The Rolling Stones: From the Vault – L.A. Forum (Live in 1975)

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I know for many of you my movie/Blu-ray/book/whatever reviews are not the primary reason you come to this site. At a guess, I’d say there are quite a few of you who wish I’d stop writing them. This site used to be about the music, man, I can almost hear you say.

I appreciate that you all tolerate these things, and never complain.

For once I’ve got a review that is about the music, man. The Rolling Stones have released quite a few concerts on video in their From the Vault series over the years. I got a couple of them to review a while back and here’s one of them.

I’m not by any means a Stones superfan. I definitely can’t break down their discography or which years are best in terms of performances. But I dug the hell out of this show as you can see from my review.

Earth to Echo (2014)

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I truly have no memory of watching this. I did enjoy reading my review and noting how movies had kicked into nostalgia overload (the review was written in 2014) and chuckling about how quaint that sounds today.

I guess the movie was a mash-up of a bunch of 1980s family adventure films, but not nearly as good as any of them. This is probably why I don’t remember it. I’m sure I sold the Blu-ray so all I have left is this review.

Dr. Katz Live Album

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I’m a huge fan of Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist – or I should say I was a huge fan. Nothing happened to cause me to not be a fan, I just haven’t seen it in years so I have no idea how it holds up, or if I’d still find it funny.

I definitely found it funny in 2014, when they released this audio-only, live version of the show. The series was always basically comedians doing their bits in an animated format. Here is it comedians doing bits in audio format, pretending to be an animated show.

I dug it back then, as you can see from my review.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Dream Demon (1988)

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A beautiful, upper-class schoolteacher prepares to marry her military hero husband. But instead of saying “I Do” she declares that she cannot marry him. He rebukes her with a slap to the face. She responds in kind and knocks his head plumb off of his body. She flees the church with her white wedding gown covered in bright red blood.

This is a dream of course. Diana (Jemma Redgrave) will have many more of them before the film ends. Many, many more of them. I’d say a good 2/3rds of the film is dream sequences.

The dreams aren’t particularly scary, or even all that inventive. While watching this I kept thinking that if someone like David Lynch had directed it, Dream Demon would be a true classic. He’d create nightmares that we’d be talking about for decades. Instead, we get a lot of long hallways, a creepy basement, and the occasional man on fire.

Despite all of this I still quite liked the movie. What the dreams lack in imagination they make up for in beauty and mood. They are all shot with dramatic, shadowy lighting and wonderfully moody colors. They are…well…dreamy.

The plot outside of the dreams involves Diana trying to understand why she is having these dreams. Is she just nervous about getting married like her therapist suggests, or is there something more nefarious happening? Despite the title of the film, there isn’t anything supernatural going on, although it does owe a great debt to A Nightmare on Elm Street made just a few years earlier. But sadly, there is nothing akin to Freddy Krueger stalking her dreams. The film could really use a good villain.

There are a couple of obnoxious paparazzi types hanging around and one of them (played by the great Timothy Spall) features in some of the dreams, getting more and more grotesque with each one. But they ultimately don’t amount to much.

She’s helped by Jenny (Kathlene Wilhoite) an American who says her biological parents used to live in Jenny’s house, but she was adopted as a young girl and has no memory of them.

The two begin sharing dreams, each living inside the other’s nightmares and they begin to be afraid that they will never escape them.

Unlike a lot of movies of this sort, neither girl makes any real effort to stay awake. They don’t drink coffee by the gallon or try to remain standing or anything. Diana falls asleep a the drop of a hat. She’s constantly nodding off while sitting on the couch or anywhere else. Despite the fact she’s terrified of what she might dream of.

The resolution is as unimaginative as the dreams, and yet again I still quite enjoyed the film. There is a mood that the film is vibing on that I found to be pretty great.

