HW: Camden 1977 tidied up for trade

[dave hall]

Er,
Is it possible to have a similar arrangement as the Hawkestra gig?

Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Edmonds <mmje at MMJE.DEMON.CO.UK>
To: BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Date: 28 January 2002 22:28
Subject: HW: Camden 1977 tidied up for trade


>Hi All,
>
>OK, I'm going out on a limb here. I have what I hope is the best available
>version of the excellent Camden Music Machine June 10, 1977 gig available
>for trade. If you like this HW era then you have to have this. It's a
>cracking gig and apart from a honker of a bum chord at the beginning of
High
>Rise, the band doesn't put a foot wrong.
>
>Track list:
>
>Reefer Madness
>Hassan I Sahba
>Forge of the Vulcan
>Brainstorm
>Wind of Change
>Steppenwolf
>High Rise
>Robot
>Spirit of the Age
>Damnation Alley
>Uncle Sam's on Mars
>The Iron Dream
>Master of the Universe (encore)
>
>Running time: 79m 46sec
>
>Sound quality:
>
>On the whole, I would rate this as a high 7, rising to 8 and dipping to 6
in
>places.
>
>Details:
>
>First off, thanks to all those who sent me tapes of this gig (plus the June
>11 show). I used the good quality "Forge of the Vulcan" CD for the work
>because it seems there are two distinct Camden tapes available of which one
>is definitely wrong. If you have a tape which suddenly stops in Spirit of
>the Age, bangs into the *middle section only* of Master of the Universe and
>then bangs into the post-vocal section (the big organ chord riff) of
>Damnation Alley then chances are, your tape is sped up by about 7%.
Although
>it might sound exciting, the tempos are completely wrong. For example, the
>sped up version of the Camden Uncle Sam runs at over 170bpm!! The correct
>version runs at about 150bpm and for a point of reference, the PXR5 version
>is about 145bpm. Steppenwolf sounds completely nuts at the wrong tempo.
>
>The main problem with the Vulcan CD is that although it sounds clean, it is
>strangely lifeless so I did some work on it. First thing was to swap
>channels as Dave's guitar was on the left. Then to try and spice it up a
>bit, I added some midrange (not too much or it gets nasal). I tried doing
>other things to give it more edge but I always ended up with something that
>degraded the sound too much. Then, as usual, the balance across the
>recording was skewed and inconsistent so I set up envelope controls to try
>and keep things central. It doesn't always work but it's better than having
>the sound coming all from one side.
>
>As for the track joins, the music is continuous up to Spirit of the Age
>where I had to fade it out. There is then a quick fade up into Damnation
>Alley and this version has some of the main vocals. Music is then
continuous
>to the "thank you" after The Iron Dream. Master of the Universe is
>incomplete so this has the end of the first section, the complete middle
>section and the first half of the third section - more than the other tape
>version.
>
>There are some minor problems with the sound. In the quiet bits (Forge of
>the Vulcan and Wind of Change) there is a quiet clicking in the left. I
>tried everything to get rid of this and it worked if listening on speakers
>but headphones showed up the processing so I had to let it stand. There is
>also a strange treble artifact in Damnation Alley on the cymbals (they
sound
>swooshy) and the only way to fix this would have been to drop the treble
>EQ - no cymbals in other words so again, I left it. The sound also breaks
up
>slightly towards the end of Robot.
>
>Finally, on the CD burn, there is a small click between Steppenwolf and
High
>Rise. I haven't worked out what causes this as if you burn with the 2
second
>gap, it plays fine or if you play the WAVs individually or strung together
>on the PC it plays fine - it just cocks up on the CD. Oh, and there are
none
>of those maddening 2 sec gaps except before the encore.
>
>Anyway, I've blurbed enough. If you want to trade, please contact me on
><mmje at mmje.demon.co.uk>.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Mark
>