Author: Mat Brewster

Welcome to the Midnight Cafe group of sites.

Leo Kottke – Santa Barbara, CA (09/17/17)

Leo Kottke
9/17/17
Lobero Theatre
Santa Barbara, CA

11th Row DEAD Center:
Neumann AK 40s (ORTF) >LC3 >KM100s >Beyer MV-100 >Tascam DR-100mkII (24bit/48khz)

WAV >iZotope RX6 Advanced & Har-Bal 3.0 >

WAV >Audacity (Track Splits, Down Sample / Dither To 16bit/44.1khz) >FLAC (Level 8) Plus Tags Via xACT 2.41

Recorded, Audacity, FLAC, & Tags By OldNeumanntapr
iZotope / Har-Bal Post Production By Flying M

Disc I:

  1. Intro
  2. From Pizza Towers To Defeat
  3. Pamela Brown
  4. Ojo
  5. Homer & Jethro Story
  6. Last Steam Engine Train
  7. Four Cents
  8. Julie’s House
  9. Disko (Island) / Callus Story
  10. Disco
  11. Staging Story
  12. Living In The Country
  13. Diner / Stink Story

Disc II:

  1. Then
  2. The Brain Of The Purple Mountain
  3. Tuning / Carnival Story
  4. Unknown
  5. Oddball
  6. Wonderland By Night
  7. Unknown (New Song, Aborted)

Encore:

  1. Intro To Rings / Snakes Story
  2. Rings

Leo Kottke Solo Acoustic – Six & 12 String Guitars, Vocals

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
I’m still kicking myself that it took so many years for me to discover Leo Kottke. I’d heard of him for a long time but never took the time to seek out his music. I even had the chance to see / record him not too far from home in 2011 or 2012. When I finally did listen to one of his recordings I was instantly hooked. I’d never heard anything quite like his playing before. I noticed right away that in addition to being a virtuoso guitar player he was a superb story teller. Another taper / collector summed it up really well. “Leo is a very funny comedian who just happens to be a virtuoso guitarist!” I couldn’t have said it better myself. This is the second time that I have seen him, the first being also at the Lobero Theatre in November of 2014. I think one of the reasons I collect so many of his live shows is to hear the meandering, nonsensical, funny stories that he tells! Leo tried a new instrumental at the end of the set but abandoned it partway through when he couldn’t get it to work. He said, “I used to say that I play everything that I can remember, but I guess I can’t say that anymore.” He said that what made it worse was that it was a new song, and he couldn’t remember how it went. There was another song in the set that I couldn’t place. Leo usually plays instrumentals, which can be hard to identify, but this track had lyrics and I still couldn’t uncover anything on it when I Googled the words. Hopefully someone else can give it a name. This was a quiet acoustic show. It was so quiet that the microphones picked up the sounds of my breathing, even though I was conscious that it might happen. There’s really no way to get around that, and still be alive to record the show! Thanks, as always, for Flying M’s awesome work in post production!

Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. 😉

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)

poster

Talk about a case of a sequel being better than the original. I watched Vampire Hunter D a few weeks ago and thought it was awful. There were interesting story ideas, cool characters, and deep mythology hidden within a terribly written and animated film. This sequel, made some fifteen years later improves upon everything in every way.

The basics of the story are essentially the same. This one opens up the mythology a little bit and adds some characters, but it is still Vampire Hunter D trying to rescue a beautiful maiden from a vampire.

In this version, set in the far future, vampires have essentially ruled the world for centuries, but they are slowly dying out. Or rather they are slowly being killed by vampire hunters. Most of these are humans, mercenaries looking for big paydays and a bit of danger. But D is a dhampir – half human half vampire.

The girl, Charlotte (Wendy Lee) is taken from her home by Meier Link (John Rafter Lee) a vampire of nobility. Her family pays D (Andy Philpot) a hefty downpayment (with promises of much more if he succeeds) for rescuing her.

They’ve also paid The Marcus Brothers, a motley crew of hunters to do the same. They mostly consist of the same type of characters you get in any film with mercenaries – rough-and-tumble dudes who are good with specific weapons and get smart-assed with their dialogue. There is one lady Leila (Pamela Segal) and a bedridden psychic who can psychically leave his body and do severe damage to his enemies with his mind.

