Category: Uncategorized

Arlo Guthrie – Arroyo Grande, CA (04/08/15)

Arlo Guthrie
Forbes Hall
The Clark Center for the Performing Arts
Arroyo Grande, CA
April 8, 2015

16 BIT

Neumann AK-40s (ORTF In Hat) > LC3 > KM-100s > Beyer MV-100 > Tascam DR-100mkII @ 24 bit/48 kHz

Mastering: .WAV’s > iZotope RX3 Advanced v3.00.695 (declick) > Sound Forge Pro 10.0a (minor edits, normalize, & fades) >
WAV >Audacity (Track Splits, Down Sample / Dither To 16 bit / 44.1k) >FLAC (Level 8) via xACT 2.35) >FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.35

Location: 7th row, Center Section, three seats in from left-side aisle
Recorded, Audacity track splits / down sample, FLAC, tags, & front-cover artwork by OldNeumanntapr

Mastered by: Dennis Orr

Set I:

  1. Motorcycle Song
  2. talk / band intros
  3. Chilling Of The Evening
  4. talk
  5. Darkest Hour
  6. talk
  7. Me And My Goose
  8. talk
  9. Ocean Crossing
  10. Last Train
  11. Pig Meat Papa*
  12. talk / Wavy Gravy story, Woodstock story, Checker cab story
  13. Coming Into Los Angeles

Set II:

  1. Alice’s Restaurant
  2. talk
  3. St. James Infirmary**
  4. talk
  5. Hear You Sing Again***
  6. City Of New Orleans****
  7. talk
  8. Highway In The Wind
  9. This Land Is Your Land***
  10. talk
  11. My Peace^*
  • Leadbelly, circa 1935
    ** Cisco Houston
    *** Woody Guthrie
    **** Steve Goodman
    ^* Words By Woody Guthrie, Music By Arlo Guthrie

Arlo Guthrie – lead vocals, guitars, & keyboards
Abe Guthrie – keyboards
Bobby Sweet – lead guitar & violin
Terry A La Berry – drums

OldNeumanntapr Notes:
I hadn’t seen Arlo in almost 17 years, since he played the old Cuesta College Auditorium in San Luis Obispo. I noticed right away that Arlo appeared to have lost weight since the last time I’d seen him. His voice was a little craggy, which he attributed to being sick.

The night before the show I burned CD’s of the two previous Arlo shows that I had recorded (3/23/91 Ventura Theater and 10/23/98 Cuesta College), in hopes of giving them to Arlo. I wasn’t sure if he would meet folks after the show, like he did at Cuesta in ’98, so luckily I was able to stop by the back doors of the Clark Center at around 3 pm. I was able to give the discs to Arlo’s bus driver and he said that he would pass them along.

My friend Dave bought four tickets back in November or December, when they went on sale, so I knew I had a good reserved seat waiting. Even though Arlo is reputed to allow taping, I decided to go stealth because it would be easier. Plus, my seat was about 10 feet or so in front of the board, which is where I figured to set up if I went the open taping route.

I wasn’t sure the venue would allow me to bring in a mic stand, and even if they would have I thought the possibility was high, being it was a sold out show, that someone in the back would complain that my microphones were blocking their sight lines. When we walked out after the show I noticed that Arlo’s sound crew had brought in their own mixing board and lighting gear, and the house board was covered up in the spot where I had set up before, for Dark Star Orchestra in 2007. So, it was a good decision to run stealth. Fortunately the crowd around me was very quiet. One guy behind me coughed a couple of times but it wasn’t intrusive. There was a baby that cried once or twice during the second set but fortunately it was way in the back of the hall.

Being a multi-media presentation, Arlo opened the first set with a claymation video of the Motorcycle song, complete with Arlo as a pickle riding his Honda and falling off the cliff and smashing the police car. The band came out, in the dark, while the short film was playing, and synched their playing with the film soundtrack. There was also a cartoon later depicting a little boy and his pet goose, which Arlo used to highlight a children’s song about the goose being cooked and eaten for dinner. ‘Coming Into Los Angeles’ closed the first set, which is a favorite of mine.

The second set opened with ‘Alice’s Restaurant’, with four part harmony and full orchestration. 😉 Arlo had film clips from the 1969 film ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ playing behind the band during this part of the show. He remarked to the crowd that Officer Obie, as well as the judge, were real people playing themselves and were not actors. Arlo said that Obie told him when the film was being made that if anyone was going to make a fool out of him he should do it himself. He said that he and Obie actually developed a friendship that lasted until the officer’s death.

Arlo played ‘The City Of New Orleans’, which was written by Steve Goodman. He mentioned that Goodman wanted him to pass the song on to Johhny Cash but Cash wasn’t interested, having done a recent trains album. ‘That was fortunate for me,’ Arlo said. He also played ’St. James Infirmary’, which I don’t know if I have heard before.

Arlo played a plethora of acoustic guitars, including a 12 string that seemed to be electric/acoustic, which had a sound hole that was high up in the front corner of the body. He fiddled with one acoustic six string guitar which needed some adjustments and remarked to the crowd, ‘Funny, I tuned it last year.’ He also played keyboards. His son Abe played keyboards and he had a lead guitarist who also played violin. His drummer was surrounded by a clear Plexiglas sound containment wall.

