Ayers Cale Nico Eno 19740601 London UK Rainbow AUD -at DaD

[schnittstelle]

Kevin Ayers
with special guests
Brian Eno
John Cale
Nico

London, U.K.
Rainbow Theatre
1 June 1974

THIS IS A 24-BIT FILE SET, AND CAN NOT BE PLAYED ON A STANDARD CD-R.
PER DIME GUIDELINES, ONCE THIS VERSION HAS BEEN SUFFICIENTLY DOWNLOADED, A 16-BIT VERSION WILL FOLLOW.

This recording is brought to you courtesy of Sonic Archives, which is kind of a pet name for a rather large collection of tapes I inherited earlier this year from a close friend. Their former owner had been an avid taper and trader for more than thirty years, and had recorded many shows in this collection personally. In 2006, they were introduced to the torrenting community, and by 2009, their owner came to the conclusion that the modern community of taping, trading, and sharing, had largely devolved into something they wanted no part of. In early 2010, it was brought to my attention that hundreds of these tapes were on their way to a waste management landfill. Their owner wanted nothing more to do with them, having become discouraged by years of dealing with rogue traders, professional bootleggers who re-packaged his recordings, and a crop of collectors on various torrent trackers who criticized his efforts to maintain some kind of integrity and legitimacy to live taping. In
a way, all those people won. Fortunately, I was able to take possession of many of these recordings, although it seems likely that many of them may had already been disposed of, before I could save them all.

As a fellow taper and music fan, I'm excited to be able to carry the torch as a curator of this collection. A great amount of care was taken to preserve these tapes for years, and where possible, I suppose, a meticulous amount of detail went into telling the stories that went with them, which is a tradition I intend to try and carry on. Like the previous owner, I think the best way to preserve recordings like these is to share them, and that there is no such thing as too much information. I'm dedicating the torrents I'll be sharing to the person who inspired me to have a go at it, and I'll make every effort to continue in their footsteps. I thought they must be crazy to walk away from all this - maybe I'm even crazier, for walking into it. Hopefully, you'll respect what went into making this possible, and not do any of those silly things (like converting to .mp3s, posting artwork, deleting notes, re-naming files); that only de-value the efforts which were made to bring you th
e best quality version of these recordings. (If you do those things anyway, you know what you are, and no one needs to tell you.)


As promised, here is a sadly butchered version of the legendary June 1, 1974 concert, by a non-existent "super-group" jokingly referred to as "A.C.N.E." Every second of officially released content has been removed from this fileset. The source recording in this case was from a pair of cassettes received in trade sometime in the early '80s, and no generation was listed by the person who sent the tapes, who was generally a very thorough and detail-oriented trader, by all accounts. Compared to some of the bootleg discs of this show which are in circulation, this recording sounds well within 2 or 3 generations from the master, but that is only a guess.

What is remarkable about this performance (other than the fact that so little of it was released officially, in what appeared to be the record label's attempt to groom Kevin Ayers for commercial success), is that there were apparently two more "repeat performances" which followed:

June 27th, 1974, in Birmingham, and June 28th 1974, in Manchester. Were those performances recorded - either by the record label, or otherwise? Has anyone ever seen any recorded version of either of those shows? If not for the liner notes in the Edsel compilation, "Didn't Feel Lonely Till I Thought Of You - The Island Records Years", I probably never would have known about those two subsequent dates.

Except for the obvious difference in sound quality, one can insert the missing tracks from the official album, and have the complete performance intact. Most of the transitions aren't too jarring, with the exception of "Baby's On Fire #2", which was the version used on the official release, and had to be removed here for legal reasons. Why the percussive introduction for that song was left off the album, is one of the many questions about this performance which remain unanswered.

total running time - complete tapes: 01:56:48 [not including overlap]
total running time - this torrent: 01:12:00
official content removed: 44:40

cassette one side A (42:55):

A001 start / introduction (2:01)
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REMOVED FROM THIS TORRENT
Brian Eno:
A002 Driving Me Backwards (6:04 on cassette) (6:07 on album)
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A003 interim (00:22)
A004 Baby's On Fire #1 (3:56)
A005 interim (00:34)

John Cale:
A006 Buffalo Ballet (3:23)
A007 interim (00:23)
A008 Gun (4:07)
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REMOVED FROM THIS TORRENT
A009 Heartbreak Hotel (5:13 on cassette) (5:19 on album)
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A010 interim (1:38)

Nico:
A011 Deutschland Uber Alles (5:37)
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REMOVED FROM THIS TORRENT
A012 The End (8:47 on cassette) [truncated at end during applause] (9:14 on album)
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A013 interim (00:44)

cassette one side B (43:58):

