| Identifier | 2639785 |
| Created At | Tue May 23 2023 23:54:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) |
| Media Type | shn |
| Media Count | 2 |
| Note | A member or two of the Compendium Mail List expressed some interest
in just how Gordon Gullahorn and I managed to get the tapes together for the recent Watkins 25th Anniversary Tree. So, if you'll pardon a bit of rambling on, here it is. As many of you know, this show has only circulated in really bad Aud quality. The tapes are always incomplete, and of unknown generation. They have this horrendous wow and flutter all over the best parts of set two, and really leave the listener saying "Is that a good show under there? Well, I'll never know because I can't bear to listen to it again!" If you have a copy, you know what I mean. If you don't have a copy, you don't want one. Anyway, there was this discussion going on at rmgd about this "rare gem" of a show back in February, I think (I guess some people *had* listened again). I piped in because I had just come across this show on some one's list who had the Aud listed as a 2nd gen. I had NEVER seen a known gen at all, let alone 2nd. So having set up the trade, I told the folks in the thread at rmgd that I'd be happy to spin it for anyone if it was any good once I got it. Another person in the thread, Gordon Gullahorn, and I started talking about doing a tree if it was really good. After all, the 25th Anniversary was coming up, and the show hardly circulated. It would be fun if the tapes merited doing a tree. A little time passed and the tapes came and, yes, they were good. Let's put a few qualifiers on this "good" here. The taper, at that time still a mystery, was certainly near the stage, lending a nice presence to the music. It wasn't the best 1973 Aud I had ever gotten, but I was perfectly happy to give these tapes a fair amount of latitude given the circumstances surrounding the recording conditions, size of the crowd, and what else there was circulating on tape from the show. Even with the various audience nuances -- every kind you can think of from the guy yelling HELLO into the mic at the start of Eyes, to the off time clapper and the off key singer -- the tapes still left my jaw on the floor because the show was so terrific, and when the band was jamming the crowd into silence, the sound quality was truly quite fine. Gordon and I set about trying to track up the gen line to the original taper, as well as dig up the rest of the show. The Aud/3 I had was not the whole show, only the end of set one, and most of set two. The first problem was that Andy (the guy with the Aud/2) couldn't remember who he got the show from. Gordon and I started posting around, but it felt like looking for a needle in a haystack. After many fruitless posts at rmgd, DNC, etc., I was prodding Andy's memory some more and he said that he remembered getting the show from the taper himself and that he thinks he met this guy in one of the AOL Dead chat rooms. He said the guy was very friendly and would probably come right out of the wood work for us if we asked around. Well, the thought of sticking my head in AOL's 710 Ashbury chat room like some private detective held little charm for me. For every good soul in there you have fifteen or twenty people that make the experience more like drinking a warm beer at a high school party. We seemed to be destined to come up empty. We also found that more often than not, any time we thought we had a good lead, it would fizzle away, or get off track. Gordon and I agreed that there was some strange mystique shrouding this show. I can't really recall just how the idea struck me, but I started putting 2 and 2 and probably 7 together and thought it could be this guy Bill Degen who I have been trading with for well over a year. He was an East Coast taper at the time, and I had gotten a few of his shows in the past. he did have an AOL address and the friendly personality. He fit the bill (no pun intended). Bill couldn't remember this Andy guy, but he identified all the unique crowd noises on the tape as coming from the tapes he made at the show. Bingo! And once I got his personal tapes (his original masters burned in a house fire back in the 80's so these are copies he personally made some time back, bless him!), the stuff sounded even better than my copy that was 2 gens removed. So everything that goes MC>R>seed and MC>C>seed is from him. he also provided the Mountain Jam and JBG encore (unknown, low gen SBD). Now Gordon and I were cooking. But because Bills tape recorder suffered from a faulty battery cable, we were still short most all of set one. Sure we had the crappy Audience that goes around, but that wasn't worthy of comprising almost 40% or the treed tapes. We thought maybe we'd just tree the stuff from Bill and leave it at that. Then Gordon uncovered a SBD/6 copy of the first 40mins of the show. Thanks to some still functioning brain cells, or at least good note taking on Jeff Tiedrich's part, we were able to track another generation off that tape. Eric Doherty happily sent me his SBD/5 copy for use on the