Introduction: Maybe you know the feeling - you traded for a new bootleg, and you are getting excited about hearing something new. One day it arrives in the mail and you discover it's something you already have! The trader mislabeled his bootleg and you are stuck with no recourse and a show already in your collection. What to do? This is where this guide comes in; in here I dissect some of the most enduring and problematic of mislabeled recordings. PLEASE read this guide before you continue on to browsing through the rest of the Live Guide! The mislabeled dates are on top and the correct dates are where it's marked "correct date".

10/24/89 Providence vs. 10/29/89 Providence
Correct date: 10/29/89.
How we can can be sure: Somewhere sitting in a pile of old documents at my folks' house is an advertisement for Louder Than Love and its subsequent tour. Listed are all tour dates from 10/20/89 through 12/16/89. It's really a cool advertisement; there's this stoner dude exclaiming "I came in for XXXX (don't remember who) and I left with Soundgarden!". There is still a chance that the Providence date is 10/24/89 as they were in New York City on 10/26/89, but personally, I'm about 96% sure the correct date is 10/29/89.

11/xx/91 Toronto vs. 1/16/92 Toronto
Correct date: 1/16/92.
How we can can be sure: This one is understandable. As the setlist leans heavily on Badmotorfinger material, it would be easy to mistake this for a 1991 show. However...it just isn't. We know they played the Spectrum in Toronto on 1/16/92; we know it was videotaped; there are even magazine reviews of the show that with snippets of dialogue that match what's on this video. Enough said.


7/13/92 Seattle vs. 7/22/92 Bremerton
Correct date: 7/22/92 [Bremerton, WA, USA].
How we can can be sure: The official Lollapalooza 1992 schedule confirms this one. I don't know why this mislabel is so common.


8/02/92 Tinley Park vs. 9/08/92 Phoenix
Correct date: 8/02/92 [Tinley Park, IL, USA] - poorly circulated ANA audience, even rarer audience AMT VID
Correct date: 9/08/92 [Phoenix, AZ, USA] - "Lollapalooza 1992" factory-pressed bootleg
How we can can be sure: The official Lollapalooza 1992 schedule confirms the schedule. We know "Lollapalooza 1992" is Phoenix because the PA announcer addresses the audience as "Phoenix" at the beginning of the show. The real 8/02/92 recording remains difficult to track down.


8/11/93 Rapid City - official live tracks
Correct date: 8/18/93 [Toronto, ON, Canada].
How we can can be sure: The recordings of "Beyond The Wheel" and "Jesus Christ Pose" on the "Black Hole Sun" CD2 are only labeled as "recorded live in Sturgis, 1993". When I put the last version of this guide together back in 2001/2, I searched forever trying to figure out where "Sturgis" was; I pulled out atlases and looked at every city they played on that short tour with Neil Young (thank God Neil Young has an extremely organized trading/live scene community); eventually I arrived at the conclusion that the tracks were recorded in Rapid City, SD, USA due to their proximity to the great Sturgis rally in South Dakota.

Then, of course I traded for the audio of the 8/18/93 Toronto show. So much for Sturgis. There is no doubt whatsoever the two live tracks are from this show. It's highly possible Soundgarden mislabeled the tracks themselves; in any case, if you want to accurately list them, they were recorded on 8/18/93 in Toronto.