Allman Brothers Band – Morrison, CO (08/12/01)

Allman Brothers Band
Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Morrison, CO
August 12, 2001

** 16 BIT **

Source: Neumann KM-140’s (ORTF) > Lunatec V2 > Tascam DA-P1 > DAT(m)
Transfer: DAT(m) > Sony PCM-R500 > S/PDIF > Tascam HD-P2 > CDWave > FLAC (16/44.1)
Mastering: .WAV > Sound Forge Pro 10.0a (boost mids and highs, minor edits, normalize, & add fades) > CDWav (tracking) > Trader’s Little Helper (level 5) > FLAC
Location: Row 10, ROC
Recorded by: Jeff Bowen, aka OldNeumanntapr, and Jack Hunt
Transfered by: Terry Watts
Mastered by: Dennis Orr
Tagging, Via xACT 2.53, And Front-Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr

Setlist:

  1. Tuning/Crowd/Intro
  2. Revival
  3. Statesboro Blues
  4. Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More
  5. The Same Thing
  6. Stormy Monday
  7. Who To Believe
  8. Dreams
  9. Rocking Horse
  10. Trouble No More
  11. Desdemona
  12. All Night Train
  13. I’ve Been Lovin’ You Too Long
  14. Midnight Rider
  15. Soulshine
  16. Jessica
  17. Encore Break

Encore:

  1. Mountain Jam

Gregg Allman – vocals & keyboards
Warren Haynes – vocals & guitars
Derek Trucks – guitars
Oteil Burbridge – bass
Butch Trucks – drums
Jaimoe – drums
Marc Quinones – percussion

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This is one of two shows that I have recorded out of my home state of California, the other being Blue Oyster Cult in Utah on this very same trip. I flew to Salt Lake City and met up with my friend Jack, and we recorded Blue Oyster Cult at the Weber County Fair in Ogden, UT, before driving out to record the Allman Brothers Band in CO. I’d always wanted to see Red Rocks Amphitheatre after hearing stories about it for so many years. It’s a really cool place. We got there in the early afternoon after staying in a motel for the night in Wyoming en route from Utah. Red Rocks is a ‘park’ during the daylight hours so we were able to walk through it at see the complete amphitheatre. I had heard that from the upper part of the amphitheatre you can see lightning storms out over the valley below. Thanks to Kirk West, Jack was able to score a pair of backstage passes from the band that we used after the show. We both met Warren Haynes backstage after the show, which is actually ‘under’ the stage rather than behind, because of the natural rock formations that surround the amphitheatre. In addition to my taping gear, which the band had no problem with, I also brought in my old black-body Nikon FM. I had to hide the FM in the taping bag because the band would not allow cameras. So, I had Jack shoot photos during the show and I ran the recording gear, and I told him that if they threw him out for taking pictures at least I would be there to run the audio gear! However, when the time came for photos with Warren backstage after the show, the shot that I took of Jack and Warren was clear but the one that Jack took of Warren and me was blurry. I attribute that to the fact that Jack made several beer runs (for himself) during the show. (He claimed that he wasn’t good with available-light manual focus without a flash. The depth of field at f/2.0 is very shallow.) Likely excuse; He was drunk. Susan Tedeschi opened for the Allman Brothers, and we recorded both sets. We were lucky to claim a tenth row right-of-center position to record from. The sound was really good and I was fortunate to be able to use my friend Allen Chen’s Lunatec V2 microphone preamp. This was the first time that I saw the Allman Brothers do ’Mountain Jam’. We had a minor shock when we got back to the parking lots and found the rental car gone, but soon realized that it had been towed a short distance away and re-parked on the other side of a big rock outcropping. Not sure why. It took another day and a half to get back to Salt Lake City, after overnighting at the same motel in Wyoming. I stayed at Jack’s house just north of Salt Lake City for a week so I could ‘mine’ his DAT collection, and then I flew home. The flight from Phoenix to San Luis Obispo was almost a disaster because thick fog almost kept us from landing at the SLO airport. We made one or two attempts before the stewardess got on the radio and said that because of the fog there was a possibility that we would have to divert to Fresno. My girlfriend was waiting at the airport for me and I was not happy about the prospect of spending the night in Fresno. Fortunately, the third time was the charm and the pilot, whose name was ‘Captain Kirk’, brought us through the fog and we landed safely. Not quite a month later to the day the country would grieve over 9-11.