All in all it was a good concert evening in a really small intimate theater. The theatre at the Clark Center holds a little over 600 people.

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

Allman Brothers Band – Paso Robles, CA (08/05/96)

Allman Brothers Band
8/5/96
Grandstands
California Mid-State Fair
Paso Robles, CA

SEC. 5, Row B, Seat #4 (2nd Row, Left)
Nakamichi CM-300 CP-2 Omnis >Sony TCD-D7 (Stealth)
DAT Master Transferred: Tascam DA-30 >HHb CDR 800 PRO Via Analog i/o,
CD Masters >FLAC (Level 8) Via xACT 2.35 >FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.53

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

Disc I

  1. Statesboro Blues (fades in)
  2. Midnight Rider
  3. Blue Sky
  4. You Don’t Love Me (fades in)
  5. What’s Done Is Done
  6. Worried Down With The Blues
  7. True Gravity >

Disc II

  1. Drums >
  2. Bass Solo >True Gravity
  3. The Same Thing
  4. Dreams
  5. End Of The Line
  6. One Way Out

OldNeumanntapr Notes:
This was a stealth recording because the fairgrounds would NOT allow a recording to be made, even though the band allowed it. I purchased tickets that were directly under the left PA stack, as the crowds at the fair shows are usually drunk and unruly. This was the night that Dickey went to the hospital midway through the set so the band had to improvise with lots of long drawn out jams. You got the feeling the band was really flying by the seat of their pants after Dickey was taken away. It was like, ‘OK guys, NOW what do we do?’ The show must go on! I believe that my recording was the only one made that night. I’ve never seen another source for this show, and most of the tapers were still in Colorado for the ABB Red Rocks shows that had just taken place the previous weekend. As usual, the Mid State Fair crowds were drunk and obnoxious. (I wanted to be as close to the PA stacks as possible!) I used the omni capsules because I had the microphones hidden in a Levi jacket with just the capsules protruding from the front pockets, and they were pointing straight up. (There was really no way to ‘aim’ them’ so proximity to the PA was key.) This was my standard stealth set up at the time. The jacket had holes sewn into the bottom of the front pockets and I used hollowed out 35mm film can lids that went around the microphone bodies to keep the weight of the microphones from falling through the pockets. Custom shortened XLR >RCA cables were used to link with a standard RCA >Mini Y cable that ran into the mic input on my D7.

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

The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2014)

cover

In my review of The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears I noted that while I liked the film I was not likely to ever watch it again. And yet my review of the film makes me want to do just that.

It is a strange, almost incomprehensible film – one filled with beautiful, dark, blood-soaked images. I barely remember it. I need to rewatch it.

My full review is here.

Borgen: The Complete Series

cover

Being an amateur reviewer is fun, but sometimes exhausting. Because I have a regular full-time job, a family, and sometimes I pretend I have a social life finding the time to sit down and watch something and then review it can be complicated.

Ok, let’s be real here. Obviously, I have the time. I watch a lot of movies. I talk about them here so I can’t pretend that I don’t have the time. Let me start over. Being an amateur reviewer is fun, but sometimes I want to watch whatever I want to watch and not have to write about them afterward.

That’s better.

Being an amateur reviewer does take a lot of time. When I write an official review I try to do a good job. I spend quite a bit of time in research mode. I’ll read about the making of the film. I’ll read new reviews and reviews that were written at the time the film came out. I like to dig into the history of genres and filmmakers. Etc. That stuff doesn’t always come into the actual review, but I like to do my research.

But reviews also have a deadline. PR people want you to have the reviews up the week the film comes out (or in my case when the Blu-ray is released). When things go well that is no problem. But sometimes they don’t actually give me a copy of the film until after it has come out. Sometimes I’ll request quite a few things and then find myself having to watch and review half a dozen films within a few days.

Or sometimes, as is the case with this series, I’ll get a multi-season collection and have to get my review out quickly. Binge-watching a series is one thing. Bing-watching multiple seasons in a few days and managing to write something coherent is something else. With stuff like this, I tend to watch a couple of episodes then skip a few and work my way through the entire thing like that. There just isn’t enough time to watch every single episode.

So, Borgen is a Danish series that is often likened to The West Wing. I remember watching it, and liking it, but the whole thing is a blur. I know I skipped around quite a lot with it and now I really want to sit down with it, taking my time to enjoy it.

You can read my review here.

Puck: What Fools These Mortals Be!

covert

I pay very little attention to politics these days. I know I probably should, I know it is important. I do get enough information to make what I think is an informed enough vote, but there is so much vitriol out there that I can’t take too much of it in.

I used to pay close attention. I used to argue about it on social media thinking I was making a difference. Then one night I realized I was lying in bed at two o’clock in the morning trying to make the perfect argument to convince an old college friend on Facebook of something or other.

I didn’t convince him of anything. In fact, we got into a pretty good fight and stopped talking to each other for a long while.

My blood pressure can’t take that crap.

And that’s how I make an introduction to my review of a book that is full of political cartoons from a century ago! Puck was a hugely important political magazine that ran from 1877 to 1918. This book covers that history and presents a whole bunch of the cartoons that ran inside its covers. As you can read in my review, it is quite informative and rather dull to this non-history buff reader.

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

cover art

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)

cover

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.

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. 😉

Percy Crosby’s Skippy: Daily Comics 1931-1933

cover

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.