Leila gets the most screen time and she is the most interesting. The rest of her crew immediately take a disliking to D as they see him as competition. But Leila forms a friendship of sorts with him. He rescues her then she rescues him and they form a bond.

There are monsters, including a shapeshifter and a werewolf, they must battle but those scenes are short, and the fights are finished fairly quickly. It is as if the film understands that the monsters might be fun to watch for a minute, but it is the characters that are going to create fans.

The story is mostly good, though it borrows heavily from other stories and periodically drags. It is still lightyears above what they did in the first film.

The animation is gorgeous. The film wanders from a desolate desert to a great forest and we spend the third act in an enormous gothic castle. All of it is rendered beautifully. The characters are well-drawn and the action flows like the best live-action movies do.

It is astonishing how much better this film is than the original. Highly recommended.

Allman Brothers Band – Mountain View, CA (08/01/99)

Allman Brothers Band
Aug 1,1999
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, CA

*Neumann AK-40’s (x/y) >LC3->KM-100’s >Beyer MV-100 >Tascam DA-P1,
DAT Master Transferred: Tascam DA-30 >HHb CDR 800 PRO Via Analog i/o,
Taiyo Uden CD Masters >WAV Via xACT 2.35 >Audacity (Minor Edits, Minor Selective Compression [To Repair Wind Noise] >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.44

Recorded, Transferred, FLAC’d, Tagged, & Front Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr

*SEC 202, Row H (Some Minor Wind Noise / Distortion during first couple of songs.

Disc I:

  1. True Gravity
  2. Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More
  3. You Don’t Love Me
  4. Good Times (Don’t Fade Away)
  5. Midnight Rider
  6. Good Clean Fun
  7. Blue Sky
  8. End Of The Line

Disc II:

  1. Seven Turns*
  2. Melissa*
  3. J.J.’s Alley
  4. Trouble No More
  5. Stormy Monday**
  6. In Memory of Elizabeth Reed >***
  7. Bass Jam >In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed
  8. Revival

Encore:

  1. No One To Run With

*acoustic
**w/Susan Tedeschi on guitar and vocals
***w/Martin Fierro on saxophone

Susan Tedeschi Opened

OldNeumanntapr Notes:
This was my third Allman Brothers Band recording at Shoreline, and at least by now the venue staff was clued into tapers and let us bring microphone stands into the venue. Whereas the Dead had a designated tapers section, the Allman Brothers would let you record wherever your seat was. This was both good and bad, because even though you could record from up front if you had the ticket, you were still at the mercy of the crowd around you. It’s why they say ‘safety in numbers’. In the tapers section you could be helped by like-minded individuals who all had the common goal of recording, but the Allman Brothers tapers were scattered hither and yon and your neighbors could make or break your recording. At least I was able to run my microphone capsules on the stand with the active cables so they took up as little room as possible. I remember people yelling to security about tapers with larger mics that were obscuring their view and they made them lower their stands. I think this was the only time that I was able to see Martin Fierro play. He added so much to Jerry Garcia’s funk band ‘Legion Of Mary’. I loved his playing.

Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. 😉

Talking Heads – Rotterdam, The Netherlands (12/11/80)

TALKING HEADS
The Ahoy
Rotterdam
Netherlands
December 11, 1980

Partial Show – Disc Time 51:50

01 Warning Sign
02 Stay Hungry
03 Cities
04 band introductions
05 I Zimbra
06 Drugs
07 Once in a Lifetime (fades out) > radio announcement
08 Houses in Motion
09 Born Under Punches
10 Cross Eyed and Painless (fades out)

Source: Dutch FM Broadcast > ? > Cassette.

Transfer: Cassette > Sony TC-D5M > Realtek AC97 > Soundforge >
CD-Wave > TLH v.1.0.0.72 (for SBE-OK, FLAC compression and
checksums) > FLAC > dimeadozen, November 2006.

Notes: Once in a Lifetime fades out after only two minutes.
There’s some minor tape damage audible during Houses in Motion,
around track time 4:25 > 4:35. Cross Eyed and Painless fades
out on the final notes. Otherwise, a great recording…ENJOY!

