David Bowie 1997-09-30 Live from WBCN 104.1 Studios in Boston (speed corrected + eq’d)
Sound Quality Rating
01. talk.flac
02. always crashing in the same car.flac
03. talk.flac
04. the supermen.flac
05. talk.flac
06. scary monsters.flac
07. closing comments.flac
Label : No label
Audio Source : FM Broadcast
Lineage : Unknown
Taping Gear : Unknown
Taper: Unknown
Recording Location: Unknown
Total running time : 0:39:15
Sound Quality : Excellent quality! Equals record or radio
Attendance : Unknown
Artwork : None
David and Reeves perform in front of a small audience in a studio and chat some with the audience. This recording is complete except the first few seconds of the track 1 introduction.
Quality is crisp and clear.track 4 has a bit of explanation from David how a riff he got from Jimmy Page many years earlier helped him put both those songs together. (yes, even David Bowie learned something from LZ’s guitarist). this was the day before the 1st of 2 shows at the Orpheum Theater in Boston, (with his full band) and there is mention of the webcast of one of those.
It was the taper his 1st ever attempt to see a webcasted concert, and he never got to see more than an occasional broken apart note. live concert webcasting was still a very primitive art in 1997 (apparently) but he later heard the shows were very good ones. Boston has always appreciated David Bowie,even playing a “secret gig” at Avalon (1996?) which I’ve never heard.
David Bowie – guitar and vocals .
Reeves Gabrels – guitar
This one, I found it ran too slow. I compared it to lots of other sessions from that time.
That is a tricky process, as recordings were largely made to cassette tape at that time, then copied – some run too slow, some too fast, some just only slightly too much one way or the other. The thick guitar sound on this one did not help matters.
I elected to speed up the recording by 3%, which has sounded about right on reviewing it. Then I eq’d it, raising the treble slightly, and bringing the bass, and the gain down too, to give it more headroom, as well as a less heavy sound. There is wow and flutter in the guitar sound, but there’s nothing I can do about that, I know that software designed to deal with that costs thousands.
I like the way the music sounds now, and the chat here is pretty good too – for example the genesis of the I’m Afraid of Americans song, described in track 3.
‘Raw’ recordings of this have been shared before multiple times. One is here – “WBCN Boston”