Big Day Out 1994
The Big Day Out shows in 1994 are fascinating. The band decided to play almost all old material, mixing in songs from as far back as Screaming Life ("Hunted Down") while only playing one song from then-forthcoming Superunknown, "Spoonman". The problem presented by these shows is twofold: 1) I'm only about 90% sure of the dates I have listed on my page, but I'm using other bands' pages as a background check. It's difficult to decide who's right and who isn't; 2) several of these shows aren't labeled very well. 1/26/94 has always been labeled 1/25/94; there is confusion between the 1/23/94 and 1/26/94 videos (they played "Big Dumb Sex on 1/23/94); and since the side shows have not surfaced en masse, the dates for those are not known with much certainty either. I've tried to present these dates as accurately as possible and for the record, the only recording from any of the Australia/New Zealand Big Day Out shows circulating with any frequency is 1/26/94.Every video I have come across labeled as 1/23/94 Melbourne has proven to be, in fact, 1/26/94 from Sydney. Confusing enough? There is a simple test to know if you have the right video: if your video of 1/23/94 has "Big Dumb Sex", then you do indeed have the Melbourne video. If not, you almost certainly have Sydney. This is why I now include screenshots of videos. Please label your bootlegs correctly!


1994 Japanese shows - A royal mess!
Oh my. No other series of bootlegs/shows presents a challenge such as this...seriously-everything is mislabeled.
For starters, please read the following show entries:

February 08, 1994 - Tokyo, Japan
February 10, 1994 - Osaka, Japan
February 11, 1994 - Nagoya, Japan

Finished? Now please closely read this article.

Okay...now let's begin the process of deduction. The 2/08 Tokyo show is fairly common. We can be certain this recording is Tokyo, as Chris mentions that this is their first show in Japan, which was Tokyo. There's also a nifty video out there with a long interview, "Fell On Black Days" and "Spoonman" from the Tokyo show. We can be certain that this video is from Tokyo because Chris tells the audience to be quiet for the quiet song before "Fell On Black Days"-this appears on the video as well. Furthermore, at the end of "Fell On Black Days" you can hear Kim tearing right into "Hunted Down", which matches perfectly the Tokyo audio. Yet the video labels the location for the songs as Club Citta-which is in Kawasaki. Except that the Kawasaki show was the Tokyo show-and is plainly labeled as such on the video. That is, the Kawasaki show is the Tokyo show in the same way that a show in Mansfield, MA is labeled as Boston, MA on many tour itineraries. They are one in the same.

On to the Osaka show. The factory-pressed bootleg CD "Garden Of Souls" contains an incomplete recording of the 2/11/94 Nagoya show but is labeled as being from Osaka, which it is not. There is no known recording of Osaka. This has been confirmed by listening to the complete tape. Based on all available information, I believe there was no date on 2/13/94, as previously believed.

8/04/94 Paris vs. 4/08/94 Paris
Correct date: 4/08/94 [Paris, France] - as in April 08, 1994...or 08 April, 1994 for you Europeans.
How we can can be sure: This one is a simple mistake, based on the fact Europeans label dates differently than Americans (for the record, as I'm American, I'm using the American way of labeling dates; I'm not a cultural imperialist or anything...it's just easier for me mentally). The reason this causes problems is that the 'Garden played in Montreal on 8/04/94 (4 August 1994). I think it's interesting they managed to be in French-speaking countries on both dates, which only adds to the confusion. Other such dates where different ways of dating will cause problems:

2/12/89 (San Francisco) vs. 12/02/89 (Albuquerque)*
3/11/89 (Hoboken) vs. 11/03/89 (Montreal)*
5/12/89 (London) vs. 12/05/89 (Phoenix)*
2/03/90 (Tampa) vs. 3/02/90 (Denver)
3/08/90 (Madison) vs. 8/03/90 (Chicago)*
1/09/92 (Houston) vs. 9/01/92 (Atlanta)
2/05/92 (Indianapolis) vs. 5/02/92 (Chicago)*
2/07/92 (Nashville) vs. 7/02/92 (Lisbon)*
2/08/92 (Springfield) vs. 8/02/92 (Tinley Park)*
3/04/92 (Vancouver) vs. 4/03/92 (Kentish Towne)*
3/05/92 (Seattle) vs. 5/03/92 (Detroit)**
5/09/92 (New York) vs. 9/05/92 (Rosenberg)
1/07/94 (Seattle) vs. 7/01/94 (St. Paul)*
4/06/94 (Utrecht) vs. 6/04/94 (Berkeley)*
4/08/94 (Paris) vs. 8/04/94 (Montreal)**
7/10/96 (Randall's Island) vs. 10/07/96 (Munich)*
7/11/96 (Randall's Island) vs. 11/07/96 (Denver)**
10/11/96 (Rotterdam) vs. 11/10/96 (Chicago)**

I've marked with a * cases in which one show is circulating; these need to carefully labeled; where ** are marked, these are cases in which both shows are currently circulating-please mark your trade lists well! The less confusion, the better.