Amanda Shires – San Luis Obispo, CA (05/09/13)

Amanda Shires
May 9 2013
SLO Brewing Co.
San Luis Obispo, CA

FOB: Neumann KM-140s (ORTF) >25 ft XLRs >Beyer MV-100 >Tascam DR-100mkII (24bit/48hz)

Master WAV >Audacity (Amplify, Normalize, Track Splits, Minor Edits) >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.37

Microphone Cross Bar Bungeed To Front Center Ceiling Post, 8 Ft From Stage Center, 9.5 Ft High

(Recorded, Transferred, FLAC’d, Tagged (Via xACT 2.53) & Front Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr)

  1. Kudzu
  2. Swimmer, Dreams Don’t Keep
  3. Kept Watch Like Doves
  4. The Garden Song
  5. Bulletproof
  6. Devastate *
  7. If I
  8. Lovesick I Remain

*(new song abandoned-noisy audience?)-chat about being stoned listening to Carol King

Solo Acoustic
Amanda Shires – Acoustic Guitar, Vocals

Opened For Todd Snider, you can find his set here.

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This was the very first recording that I made with my, at that time, brand new Tascam DR-100mkII. I was recording Amanda’s set mostly just to get a feel for the new deck, and to practice a little with it before Todd Snider came out.

Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, don’t sell, play nice, don’t run with scissors, etc. 😉

The Good Die Young (1954)

cover

The Good Die Young is an odd little heist film. It spends more time developing its characters – four men who are not career criminals, and their wives – than it does with the heister (or its preparation, or what happens after.)

As a character study, it is pretty interesting. The acting is good (Gloria Grahame is in it and you can never go wrong with Gloria Grahame). But it lacks that certain something that makes a film great.

You can read my full review here.

Allman Brothers Band – Augusta, GA (11/18/81)

Allman Brothers Band
Bell Auditorium
Augusta, GA
11/18/1981

Source: analog SBD recording > ? > CD-R > EAC > FLAC

Remastered by Mr. Sifter, July 2024. Some songs have incomplete intros/outros, and “Southbound” has a cut in the middle. Not anyone’s favorite era but an overlooked era, with full 5 songs off ‘Brothers Of The Road,’ an album they’d never return to again after the tour ended a couple months later.

Speed corrected to the correct pitch using Audacity,

Clearly a few generations from the master, removed some of the gratuitous hiss and attempted to EQ some details out of the lows and mids to at least give this short-lived lineup a fair shake here.

Thx to Sean Gleason for his original 2012 upload.

  1. Jessica
  2. Can’t Take It With You
  3. Straight From The Heart
  4. Blue Sky
  5. Leavin’
  6. Crazy Love
  7. Things You Used To Do
  8. Midnight Rider
  9. In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
  10. Need Your Love So Bad
  11. Melissa
  12. Never Knew How Much (I Needed You)
  13. One Way Out
  14. Southbound
  15. The Judgement
  16. Encore: Statesboro Blues
  17. Whipping Post

Saigon (1948)

cover art

Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd made four films together. Three of them – This Gun For Hire, The Glass Key, & The Blue Dahlia are terrific film noirs. Their final film together Saigon is a bit of a dud. It isn’t a film noir but an exotic post-war picture. They made a lot of those during and just after World War II where they put American characters in exotic locales (but still shot them in California sound stages) and gave the locals quite a thrill.

Some of them (including my favorite film of all time, Casablanca) are quite good, others, like Saigon just never really go anywhere. You can read my full review here.

The Burglars (1971)

blu

Jean-Paul Belmondo was one of my favorite French actors. He made some great films including Breathless from director Jean Luc Godard, Le Doulous from Jean-Pierre Melville, and Mississippi Mermaid from Francois Truffaut (if you are keeping count those are three great films from three of the greatest French directors ever). But even when he made not-so-great films from not-so-great directors Belmondo elevated the material. He was so charming, so full of life his mere presence made a film better.

Such is the case with The Burglars. It is a fairly average heist film, but Belmondo is wonderful and that makes it worth watching. You can read my full review here.