tree. That was as far up the generational line we could climb before the source of the next gen up had been forgotten. We think this might be a bit of the fabled FM broadcast that, despite many an e-mail and inquiry on Gordon's part to East Coast radio stations, never surfaced for us. On the subject of the SBD, I've had a few e-mail exchanges with Dick Latvala on the subject of the tapes of 7/28/73 in the Vault since starting the tree last week. He said he pulled out the reels some six months back, and due to some technical problems with the tapes, they left him with a less than glorious impression of the show itself. Though he said he's willing to give them another listen, I wouldn't think they'd be making it out of the Vault any time soon. The tunes that were not seeded from Bill's or Eric's tapes come from the three or so copies of the show Gordon and I kept trading for while looking for a good copy. But having listened to them all to find the best one, I can say for sure that all of these come from the same original, crappy tapes. The assembly of the seeds was a bear. And I don't envy Gordon's task of doing it all over with his DATs. As it happened we decided to do an Analog Only and a DAT Only tree for the show. Work, life and the like kept us from meeting the actual anniversary of the show with both trees. Since I had all the masters here, I thought it would be nice to do a large tree that had no DATing in the generational line. Kind of unique these days. Gordon's DAT tree will get rolling soon. There are some half a dozen or more spots where Bills tapes were missing things (the start of Big River, end of IKYR, the second verse of Playin' etc, etc...). So I did a LOT of editing and pitch adjustment. It took about three full days worth of time to get them just right. I've got an old Nak deck that makes completely undetectable splices, so it became a challenge to do it all well, since no one would hear the edits, just the quality *of* the edits. Now I didn't kill myself doing it. Some of the cuts are not perfection on earth, but I'm just crazy enough to have done them over and over enough to get everyone who listens to say "Ahhhhh...." And when you start to think that each edit represents a point on the originals where there was a bummer of a cut, you can't help but smile. The Analog tree ended up with over 180 people on it, and most of the ten first gen from seed tapes have been sent off already. So if your on the tree, the show's a-comin'. And if you're not, it shouldn't be too hard to track down in a few weeks time. Once the DAT tree happens, it will spread all the more. Here is how the show went down onto the seed tapes. The gens listed are that of the seeds themselves: Tape One: Bertha thru LL Rain - sbd/6 Jack Straw, Deal - unknown aud Row Jimmy, Playin' - master cassette>reel>cassette Side A: Bill Graham intro Bertha Beat It On Down The Line Brown Eyed Women Mexicali Blues Box of Rain Here Comes Sunshine Looks Like Rain (Bill Graham intro and start of Bertha spliced from aud/?) Side B: Row Jimmy Jack Straw Deal Playin' in the Band (splice in Row Jimmy after opening bars. First verse is missing. Second verse thru third chorus of Playin' spliced from aud/?.) Tape Two: Around, Lucy - unknown aud Big River thru Sugar Mag - aud master cassette>cassette2 Side A: Around and Around Loose Lucy Big River He's Gone> Truckin'> Nobody's Jam> El Paso (start of Big River spliced from aud/?) Side B: China Cat Sunflower> I Know You Rider Stella Blue Eyes of the World> Sugar Magnolia (end of IKYR spliced from aud/?) Tape Three: Encore One - aud master cassette>cassette2 Encore Two - unknown sbd 07/27/73 - aud master cassette>reel>cassette Side A: Encore One: Sing Me Back Home(cut) Encore Two: Not Fade Away Mountain Jam Johnny Be Goode (Encore Two with Allman Brothers Band and The Band) Side B: Filler: 07/27/73 Aud Watkins Glen Sound Check Jam> Wharf Rat Me and My Uncle (Jam is cut when taper is busted by a roadie. Aud picks up again at the start at Wharf Rat. The missing portion is supplied by SBD>D>cass>seed) Thanks for listening, Noah Weiner (nbw000@a...) |
| Source Info | read the story |
| Trades Allowed |
Performance
| Grateful Dead 1973-07-28 Grand Prix Racecourse, Watkins Glen, NY | |
|---|---|
| Set 1 | Bertha Beat It On Down The Line Brown Eyed Women Mexicali Blues Box Of Rain Here Comes Sunshine Looks Like Rain Row Jimmy Jack Straw Deal Playing In The Band |
| Set 2 | Around & Around Loose Lucy Big River He's Gone > Truckin' > Nobody's Fault But Mine > El Paso China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider Stella Blue Eyes Of The World Sugar Magnolia Sing Me Back Home |
| Set 3 | Jam after the Allman Brothers set comprised of members from all three bands. Not Fade Away Mountain Jam Johnny B. Goode |
| Comment | Grateful Dead performed first The Band performed second Allman Brothers Band performed third Photos from the show https://www.flickr.com/photos/grantdabassman/sets/72157603224730871 Jerry Garcia - Guitar Bob Weir - Guitar Keith Godchaux - Keyboards Phil Lesh - Bass Bill Kreutzmann - Drums Donna Jean Godchaux - Vocals |