The Special Garage Concerts
2014 live album by Cardiacs
The Special Garage Concerts is a live double album by English rock band Cardiacs released in 2005. It was recorded at The Garage in London over three nights in October 2003 where the band played most of their material that was recorded before 1984, prior to A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window. This included many tracks that feature on The Seaside and Archive Cardiacs, and the shows drew heavily from the demos The Obvious Identity and Toy World while also including the previously unreleased tracks "An Ant", "Hello Mr Minnow", "Hopeless" and "Gloomy News" .
The album was the band's first release with guitarist Kavus Torabi, who replaced Jon Poole, and received praise for its live renditions. A recording of the band rehearsing for the shows was released as the 2017 DVD Some Fairytales from the Rotten Shed, which features surrealist comedy and was well-received for its sound quality and theatricality.
Background and recording
Tim Smith hadn't felt comfortable making Cardiacs's early cassette albums public due to their rough sound, but due to the demand for the unavailable songs, the band made the decision to play and record the songs to create high quality versions and a unique concert experience. Prior to the shows, guitarist Jon Poole left Cardiacs due to a tight schedule with the Wildhearts. He was replaced by Kavus Torabi, who had been the band's guitar technician since the months before Sing to God (1996), as well as a member of Die Laughing and the Monsoon Bassoon. Shortly after joining the band in 2003, Torabi had to learn a number of songs from the band's early years for three shows at The Garage in London.
The line-up for the three shows was a four-piece of Tim Smith, Kavus Torabi, Jim Smith, and Bob Leith, with horns and keyboards provided through backing tracks.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q108782169. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2005, 2003, 1984 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Special Garage Concerts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.