Category: Uncategorized

Lyle Lovett – Radio & TV Appearances (1989-1999)

Lyle Lovett
Radio & TV Appearances (1989-1999)

Grammy Awards 2/22/89

  1. She’s Hot to Go

KSGR Broadcasts Vol 6 & 8

  1. (Townes Van Zandt’s) White Freightliner Blues

KFOG-FM, San Francisco, CA 10/26/94

  1. Hello Grandma

Johnny Cash Tribute 1999

  1. Tennessee Flat Top Box

KSGR Broadcasts Volume 4

  1. That’s Right You’re Not from Texas

TNN

  1. Road to Ensenada
  2. Fiona

The Arsenio Hall Show

  1. I’ve Been to Memphis

KCRW, Santa Monica, CA 10/30/98

  1. Bears

World Cafe

  1. Private Conversation

Late Night w/David Letterman 8/9/95

  1. Funny How Times Slip Away

KCBO

  1. She’s No Lady

KSGR Broadcasts Vol 7

  1. If I Had a Boat

KFOG-FM, San Francisco, CA 8/14/99

  1. Church

Lyle w/Asleep at the Wheel

  1. Blues for Dixie

KSGR Broadcasts Vol 4

  1. Test Signal

The Tonight Show w/Jay Leno 2/17/93

  1. Stand By Your Man

Late Night w/David Letterman 6/16/93

  1. You’ve Been So Good Up to Now

Hee-Haw

  1. Which Way Does That Old Pony Run?
  2. I Married Her Just Because She Looks Like You
  3. Where Oh Where are You Tonight? / jokes

Lit Up Inside: Selected Lyrics by Van Morrison

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I swear I posted this review on this site when I first published it, but I cannot find it anywhere. Several years ago, before I went private and public again, I was contacted out of nowhere by a publicist for the company releasing a book of Van Morrison’s lyrics.

She presumably had just googled Van’s name and came across my site. Amazingly she didn’t balk at the fact that I was posting lots of ROIOs from Van and asked me to review the book.

Van is better known for his music than his lyrics, but as my review points out, the man can write some words, too.

Maleficent (2014)

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The idea that Hollywood has run out of new ideas is not new. We’ve been complaining about that for about as long as I can remember. There are still wildly original movies coming out these days (I just watched Poor Things as just one example – although come to think of it, that film was clearly greatly influenced by Frankenstein…). But it does seem that the local cineplex is constantly filled with sequels, remakes, and reimaginings.

That last one has gained a lot of traction over the last few years. Movies and television shows are often going back to the “classics” and tinkering with them a bit, reimaging them for today’s age. Maleficent takes the classic Sleeping Beauty villain and gives us her backstory, making her not quite so evil.

As you can read in my review, it doesn’t quite work.

Don Henley – Mountain View, CA (10/11/92)

Don Henley
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, California
Sunday October 11, 1992

Recorded By OldNeumanntapr from lawn repeater stacks, left side
2 Nakamichi CM-300s w/CP-2 Omnis > Sony WM-D6C using Maxell UDXLIIS cassettes
Transferred: Sony TC-D5M > Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48khz)

Mastered by Flying -M- (January 2021)
Har-Bal 3.0 & iZotope RX 8 advanced > CD Wave > Korg Aqua (16-44) > TLH (flac level 8)

Billed as “Healing The Sacred Hoop – The Next 500 Years”
A benefit for the International Indian Treaty Council
Sunday’s show also featured performances by Bonnie Raitt, Todd Rundgren, Little Feat, Ry Cooder & David Lindley, Cris Williamson, and Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman

  1. The End Of The Innocence
  2. Reason To Believe
  3. Sweetheart Like You
  4. Best Of My Love
  5. What’s Goin’ On
  6. Same Girl
  7. Chief Joseph
  8. Lonely Weekends
  9. What A Wonderful World
    Encore:
  10. The Heart Of The Matter
    [52:36]

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

Mastered by Flying -M- (January 2021)
Har-Bal 3.0 & iZotope RX 8 advanced > CD Wave > Korg Aqua (16-44) > TLH (flac level 8)

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 ‘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 real isolation that the cardioids have. I had been recording a band in a bar back home the night 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 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 sticken’ 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. I need to transfer these cassettes to CDR. Some will sound better than others.

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!

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

Thanks go out to Professor Goody for verifying the pitch on this recording.
Jewel box artwork by ethiessen and it looks so nice, a million thanks for the beautiful covers.

Finally, thanks to OldNeumanntapr for trusting me with his recording and waiting forever for me to finish this.

For historical reference only and not intended for resale or any commercial use

Enjoy…
-M- (January 2021)

FLYING M PRODUCTIONS

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)

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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

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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!

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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.