I am a long time fan of early Ministry. Because of that I attended all 3 shows at the East Side Club and the one at the Ripley Music Hall. I have a few questions or comments on these shows. Hopefully someone here has some thoughts.
None of the East Side Club listings show Front 242 as the opener. I am positive they opened one of the shows there, just not sure if it was the second or the third.
I remember Ocean Drive being played at the 2nd or third show. I only know that because Al introduced it by name. I thought it was great and never heard anything about it again. Recent research mentions Ocean Drive as an unreleased song, so it seems my memory was correct. I do not see it on any of the East Side set lists.
Anyone else remember one of the East Side shows ending abruptly? I recall them playing a few songs. Al was spitting beer at the crowd or something similarly provoking. Someone threw a beer at him, and he stormed off the stage to an early exit.
Finally, if anyone can point me to downloads of any of these shows, it would be much appreciated.
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I also like Ministry, but people get mad at me for it.
Hi Brakeshoe and welcome!
That’s awesome that you got to attend those early shows back in the day! I’m pretty sure Front 242 was the opener for most of the shows, if not all.
Ocean Drive is still somewhat of a mystery. This track has also been referred to as Oceanside Away, but it has not surfaced on any recordings. I’m super jealous that you got to hear it 
Was Patty on vocals or was it Al? For the longest time I thought it may have just been a working title for the early version of Hizbollah that opened these sets. There’s also a track called Saturn Drive by Alan Vega that Al contributed keyboards for and I also wondered if there’s any relation between the two songs.
There is another unreleased tune called “Do You Even Like It” that is on most of the recordings. For video, there’s a full show for the Chicago Exit performance, and clips from Boston and Providence. For audio, there’s LeGrange, IL and First Ave in Minneapolis, but sadly none have the Ocean Drive track.
I would definitely love to learn more about these early shows!
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Patty was definitely in the lineup that night. I recall her singing on it, although Al may have also contributed. All I can say for sure is the song was introduced as Ocean Drive. I had never heard of Oceanside Away until very recently. All these years I was looking for Ocean Drive. I have no recollection of the song, other than I liked it a lot. It was right around when All Day/Every Day Is Halloween came out, and seemed to fit right in with that sound.
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I found a guy who had the first couple Philadelphia shows recorded (1982 and 1983). He also taped the Blackouts set when they opened for them in 83. This was maybe 30 years ago, back when you’d have to just search for pages with bootleg tapes on old search engines. I must have searched through thousands. I traded the guy and got the one from 82 and the Blackouts set, since the 82 sets were pretty unique and I had never seen another Blackouts recording at that point. He included a couple tracks from the 83 show as a bonus, but when I came back to him to try to get the 83 show, he’d disappeared. Front 242 opened for 10 dates on the 1984 tour, so that would have been the 3rd show there. I have a scan of a poster from that show, but I think it’s a really rough one from an ebay listing from many years ago. I’ve never seen a recording of the 84 Philadelphia show listed anywhere, so it probably doesn’t exist. But somewhere out there, there’s a cassette of the 1983 show.
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Very cool topic! I think I recall seeing an image of a flyer announcing a 1982 Depeche Mode show in Philadelphia where Ministry was the opening act. What a killer twin bill that must have been.
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I would have loved to see the Ministry/Depeche Mode gig. Funny enough a recording exists for the Depeche Mode set. The folks over at the DMLiveWiki confirmed that Ministry’s set isn’t on the same recording.
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