Transfer: Master Cassette > Nakamichi RX-505 azimuth-adjusted playback > Sound Devices USBPre2 > Audacity 3.1 capture > iZotope RX10 Advanced and Ozone 9 > FLAC
Checksums ;flac fingerprints generated by xACT 2.56 on 2026-01-24 21:56:04 +0000

01 Rocket U.S.A.flac:505a8786e4d200b93611aaa4d72961a5
02 96 Tears.flac:938baf41607edc9556d342520f16e827
03 Ghost Rider.flac:18123c13eca8c2e322ba6fdcaf6bde93
04 Harlem.flac:7cc5263fbc77cb1a4be17d54ad1d9d26

#MD5 checksums generated by xACT 2.56 on 2026-01-24 21:55:57 +0000

fa207662471bf2cc9683a42a6210522a *01 Rocket U.S.A.flac
bb91cf9b32b888808ecc00e073a05fe5 *02 96 Tears.flac
5568707c8832b80c827acbac267b7adc *03 Ghost Rider.flac
5a6f707a0939255e5ac2209457e855ae *04 Harlem.flac
Media
Notes Suicide, Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, ON, June 3, 1978

What is sure to be one of the rarest recordings to emerge from the SF tapes is this 20 minute capture of legendary post-punk electronic duo Suicide. Vocalist Alan Vega had a huge influence on Bruce Springsteen in the Nebraska era and the film Deliver Me From Nowhere depicts Springsteen listening to Suicide's song "Frankie Teardrop."

There are but a handful of known recordings of Suicide from their seminal years and even those that have been officially released are to my ears arguably inferior quality to SF's brief capture. Samples provided.

The four songs taped here include "Rocket U.S.A." and "Ghost Rider" from their debut album, plus a cover of "96 Tears" which was often part of the set, and what seems to be an early version of "Harlem" with a lot of different lyrics. The track would come out on Suicide's second album in 1980.

The Horseshoe Tavern has been a music venue in Toronto going back to the 1940s, and surely this had to be one of the stranger sets ever performed there. I'm not sure how popular this recording will prove to be, but we're thrilled to add another document to the slim history of this pioneering duo

Once again we say R.I.P. and express our gratitude to SF for taping these concerts in the first place and special thanks to ML for making this collection available to JEMS for preservation and distribution. Slipkid68 has been on point coordinating the series. He also handled some of the tape transfers and wrote the introduction to the series above. We'd also like to thank Professor Goody for helping as always with pitch adjustment and to mjk5510 for post production.

BK for JEMS
Tech Notes Known Faults: Unclear if this is the complete performance
Microphones Unknown Microphone
Trades Allowed Yes
Owned by Daniel · Last Updated Feb 5, 2026