Scabdates

Scabdates is, to this date, the only full live album released by The Mars Volta.   It is not on any streaming service or their bandcamp page, making the album increasingly difficult to listen to.  Additionally, the album was not repressed by Clouds Hill making it difficult to obtain on vinyl.  The album features overdubbed and edited versions of three songs, Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt, Concertina, and Cicatriz ESP.  These songs have had certain amounts of overdub added to them.  Take the Veil features an extended version of the “helicopter jam” that frequented their 2005 shows, and Cicatriz ESP has entire sound collage layered on top of the latter half of the song.  These three tracks are separated by two pre-song jams Haruspex and Caviglia.  While the performances are strong on this live album due to the abundance of bootleg recordings it is often overlooked by the more aggressive fans of the band.

In 2011 NME named the album one of the top 50 live albums of all time.  Part of Take the Veil was featured in the movie Get Him to the Greek.  

Per Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on the construction of Scabdates:

“I listened to my favorite live records, and said, “Okay, that’s nice. What would I want as a fan?” When I was a kid, I always wanted little moments about the band on tour, so I could imagine them in my head. You hear our live record, and it starts with sound check and our technicians speaking about what’s wrong with the microphone. And then there’s us backstage, and then it goes into the concert, and then in the middle of a song, I put in some conversations we had on the tour bus. All these things are really appealing to me. A lot of people who were upset said, “This is not a live album. It includes all this other bullshit. And it has overdubs!” It has no overdubs, it was just mixed in a creative way.”

The recording process is described as such:

“This Album Was Recorded Live On My Mobile Studio [E-Clat] Between May 2004 And May 2005 By Jonathan Debaun, Who Engineered The Entire Project. I Put It Together [Including Some Field Recordings I Made Of The Band On Tour] And Mixed It Under A Strict Time Constraint At Sound City Studios In September 2005. It Was Promptly Sent To Howie Weinberg Who Mastered It At Masterdisk, New York City, With The Assistance Of Roger Liam. Danielle Van Ark Is Responsible For All The Photographs And For Sending Them To Sonny Kay, Who Designed And Laid Out This Record Under The Art Direction Of Cedric And Myself. This Coordination Was Made Possible By Kristen Welsh, The Care Taker Of Monkey Island.”

This is the first The Mars Volta album to note a distinct delineation between The Mars Volta being Cedric and Omar and the rest of the members of the band being part of The Mars Volta Group.  

Chart Performance:

Australian Albums (ARIA) – 87
US Billboard 200 – 76

Recording sources:

05/12/2004
Wiltern Theatre – Los Angeles, CA: “Haruspex“, “Cicatriz“

05/13/2004
Wiltern Theatre – Los Angeles, CA: “Caviglia“

05/05/2005
Roseland Ballroom – New York City, NY : “Abrasions Mount the Timpani“, “Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt“

05/06/2005
Roseland Ballroom – New York City, NY: “Gust of Mutts / And Ghosted Pouts“

05/10/2005
Avalon Ballroom – Boston, MA: “Concertina“