8/04/94 Montreal vs. 8/05/94 Hull
Correct date: 8/04/94 [Montreal, QC, Canada] - currently circulating DVD, shot from the back right of the venue
Correct date: 8/05/94 [Hull, QC, Canada] - currently circulating FLACs from my ANAx cassette
How we can can be sure: I received a DVD marked 8/05/94 when I was still in grad school, but I didn't really get around to watching this one while actually paying much attention. That was a mistake. I already had a complete audio from 8/05/94 that I picked up back in 1999 or so; I'm 99.99% confident in the accuracy of the cassette's date. Well, I didn't think much about my cassette of the Hull show at the time I got the DVD marked 8/05/94; months later I popped in the supposed 8/05/94 to watch it and something struck me-that it was a different show than my cassette from Hull. Sure enough, my suspicions were increased tenfold when I noticed the supposed 8/05/94 DVD was missing "Limo Wreck", the song that marks Hull (this is the last known performance and the only known version post-6/94). I pulled out my audio of the Hull show and listened to a few tracks just to confirm that they are different shows; sure enough, just as I expected, they are.

Both shows are obviously in Quebec-Chris greets both audiences in French, and the performances are very similar, indicating they were played very close to each other-they are not, however, identical. Since I'm almost certain my cassette is the Hull show (later all but definitively confirmed by attendees of the show), I have no choice but to confirm that the DVD is actually the 8/04/94 Montreal show. Furthermore, the video of the show has been out there for a long time; I personally had been looking for it for ages.

To check out the differences, listen to the solos for "Searching With My Good Eye Closed", first from Montreal, then from Hull. They're different.


9/16/96 London vs. 9/19/96 London
Correct date: 9/19/96 [London, England, UK]
How we can can be sure: This one is once again just a simple mislabel. The guys played Glasgow on 9/16/96 and London on 9/19/96; I'm not sure anyone would confuse the two shows.


11/26/96 vs. 11/20/96 Fairfax
Correct date: 11/20/96 [Fairfax, VA, USA]
How we can can be sure: This one is just a simple mislabel. Reports from this show plus ticket stubs confirm the show took place on 11/20/96.


12/04/96 Sacramento vs. 12/05/96 Oakland
Correct date: 12/04/96 [Sacramento, CA, USA] - audience-shot DVD...no known audios
Correct date: 12/05/96 [Oakland, CA, USA] - DAT audience audio...no known videos
How we can can be sure: This one's totally my fault. For some reason my setlist for 12/04/96 was wrong in the last version of the Live Guide. When a collector received a DVD of the Sacramento show, he checked the setlist on my old Live Guide and decided his DVD was actually 12/05/96 (Oakland) based on the setlist alone. It was a smart move on his part, since so much out there is mislabeled. Unfortunately, this time the bootleg was actually labeled correctly. He then torrented the video, labeling it as 12/05/96 (Oakland). Once again, this is completely my fault-I had a bad setlist down for 12/04/96; unfortunately, they played the same setlist both nights. The master DAT of the Oakland show has since surfaced, eliminating any remaining confusion. To recap: there is only video of Sacramento and only audio of Oakland.


1/23/97 Sydney Big Day Out
Correct date: 1/27/97 [Sydney, Australia]
How we can can be sure: Again, this one is just a simple mislabel. About 30 sources confirm the show took place on 1/27/97.