| Identifier | 3633125 |
| Created At | Tue May 23 2023 23:54:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) |
| Media Type | CD-R |
| Media Count | 2 |
| Source Info | See Tech Notes |
| Tech Note | Watkins Story Part1 This was supposed to happen two years ago in conjunction with the 25th Anniversary Watkins Glen Analog Tree. I won't bore you with the details, but the digital end never happened. A few months ago, I had decided that I would finally have my AUD Analog seeds from the Analog Tree transferred to DAT so that the digital world could finally get it's hands on the tree that was run back in 1998. In a wonderful cosmic twist of fate, on the very day that I put my precious seed tapes in the mail to go to a trusted A>D person, I got word that the a digital copy of the Master Soundboard Reels from 7/28/73 was going to be headed in my direction. Wow! I had a few conversations with Dick Latvala when I was organizing the 25th Anniversary Tree and he had told me that the SBDMR was filled with gremlins and glitches, and would never be suitable for official release, but it did exist and he had listened to it. Most of his friends had told him the show sucked (FOOLS!) so he didn't pay much attention when he did listen to it. It seemed that the SBD was destined to gather dust in the Vault for good. So be it. As it was, we had put together a very enjoyable copy of the complete show from AUD and FM sources and treed out what went on to change people's minds about a show that was always thought to be a true low point in 1973. All the folklore-ish rumors about how bad they played, and how without life the show was were put to rest. I still believe that the bad rap given to 7/28/73 in the past stemmed from the atrocious partial AUD that had circulated for years. The SBD arrived and blew my mind. The main problem was that a few songs were missing entirely from the copy. But that would be overcome by the sources I used for the first Watkins Tree (more in a moment). The gremlins and glitches consist mainly of occasional pops or clicks over both dates and a static noise over much of the recording on 7/28. It is at times a slight distraction, while at other times barely audible. It really isn't that distracting from the music at all. Just a little crackling here and there. However, there is a portion of glitching that does get a bit rough. The worst of it comes during the He's Gone>Truckin' where there are some severe buzzes and grounding noises. These get pretty bad for sure. It sounds like some cables are loose and a soundman is trying to rectify the problem time and time again. But when you compare these SBD problems during the He's Gone>Truckin' to the AUD used on the first tree where we get to listen to the taper's buddy ponder his need to go to the bathroom against never finding his way back to his spot in the crowd during the same stretch of songs, I'd say it becomes a bit of a toss up. The severe glitches clear up at about the six minute mark of Truckin' and it's relatively smooth sailing thereafter. This, coupled with a few cuts here and there within a few songs (like a small chunk of vocals missing from Eyes Of The World), rounds out most all that is wrong with the SBD. Also worth noting is that you will discern some recording level discrepancies from tape source to tape source. This was confirmed with the person that I had create the complete show seeds as unavoidable when he compiled the masters. He dealt with them as best he could (Soundforge, etc..) As for the songs that were missing entirely from the copy I received, I will give you all the information I have. I contacted the person who "held" the SBD out of the Vault to find out why these songs were missing. He informed me that they were indeed on the MR, but suffered from tremendous tape speed problem. So bad in fact, that he opted not to transfer them to the copy that made its way into circulation. This lead me to uncover and at the same time solve a real mystery. The facts now seem to indicate that what was used on the first tree as SBD, was in fact from the fabled FM broadcast of the whole show. As any of you who have copies of the show treed in 1998 know, the first 40 minutes of the show came from a SBD/5 seed. Within this first 40 minutes are two of the songs that could not be transferred from the SBDMR due to speed troubles: Here Comes Sunshine and Looks Like Rain. Neither of these songs exhibit any pitch problems at all, and further, they exhibit none of the static noise that prevails over what we have from the SBDMR. Thus, I can only surmise that this chunk that was used on the first tree actually emanated from the allusive FM broadcast made on 7/28/73; the tape for which we scoured many a local radio station in search of, all in vain. When I had in my hands all five of the different source tapes for the first tree back in the summer of 1998, I transferred each one to DAT with the help of a DAT taper buddy of mine. We made two complete DAT copies of everything involved. One set was sent to the person who was to assemble and edit together the Digital Tree, the other was just packed away at my DAT friend's house. It was this second set of DATs that I was able to pull out for use on this tree. Since no fancy splicing and editing was going to be needed for this new tree, we were able to go right to these DATs to fill the gaps in the SBDMR. So everything used here that did not come from the SBDMR is actually one generation cleaner that even the Seed tapes I made to run the old tree. It should be noted that the Encores were not to be found on the MR at all. In fact, E2 occurred some nine hours after the Dead's show that day, so it makes sense that the Reels were not still sitting there ready to roll. The job of editing all of this together fell to a person who shall remain nameless, but he needs to be thanked none the less. He shares my incredibly overbearing sense of detail when it comes to doing this sort of thing, and since I personally am not set up to do anything digitally myself, I needed someone like that in my camp. First off, his cross fade addition of the Bill Graham intro into Bertha sounds even better than the one I did on the Analog Tree. I almost wept tears of joy when I first got the discs back from him, and that was just in the first thirty seconds of the show. I didn't even think he'd go that extra mile with the discs, but he did. Every track ID is pure perfection. This guy is nothing short of the best DAT>CD person I've ever encountered. You will all be very pleased. That pretty well rounds out the story of how this tree came to be. If I think of more tidbits I'll toss them out to you all. Thanks for listening. Noah Watkins Story Part2 Here is another post I made that gave the history of the first tree, and all that went into the birth of this idea... Noah ------------------------------------------------------------- From: Noah Weiner <nbw000@aol.com> Date: Thu Mar 9, 2000 11:58pm Subject: More of the Watkins Tree Story I went looking through old e-mails and I found a copy of a post I sent to the Compendium mail list after being approached for more info on the tapes used for the first tree. I just copied the whole thing. I didn't feel like editing or updating any of it. This will confirm that I am all and more of the overly compulsive taper freak that many of you know me to be. After reading it, I can honestly say I sound a bit "obsessed." This comes from around August 1998: ------------------------------------------------ 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...) |
| Trades Allowed |
Performance
| Grateful Dead 1973-07-27 Grand Prix Racecourse, Watkins Glen, NY | |
|---|---|
| Set 1 | Promised Land Sugaree Mexicali Blues Bird Song Big River Tennessee Jed |
| Set 2 | Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo Me & My Uncle Jam > Wharf Rat Around & Around |
| Set 3 | |
| Comment | Soundcheck for July 28, 1973 Jerry Garcia - Guitar Bob Weir - Guitar Keith Godchaux - Keyboards Phil Lesh - Bass Bill Kreutzmann - Drums Donna Jean Godchaux - Vocals |