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REMOVED FROM THIS TORRENT
Kevin Ayers:
B001 May I? (5:33 on cassette) (5:30 on album)
B002 Shouting In A Bucket Blues (5:11 on cassette) (5:07 on album)
B003 Stranger In Blue Suede Shoes (3:23 on cassette) (3:27 on album)
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B004 intro (00:23)
B005 Didn't Feel Lonely Till I Thought Of You (4:26)
B006 intro (00:14)
B007 Whatevershebringswesing (8:56)
B008 interim (00:20)
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REMOVED FROM THIS TORRENT
B009 Everybody's Sometime And Some People's All The Time Blues (4:15 on cassette) (4:35 on album)
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B010 Interview (8:00)

cassette two side A:

Kevin Ayers [continued]:
C001 See You Later (00:43)
C002 It Begins With A Blessing/
Once I Awakened/
But It Ends With A Curse (11:11)
C003 Confessions Of Dr. Dream (Pt. 4 - Dr. Dream Theme) (7:05)
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REMOVED FROM THIS TORRENT
C004 Two Goes Into Four (2:29 on cassette) (2:28 on album)
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C005 encore applause (2:08)
C006 interim (00:38)
C007 I've Got A Hard-On For You Baby [Guerney Dobb] (4:47)

Brian Eno:
C008 Baby's On Fire #2 - intro (00:23)
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REMOVED FROM THIS TORRENT
C009 Baby's On Fire #2 - song (3:45 on cassette) (3:52 on album)
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C010 applause / credits (00:09)


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Digitization:

Source: unknown gen cassettes received in trade, sometime in the early '80s
Lineage: analog/digital transfer
Nakamichi 480Z [Azimuth-tuned playback] > HD [24-bit/96kHz; captured and tracked with CDWav editor]
Post-processing:
SoundForge 9.0: DC offset correction; pitch increased +45cents [preserve duration: OFF]
Trader's Little Helper v.2.5.0 [Build 164]: Level 8 .flac conversion

Looking at the .wav files, it seems that this recording is mono, but I decided to leave everything exactly as it was on the tapes. There are occasional glitches in various tracks, but they are not always in the same channel, so an auto- stereo-to-mono conversion might actually degrade the files rather than help them. No attempt was made to adjust volume levels or repair anything. Re-working would certainly be in order, but it seemed more important to share this in its' raw form, before the inevitable "re-mastered" versions start to surface. That's the reason for making a 24-bit transfer of such an obviously lo-fi recording - hopefully, if someone does want to take the time to re-work this recording, they'll start with the 24-bit version, rather than the 16-bit version.
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Tracking information:

These are the running times and credits from the original Island release on CD.
This is the version of the album to which I attempted to match the speed and pitch of the tracks I had to delete from this fileset.
The running times imply I might not have been 100% accurate, but my ears suggest I'm pretty close.
As indicated by the comparative running times of the tracks, the differential ranges from 1 to 7 seconds in most cases.
The cassette version of "The End" has a differential of about 27 seconds, compared to the album, due to the fact that the applause on the tape was cut short (possibly a tape flip).
The cassette version of "Everybody's Sometime And Some People's All The Time Blues" has a differential of about 20 seconds, and I really don't know why.

Side A
1. Driving Me Backwards" (Brian Eno) (6:07)
2. Baby's on Fire" (Eno) (3:52)
3. Heartbreak Hotel" (Mae Boren Axton, Tommy Durden, Elvis Presley) (5:19)
4. The End" (John Densmore, Robbie Krieger, Ray Manzarek, Jim Morrison) (9:14)
Side B
1. May I?" (Kevin Ayers) (5:30)
2. Shouting in a Bucket Blues" (Ayers) (5:07)
3. Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes" (Ayers) (3:27)
4. Everybody's Sometime and Some People's All the Time Blues" (Ayers) (4:35)
5. Two Goes into Four" (Ayers) (2:28)

Kevin Ayers: vocals (B1-5), guitar (B1-5), bass guitar (A1-2)
Brian Eno: vocals (A1-2), synthesizer (A1-4, B5)
John Cale: vocals (A3), piano (A2), viola (A1, B5)
Nico: vocals (A4), harmonium (A4)
Mike Oldfield: lead guitar (B4), acoustic guitar (B5)
Ollie Halsall: piano (A1), guitar (A2-3, B4), lead guitar (B1-3), acoustic guitar (B5)
John "Rabbit" Bundrick: organ(A1-3 & B1-5), organ, piano, electric piano (B1-3)
Robert Wyatt: percussion (A1-3 B1-3 + 5)
Doreen Chanter: backing vocals (A3)
Archie Leggatt: bass guitar (A1-3 B1-3 + 5)
Eddie Sparrow: drums(A2&3 B1-3), bass drum (A1), tympani (B5)
Liza Strike: backing vocals (A3)
Irene Chanter: backing vocals (A3)


To make things even more interesting...
The version of the album that was mastered for the Edsel compilation clocks in at 45:53.
Some of the tracks have been ever-so-slightly edited (mostly at the start and end of the tracks), and the running times are all completely different than the Island release.
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