The "August 25, 1993" promo CD - Cry Of Love Live

John Custer explains the credits on the Cry of Love - Promo CD, titled August 25th, 1993 which has the following liner notes:

August 25, 1993 was a special night. Cry Of Love went into the studios in New York for the first of what is now known around the industry as a “ColumbiaCast.” Eleven stations from around the country were selected to participate based on their enthusiasm for this brand new rock band from Raleigh, North Carolina. …Cry Of Love performed nearly 35 songs and was totally exhausted. Our reward for the night was the news that “Peace Pipe,” the band’s first release, went #1 on all the album rock charts that evening as well…

Cry Of Love's promotional CD entitled, "August 25, 1993" is made up of four very cool tracks. The first three (1.Bad Thing, 2. Peace Pipe & 3. Aint Too Superstitious) were recorded LIVE at SONY Studios in NYC on August 25, 1993. Those three live tracks were produced by Mike Maketansky and engineered by Mike Scott. I believe these performances were being broadcast LIVE on a national radio show as they went down... now that's balls! Later, BROTHER engineer Steve Melton, Kelly, Audley and I mixed these tracks at Muscle Shoals Sound for use on the "August 25, 1993" promo cd.

Track four ...."4. Too Cold In The Winter (acoustic)".... was recorded in JAG Studios in Raleigh, North Carolina (can't remember if we did this pre or post-BROTHER). I produced and engineered that one. Amazing acoustic playing by Audley on that track. The guy doing the band's intro ("ladies and gnnnn-umen, Cry Uhvv Luuuv...") is Pepper Keenan from Corrosion Of Conformity. Hilarious!

The "Byron and Joy" in the SPECIAL THANKS column were the owners of JAG Studios where I developed Cry Of Love and funk band DAG from 1989 to 1992 and recorded lots of other tracks including "Lord Of This World" by C.O.C. for the Black Sabbath tribute CD, Nativity In Black and Mike Dean's performance on "Access Babylon" for Dave Grohl's Probot CD in 2002) We also recorded "Diamonds And Debris" there at Jag... and "Shade Tree" and a short piece called "Death Bed" The studio owners' full names are Byron McCay and Joy Cook. Very cool people.

Q. The notes indicate 35 tunes?! WOW, were these circulated at all?

"The notes indicate 35 tunes" but not 35 separate tunes, as I recall.

I THINK I remember the circumstances of the August 25, 1993 taping/broadcast, although I wasn't there. As I recall, Cry Of Love set up in Sony Studios in New York and played absolutely LIVE over the airwaves to radio audiences... and possibly answered callers' questions, as well. But I don't think they performed 35 different songs. I believe that the performances had to be repeated a number of times (11, maybe?) for different radio stations in different time zones and so on. So, it wasn't 35 different songs but a SET made up of maybe four to eight songs (I'm just guessing) repeated over and over for the different broadcasts to the different stations all over America. It takes a great band to pull something like this off and they most certainly did. That's what I recall. Some of my numbers might be off, though.

Information provided by John Custer on 21/06/2005