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

The Game of Clones: Bruceploitation Collection Vol. 1 is the Pick of the Week

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I haven’t remembered to post one of these in a while. I do write them every week for Cinema Sentries, but just forget to post them here. I have been linking to CS for all my old picks on my My Writings page if you get a hankering for me yammering about Blu-ray releases.

Anyways, this week there are a bunch of cool Blu-rays coming out, my favorite of which is this awesome-looking set of Bruce Lee-inspired flicks. Apparently, just after Lee died a bunch of low-budget films were made with dudes that kind of looked like Bruce Lee and called themselves names like Bruce Li and Dragon Lee. They were cashing in on his famous name, but the films got increasingly bizarre and amazing.

Anyway you can read all about it and more here.

Percy Crosby’s Skippy: Daily Comics 1931-1933

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Growing up I loved the newspaper comic strips. My parents subscribed to two newspapers – The Tulsa World which ran every morning and the Claremore Progress which ran every afternoon. The Tulsa World had the better comics selection and more of them. The Claremore paper mostly overlapped with the Tulsa comics but there were a few that Tulsa didn’t have and I cherished them.

My siblings and I often fought over who got to read the comics section first, especially on Sundays when there were even more of them and they were in color.

I read all of the funny ones (even the ones I didn’t actually find that funny) but always skipped the dramatic comics. My favorites were Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side. My mother would buy us a copy of their annual books every Valentine’s Day.

Skippy was no longer around when I was growing up but I suspect I would have loved it. I love it now, as you can see from reading my review of this collection.

Owsley and Me: My LSD Family by Rhoney Gissen Stanley

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Owsley Stanley is a name very familiar to Deadheads. He was their sound engineer and financial back in their early days. He designed the infamous wall of sound. He made some of the purest LSD the world has ever known.

Rhoney Gissen Stanley was Owsley’s lover and helped him make a lot of that Acid in those early days. She wrote a book a few years ago and I wrote a review of it, which you can read here.

All Our Colors Benefit – Mountain View, CA (10/10/92)

Mickey Hart & Friends
John Trudell
John Lee Hooker & Ry Cooder
Steve Miller Band
Jackson Browne & Friends
Santana
10/10/92
Native American Indian Benefit, “All Our Colors, The Good Road Concert”
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, CA

Mickey Hart
w/Carlos Santana, Steve Miller, Kitaro, D’CuCKOO, Michael Shrieve, etc.

Any help with a setlist?

John Trudell

  1. Intro >Junkman
  2. Rockin’ The Res
  3. Reality
  4. Wait For Me
  5. Johnny Damas and Me
  6. Crazy Horse >band intros
  7. Fool’s War
  8. Bombs Over Bagdad

    John Trudell – vocals
    Mark Shark – guitar, backing vocals
    Gary Ray – drums
    Bobby Tsukamoto – bass, backing vocals
    Rick Eckstein – keyboards
    Quiltman – vocals, percussion

John Lee Hooker & Ry Cooder

  1. Lonely Man
  2. It Serves Me Right To Suffer
  3. Hobo Blues
  4. Crawling Kingsnake

Steve Miller Band

xx. Intro*
xx. Fly Like An Eagle*

  1. //Seasons
  2. You’re So Fine
  3. Mercury Blues
  4. I’m Tore Down
  5. Gangster Of Love
  6. Living In The USA
  7. Dance Dance Dance
  8. Rock ‘N Me
  9. Take The Money And Run
  10. Jet Airliner

Encore:
11. The Joker

Jackson Browne & Friends

  1. Intro
  2. Before The Deluge (w/ David Lindley)
  3. I’m Alive
  4. Miles Away
  5. Soldier Of Plenty
  6. Shape Of A Heart
  7. World In Motion (w/ Bonnie Raitt)
  8. Here Come Those Tears Again (w/ Mark Shark & Bonnie Raitt)
  9. All Good Things
  10. Lawless Avenues

encore:

  1. The Pretender
    [64:40]

Bonnie Raitt & David Lindley sat in on Jackson’s set and were the ‘friends’.

