| Identifier | 8989605 |
| Created At | Tue May 23 2023 23:54:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) |
| Media Type | cdr |
| Media Count | 2 |
| Sound Rating | a |
| Note | ound editor's notes, from Andrew Skeoch
The concert This recording is a complete Selling England show from the magnificent second US SE tour of early 1974. The recording documents Genesis at their mature best, playing some of their most evocative music, and features a nice version of Horizons. This recording documents the complete concert, from a minute before the first melotron chord of Watcher, to the final applause after Supper's Ready. The show is performed impeccably. It is interesting to note the audience's extended applause after The Musical Box. I suspect the band left the stage after this number, leaving Steve to do his solo - a gesture that was interpreted by the audience as the end of the show, and thus cause for much foot stomping and hollering. I have this picture of Phil having to come back on and rescue him! The taper of this concert gives a running commentary to a friend throughout the show, which may be annoying, amusing or entertaining, depending upon your point of view. Certainly some of his comments give an interesting sense of what is happening on stage. His conversation at the beginning is particularly informative - and "totally shredded" has now entered my vocabulary :-) The Source Master of 1st gen sources of this show are unknown. There are 2 CDR versions of this show in circulation (that I know of): Source 1: This set has Watcher to Horizons on disc 1, and Epping Forest to Supper's Ready on disc 2, plus bonus tracks from 13th June 1977 (these are poor quality (high gen) soundboard recordings from the Palais des Sports, Paris recordings that lead to 'Seconds Out'). Tracks are indexed at the songs only, not the intros as well. This version sounds muffled, has a noticable hum throughout, and is pitched about a half tone sharp. Source 2: This version comes from what is accredited as being a 2nd gen source, and has the same disc tracklist as above, but with Peter's stories seperately indexed. This version sounds better than source 1, but has quite a bit of hiss, although the highs are clean. It is pitched about a quarter tone flat. Instead of either of these sources, I have chosen to remaster from a tape of this show, which is marked '3rd gen'. Whilst the actual generation of this tape is unconfirmed, two things are known. Firstly, it is the tape that was used to make the source 1 CDR version above, although listeing to it, you wouldn't guess it. By the owner's own admission, the transfer of his source tape to digital left a bit to be desired. Secondly, this '3rd gen' tape sounds much better than the Source 2 '2nd gen' CDR. Although the highs are similarly clear, the hiss is less, and the mids show the tape to come from a lower gen source. There is much more detail and depth on the tape. Also the lows on the tape are richer and fuller than on the CDR. Of the actual recording; the master tape appears to run from Watcher through to "To see reflected there..." in Firth of Fifth, thus one side of 90min tape. The second side seems to stop only 17 mins later, in the middle of The Musical Box. The last minute of this section of the recording has increasingly loud mechanical bumps indicating an ending tape side. However this edit may also be a result of the copying, as the last tape side (which appears complete) runs for 46 mins until the end of the concert. Thus there are only two apparent edits in the recording, but both result in the omition of short sections of the concert. To fill these gaps I have edited in sections from the Detroit 16th April tape, from ten days later. There was a third edit at the conclusion to the introduction to Supper's Ready, but this came from a copying edit, and, whilst it was missing from my tape, I was able to include the missing section from CDR source 2. If you listen closely, you can hear the slight degredation in quality resulting from using this source. The Restoration The primary problem with this recording, and the greatest challenge for me in restoring it, is immediately evident to anyone who knows this recording - microphone bumps!! The taper must have been hand holding his microphone, but it sounds as though he's eating his dinner off it. There are low bass bumps all the way through the recording. On several occasions (at the beginning of the loud instrumental in Musical Box (5:55), and also during Suppers Ready (at 2:32)) he actually taps out rhythms on it!! And on a few occasions, just for good measure, the taper blows on the mic. Getting these bumps and scratches etc out, took over 500 edits. I've approached this not by cut editing, which would have removed sections of the music, but by using a denoising program. In what I call 'inverted' mode, with the 'audition noise' button in, DINR will remove sounds above a threshold, rather than below it, as normal with noise floor attenuation. Thus in many cases I was able to set the music as the threshold, and remove the bump at frequencies were it was louder than the music. This technique works remarkably well, although sometimes you can hear a slight dropout, simply because there is no music left under a hefty bump. In other cases, where the music is louder and more complex, and the mic fumbling quieter, the bumps were not loud enough to isolate and remove, so you'll hear a few of those moments still remaining. If you are listening on a good stereo, you may also notice a few occasions during Peter's intros where the noise floor goes a bit 'digitally' - these are probably the scars left after bouts of mic fumbling were removed. So having removed extraneous noises and bass rumble, the next task was to clean up the treble. This was achieved with only 6Db of broadband noise removal, which is quite modest, thanks to a clean source tape. The second significant issue with this recording is that the treble contains significant harmonic distortion. There are times when Phil's cymblals become a wall of hard, 'fizzy' treble, with little definition. I eventually settled on an equalisation curve which attenuated the worst of this, but as it was a 'quality not quantity' issue, there was little I could do to totally remove it. The choice was either correctly balanced treble with distortion evident in places, or muffled and still distorted. So if you find the top end a bit brash in places, sorry, but its on the source. Be reassured, the final mastering has smoothed some of this and revealed more definition. If you have a copy of source 2, it may seem that the treble is smoother, but this is an audio illusion created by the hiss which does have a smooth white noise texture. Remove it and the fizzy treble is revealed. Finally, this is a mono recording. I have used early reflections to open up the stereo stage a little. |
| Trades Allowed |
Performance
| Genesis 1974-04-06 Student Union Auditorium, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH | |
|---|---|
| Set 1 | Watcher Of The Skies Dancing With The Moonlight Knight The Cinema Show I Know What I Like Firth Of Fifth The Musical Box Horizons The Battle Of Epping Forest Supper's Ready |
| Set 2 | |
| Set 3 | |
| Comment | More information available at http://users.netcon.net.au/listen/hogweed/HW04.html |