Hello respektors! We wanted to share what will likely be our last (major) update for the year, which includes the completion of our Audio/Video Interviews section and lots of fun additions to the archives. Check it out below!
Songs Re-release & Songs (and Other Songs) Shows
As you may have heard, to support the upcoming re-release of Songs on November 29th, Regina announced a series of shows (December 8-10) where she will play Songs in its entirety, as well as a number of requests. How exciting! As part of that, she even enlisted the help of this very site to help take requests...
Well, that's all done, and we've submitted the requests! Fingers crossed for some fun rarities and maybe something unexpected. No matter what, we're beyond excited, as most of the Songs songs haven't been performed since 2002 (and some not at all...to our knowledge). The shows are sold out, so it'll be a packed crowd. We hope to see you there!
Audio/Video Interviews Complete
As we outlined our site roadmap, we had a few key objectives for this update, which are now all complete!
Any missing audio or video interviews added to the archive
All interviews have descriptions
All interviews have transcripts
All interviews flagged as unique or not
In addition to the above, we also added the ability to search interview transcripts, which is pretty interesting! If you ever wanted to learn more about a particular song, album, person, etc., now it's quick and easy! In the coming days, we'll also add the ability to download the transcripts more easily too.
New Additions - Interviews
Speaking of interviews, we should (to our knowledge) now have every known audio or video interview cataloged and made available. Here's a list of some recent additions which we only just got around to adding:
2024 interviews
Two Russian-language interviews (including with a poor translation...we did our best!)
A missing interview from 2019 in which Regina discusses how Black music influences her art (super fascinating!)
Two poetry readings supporting the Academy of American poets, one of which is related to the creation of "Spacetime Fairytale"!
And a couple more interviews from over the years which fell through the cracks!
One more interview related thing...we're starting to think about "print" interviews (think websites, magazines, etc.). That's a whole herculean task in and of itself...but for now, here is the first one, Regina's Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit from 2019!
New Additions - Concert Bootlegs
While this was supposed to just be the interviews update, we actually ended up getting sent/finding a pretty large amount of previously unknown bootlegs! Here's a summary of what's been added:
Regina recently made an appearance at Ben Fold's National Symphony Orchestra show (her second, first here!) to perform "You Don't Know Me" in support of a future live album! We've added photos and will post the audio bootleg a bit after the album releases
Audio/video/photos from the official livestream of the October 7th memorial event in Central Park
Audio/photos from another sneaky guest appearance by Regina at a Ben Folds show where she performed "You Don't Know Me" and "Dear Theodosia"
A missing audio bootleg and photos from a radio broadcast (which means it's pretty high quality!) from Israel in 2017
Audio from a studio session in 2009, including performances of Far-era songs and a rare version of "Left Hand Song"
Speaking of rare performances, we also added audio from another previously unknown studio session, which includes the cleanest performance of "Bobbing for Apples" we have yet!
A previously unknown complete audio bootleg which contains the first ever performance of "Love, You're a Whore"
A couple very early shows that were previously missing, including one of the earliest videos of a Regina performance!
Added full audio and missing photos from these 2006 Town Hall shows
Added a bunch of missing audio from a 2006 Philly show
A little nugget of Regina and Jack perfroming "Call Them Brothers"
Upgraded a show from a fan-made bootleg to a more professional recording produced by Radio Magnetic: Live Circuit
Some missing audio, including the first known performances of both "Hotel Song" and "Bobbing for Apples"
Phew! Okay that was quite a lot!
What's Next
As for now, we'll take a little break and then revisit our roadmap in the New Year. Hopefully we'll see many of you at the Songs (and Other Songs) shows in December, and perhaps we'll do a mini-update before year end should we happen upon any bootlegs!
Shout-outs & Thanks
One last thing...MASSIVE shout-out to the following people, without whose contributions none of this would be possible!
srg - as always, contribting an immense amount of bootlegs from the deep, dark and forgotten corners of various hard drives. The OG, continuous plugs for reginaspektor.net!
Screwup - an incredible amount of technical work is required to make this site functional, most of which is not terribly visible. Thanks for doing the most thankless job, and looking forward to giving you more nebulously defined and changing requirements in the future!
universaledability - thank you for all of the help creating the transcripts and reaching out to random corners of the Internet to source forgotten bootlegs!
That's all for now...Happy Halloween!
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