Santana

  1. Peace On Earth * >
  2. Mother Earth * >
  3. Somewhere In Heaven *
  4. Viva La Vida (Life Is For Living) *
  5. Savor >
  6. Percussion Jam
  7. The Healer ^
  8. All Your Love ^#
  9. Sacred Fire ^#
  10. Why Can’t We Live Together? *^# >
  11. Exodus *^#%$

Carlos Santana – Electric Guitars, Vocals
Alex Ligertwood – Electric Guitar, Percussion, Vocals
Chester Thompson – Keyboards, Vocals
Myron Dove – Electric Bass
Karl Perazzo – Percussion, Vocals
Raul Rekow – Percussion, Vocals
Walfredo De Los Reyes – Drums

* w/ Jorge Santana
^ – w/ Ry Cooder
# – w/ Steve Miller
% – w/ Norton Buffalo
$ – w/ Native American Dancers

Nakamichi CM-300s w/CP-2 Omnis >Sony WM-D6C Cassette Master
XLIIS Master Transferred: Sony TC-D5M >Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48khz)
(Recorded From Lawn Repeater Stacks, Left)

WAV >iZotope RX4 advanced & Har-Bal 3.0
Frequencies balanced for additional clarity and some compression to bring the recording some additional presence.

WAV >Audacity (Track Splits, Down Sample / Dither To 16bit/44.1khz) >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.37

(Recorded, Transferred, Audacity + FLAC, Tags, & Front-Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr)
(iZotope/Har-Bal Post Production by Flying -M-)

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
These performances were Bill Graham’s last big festival that he was working on before he died the previous year. I’m sorry that he never lived to actually see them performed. On the surface it seemed these benefit concerts were held to commemorate the 500 year anniversary of Columbus ‘discovering’ the new world. 1492-1992. Actually, it was more to open people’s eyes to the suffering and misery that the Native American people have endured during that 500 year history. One of the Native American speakers between sets commented, “Why do we celebrate Columbus? He was LOST!!” Santana headlined on Saturday and Bonnie Raitt headlined on Sunday. Saturday was billed as ‘All Our Colors, The Good Road Concert” and Sunday was billed as ‘Healing The Sacred Hoop’. I remember that between songs, Bonnie remarked that there were a bunch of young girls trying to get into John Lee Hooker’s dressing room. “That’s what I call ‘Healing The Sacred Hoop'”, she said. They were awesome shows. Some of the sets were kind of quiet and have more crowd noise on the recordings than I would have liked. I’m kind of amazed that there are not more recordings of these shows out there. I recorded both days up on the lawn with Nakamichi CM-300s with CP-2 omni capsules->Sony WM-D6C. The music went on from about 3pm to around midnight, so bringing in enough blank tape was a major problem. Another big problem was that since the shows started so early in the afternoon it was nearly impossible to hide recording equipment in broad daylight. I rode up to the shows with my friends Dave and Brian and it wasn’t until I was putting my equipment together in the back seat of the car that I discovered that I had the CP-2 omni capsules on the mics instead of the CP-1 cardioid caps. I was really upset because the omnis add a lot more crowd noise because they lack the side and rear isolation that the cardioids have. My previous recording had been in a bar back home the week before and we did a matrix mix with a feed off of the soundboard plus the two CM-300 omnis that were hung from the ceiling. I had forgotten to replace the omni capsules, which I hardly ever used, with the CP-1 cardioids.

