Unbeknown to me until recently, it seems like Jersey independent radio station WFMU has quite a collection of live recordings that have been printed on wax. You may remember a side of Real Estate’s incredibly limited Live on the Radio vinyl was taken from a visit to the famed 91.1FM studios, well it looks like Brooklyn based Vivian Girls also did a lengthy live set in the autumn of 2008 that was good enough to sell.
Unlike Real Estate’s striped down version in their recordings, Vivian Girls take a no holds barred approach to their set, blazing through nine songs in around 25 minutes. However, to keep to the relaxed atmosphere of the session, the girls do take momentary pauses between songs, filling it with lively and oftentimes hilarious banter (“I successfully didn’t curse! That song has like five curse words and I didn’t say one” — from “I Have No Fun”).
There are not too many surprises in this set as much of the songs are standard fare from their 2008 released S/T as well as some “new” songs from their 2009 Everything Goes Wrong release. However, for anyone who loves The Vivian Girls as much as I do, this is a must have as it is probably the closest thing you can get to match their on-stage personality without seeing them in person. Good luck finding a physical copy anywhere though as only 150 CD-Rs were burned (in addition, I can’t find any information about any vinyl release). Don’t sweat though, you can still download their entire performance from the WFMU site right here.
For those who haven’t seen this, the Girls also sat down with WFMU hyperactive interviewer Nardwuar a while back that’s pretty damn funny:
