My Chemical Romance, 2003-06-26 Soundcheck, Knitting Factory, New York City, NY, US, Sister To Sleep

Live recording of My Chemical Romance on 2003-06-26 at the Knitting Factory in New York City, NY, US. This is the soundcheck for the show with the level checks removed. Two takes of Sister To Sleep and a great droning jam.
00:00:00 - (jam)
00:00:35 - Honey This Mirror Isn't Big Enough For the Two Of Us
00:04:29 - Sister To Sleep (take 1)
00:07:32 - Sister To Sleep (take 2)
Recording: Sony ECM-717 / Sharp MD MT-90
Transfer: Sony MDS-PC3 / iRiver H120 (Rockbox 3.10) (optical)
Recording by ‪@spaceyraygun‬
Transfer by ‪@deadhoarse‬ ( / deadhoarse )

[@prod.7aco194]

Man this makes me just wanna go into Warner Brothers’ storage room and just scour every shelf for the Manhattan Demos lol it’s gotta be somewhere lmao

[@CrashLove37]

Sister to Sleep not getting a studio version is the biggest injustice in music history

[@modifidious]

It did get a studio version, 45 seconds of the studio version is on youtube.

[@lo4d3dgun]

@@modifidious yes but still i wish we could hear a full studio recording or at least a clear one

[@modifidious]

@@lo4d3dgun same

[@fevermirror]

@@lo4d3dgun it’s unlikely we ever will hear the original studio version because they said they just simply do not have it anymore lol

[@YamatoTorisu]

@@fevermirror Matt still has it and I believe Reprise has it somewhere stored. The best we can do is hope for a 20th anniversary rerelease of Three Cheers in 2 years. Edit: Mikey also said he might know where it is.

[@august6604]

i think these are the clearest recordings of sister to sleep available… next stop studio version

[@ghoulala2677]

Take 2 definitely sounds the best. I wish matt would just release the studio demo so bad 😭

[@iwillstareintoyoursoul9762]

It's not up to Matt for that. Not his fault Warner/Reprise are too stubborn to do so.

[@Loveyousomuchyoumakemesick]

I don’t think he can legally upload it

[@lo4d3dgun]

oh my god i think this is one of the clearest versions of sister to sleep now, pretty sure i’ve heard take 2 before tho :) i love it Thank you so much !!

[@lo4d3dgun]

sorry for commenting a lot

[@vrtuoso1095]

Take 2 is the og grainy one with the vampire mcr logo

[@spaceyraygun]

A little insight on why the “og” might’ve been grainy: 1. the original was an analog transfer, that means I recorded the audio through my soundcard and who knows how hot the input volume was. 2. Then it was encoded to mp3 with suitable settings for file transfer at the time, but by no means the highest quality and definitely lossy no matter what 3. Then it was uploaded to MySpace which reencoded it into flv to work with the player, lossy 4. Then someone either recorded it with their sound card (basically the same process described above) or they somehow downloaded the flv and converted back to some other format. Either way, lossy. 5. ??? Who knows how many more times it was reencoded after that, but each time would be more generation loss 6. It’s reencoded into a suitable KZbin format (lossy) 7. And uploaded to KZbin (and reencoded again by their servers) That’s AT LEAST six points of information loss, it’s like copying a copy of a copy with paper. Each time it gets worse. This transfer is digital and is exactly what was on the master, bit for bit, and was containerized into an lossless mp4. Only point of loss is the KZbin reencoding on their servers.

[@vrtuoso1095]

@@spaceyraygun I figured it had to have been compressed alot it's great you were able to give us not only that original but another take in its original quality

[@modifidious]

1:01 that scream was sick asf

[@ghoulala2677]

It’s funny this version , the other old version , and the one they did last year all have kind of different lyrics it sounds like.

[@MHWTP]

The one that was performed live almost certainly has altered lyrics. Probably cause they forgot some

[@sanray6319]

​@@MHWTPOr it wasn't fully completed yet

[@GoldLightGL]

im amazed that this soundcheck's audio ever got recorded, but I'm going to go on a long post, sorry about all the reading lmao. its sad that sister to sleep's demo has been lost to time, but this (aside from the recent version played in 2022, but its lyrics didn't seem too accurate) may be the highest quality version of the song we currently have, one thing i noted in the video during Honey This Mirror is that you can hear Gerard ask for a monitor, now i bring this up because the two takes of sister to sleep have very different lyrics, i imagine that this maybe shows that during the first take Gerard was singing to how the song should sound, while on take 2 he is singing the lyrics more accurately but sounding more quite since he is focusing on the lyrics, hence i think take 1 sounds better. on one hand that means that official lyrics where written down, but Gerard must have not remembered them during the show later that night as he did skip mess up part of the song later that night, even though the demo may have been lost there is still a chance the lyrics do exist written down somewhere (i doubt the knitting factory has archived the lyrics but who knows) but although the lyrics in the 2022 concert where also a bit off, they where close which could mean that mcr did find the lyrics, but didn't have enough time to fully memorize them during the concert, but if they do a rerecording of the song we may finally have the closest thing to a high quality version, sorry for the long comment, im a bit of an mcr nerd.

[@MHWTP]

This version of Sister To Sleep is a great improval in sound quality, but unfortunately it is still hard to make out the lyrics.

[@MHWTP]

I just realized he's saying "Keep me awake tonight" And not "Get in your way tonight" Which, really, makes much more sense.

[@nixlad]

king

[@aidanmasri]

Dude… how did you get these? Thank you so much for sharing

[@lankyGigantic]

This dude actually recorded them

[@SantiagoMonroy5]

I still don't get why this got scrapped and never released, MCR really could benefit from Deluxe releases

[@JisatsuArchives]

Do you have any information about the song Nine Volt Heart. Its a song from the bullets era that was listed on there website in 2003 (which can be seen on the waybackmachine). There's not much information about the song but it's been said it was a song they played once or twice live but the audience werent feeling it so they scrapped it. There's also a theory that it may have been a cover of Bodies by the Smashing pumpkins

[@spaceyraygun]

That link was broken the first time I went to the website in May 2002. This is from the archives of the old board; included as an aside with something I said in response to questions about the attic demo. Beyond this is anyone’s guess: “nine-volt heart was never recorded. and yes, they hated it. but from what i've been told, fragments of it were used for a song on three cheers, but i wasn't told what song it was.”

[@JisatsuArchives]

@@spaceyraygun Thanks for the response :) And also thanks for posting this Its great to hear sister to sleep in better quality. Assuming the studio version was lost I hope they re-record and release it one day. It doesn't seem impossible since they played it live last year for the first time since this show!!

[@spaceyraygun]

Fun fact: they used these recordings to relearn it! twitter.com/mcr_lore/status/1587523067995103240

[@JisatsuArchives]

@@spaceyraygun Thats awesome! Someone shoul let Frank know that the original recordings aren't lost. Matt Pelissier has them and has showed snippets of it

[@spaceyraygun]

pretty sure they’re well aware of the whereabouts of that demo 😂