I got everything in OK on Saturday but Sunday I had a problem. (This saga became one of my best ever taping stories in the years to come!) Because it was kind of cold at night I had brought extra clothing to both stay warm and conceal equipment. I had taken a long-sleeved flannel shirt and wrapped up the mics and knotted the sleeves together. I hid the D6 and cables and a couple of tapes with an ace bandage wrapped around my crotch and had no other option but to put the mics at the bottom of a backpack with misc. crap on top of it. I looked for a line with a security guy that seemed to be doing a minimum of searching and had Dave and Brian go through the turnstiles ahead of me. At the last second a supervisor took over my line just as I stepped up to the search. My heart kind of did a double beat but I hoped for the best. I always relied on the old magician’s sleight-of-hand trick of showing them what you wanted them to see while at the same time distracting them from what you wanted to hide. While my friends went through the turnstiles the supervisor was rummaging around in my bag and felt the mics wrapped up in the shirt. “What’s This?,” he wanted to know and stopped the line. I had to think fast as he was trying but could not untie the knots on the shirt. “It’s a beer bottle,” says I, after the other guy had already torn my ticket. He pulled me out of line and, yelled at me,”You can’t bring that in here!” I stepped out of line and said that I’d get rid of it. Meanwhile, Dave looked back and saw what was going on. I put my hand up in the air palm up and he tossed the car keys to me over the top of the turnstiles. I went back to his car, opened the trunk, and took out two blank cassettes from under my ace bandage and left them in the car. I unwrapped the mics and shoved them down next to the tape deck under the ace bandage and hoped for better luck! When I went back I picked a different line and got through without a problem. The usher at the gate did a double take when he saw that the ticket had been torn already and then signed off on the back by the supervisor. He asked me about it and I said, with my best ‘dumb-guy’ look, that they had found a beer bottle on me and made me go and get rid of it. What did he say? You guessed it! “You can’t bring that in here!!!!” Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave found me inside as I was making my way to the lawn and asked me about it as I gave him back his keys. I told him I had to lighten the load a bit and had to leave some tape behind. “I guess I just won’t tape Don Henley,” I said. “Oh you’ve Got to tape Henley,” he said. Later on, about 5 minutes before Henley came on stage, I looked up to see Dave drop two blank tapes in my lap. “How in the hell did you get Those??” I asked. He said that he had gotten cold and asked the people at the gate if he could go out and get his sweatshirt! Naturally, he had another thought in mind as well. I laughed and shook my head. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it! That’s the closest I’ve ever come to getting caught taping.

Once night fell, I could get the mics up higher and make a better recording, but in broad daylight I had no other choice but to sit on the ground under the repeater towers and build a little pile of clothing on top of my backpack. I hid the mics in the sleeves on the shirt and ran the mic cables back to the backpack where the D6 was.

The music was pretty good. I couldn’t see much of the stage, especially in the daytime, because the view screens were not on. I remember that the Hooker / Cooder set and the Lindley / Cooder set was kind of quiet. Those sets have more crowd noise on them, plus the omni caps sure didn’t help matters. It would have been nice to have the shotguns but they are a little noticeable!

I finally got around to making 24 bit digital transfers of the master cassettes. Thanks so much to Flying M for the post production. These sets sound a lot better now.

Bo Diddley – Isla Vista, CA (01/31/92)

Bo Diddley
1/31/92
The Anaconda
Isla Vista, CA

FOB Left; Nakamichi CM-300 CP-1 Cardioids >Sony WM-D6C
TDK SA-90 Masters >CDR Transferred: Sony TC-D5M >HHb CDR 800 PRO Via Analog i/o
CD Masters >FLAC (Level 8) Via xACT 2.25
FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.53

Recorded, Transferred, FLAC, Tags, & Front-Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr

Disc I:

  1. Bo Diddley
  2. Roadrunner
  3. I’m A Man
  4. Hey Girl
  5. You Got Another Man
  6. talk
  7. I’m Not The One

Disc II:

  1. Put Your Suitcase Down
  2. I’m Confused
  3. Diddley Daddy >
  4. This Should Not Be
  5. Hey! Bo Diddley

Oldneumanntapr Notes:
This was the first time that I had seen a show at the Anaconda, which was previously known as the Graduate. Before that it started out life as the Isla Vista Bank Of America, (and was torched in the Viet Nam era from what I’m told.) The Anaconda was located in Isla Vista, near Santa Barbara and where the UCSB campus is located. Bo Jammed a lot that night, with one song being over 22 minutes long. The recording sounds pretty good. I returned there a month or so later and taped John Lee Hooker, which was also good. The Anaconda is long gone, but at least I was able to record two blues shows there.

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