Bridge School Benefit – Mountain View, CA (11/02/91)

Bridge School Benefit
11/02/91
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, CA
Bridge School Benefit #5

Nakamichi CM-300’s w/CP-1s >Sony WM-D6C Cassette Master (Lawn) >CDR >FLAC
XLIIS Masters Transferred: Sony TC-D5M >HHb CDR 800 PRO Via Analog i/o
CD Masters >Audacity (Minor Edits: Remove Tape Flips, Loud Hand Claps, And Cable Noise) >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.47

Recorded, Transferred, FLAC’d, Tagged, & Front-Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr
2016 Remaster!

Sonic Youth Set NOT Recorded!

Disc I:
Neil Young w/ Nicolette Larson:

  1. Forever Young

Larry Keegan w/ Gene LaFond:

  1. Ain’t Got The Blues
  2. Wheelchair Blues

Intro by Neil Young
John Lee Hooker w/ Roy Rogers:

  1. Crawlin’ Kingsnake
  2. Hobo Blues
  3. Ride Johnny Ride

Don Henley:

  1. The End Of The Innocence
  2. River
  3. Heart Of The Matter
  4. Come Rain Or Come Shine
  5. Best Of My Love

Disc II:
Nils Lofgren:

  1. Blue Skies
  2. Sticks And Stones
  3. Big Tears Fall
  4. Believe (w/ Neil Young)
  5. Just A Little

Intro by Neil Young
Tracy Chapman:

  1. Crossroads
  2. Bang Bang Bang
  3. Mountains Of Things
  4. Short Supply
  5. The Love That You Had
  6. Amazing Grace (dedicated to Bill Graham)

Disc III:
Willie Nelson:

  1. Valentine
  2. Times Slip Away
  3. Crazy
  4. Night Life
  5. Mamas, Don’t Let Your Baby Grow Up To Be Cowboy
  6. On The Road Again
  7. Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain

Neil Young w/ The Stray Gators:

  1. Long May You Run
  2. Birds
  3. Harvest Moon
  4. From Hank To Hendrix
  5. Comes A Time

Finale:
Neil Young w/ The Stray Gators (all)

  1. Forever Young
  2. Greensleeves (a tribute to Bill Graham) Outro

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This was my first Bridge School Benefit and I was so glad to be there. I’ve seen/recorded four Bridge School Benefits and this one was my favorite. I don’t know if it was the band line up, or because it my first Bridge show, or if it was because of Bill Graham’s recent passing, but there was a lot of energy in the air. I really wanted to record a Bridge show, after having obtained 1st generation cassettes of the 1989 show. I believe that this is the first time that I recorded Neil Young. My friends Dave, Brian, and Rick met up with my ex wife and me at the show. They had reserved seats, while I wanted to be near the repeater speakers on the lawn to record. Dave told me that, though there was a pat down search getting into Shoreline, they would allow you to bring in food. I had the idea to take a small box of saltine crackers and hollow it out. I cut down the cellophane wrappers and only left about 15 crackers in each wrapper. My D6 fit perfectly inside the box, and I left it open with the remaining crackers exposed. We brought in a small tupperware of sliced cheese and cold cuts, and some sealed bottled water. I had a canvas bag with a solid sturdy bottom to hold everything. I took the microphones and custom XLR >RCA shortened cables and used a velcro Ace Bandage to conceal them on my body. Fortunately, being November, we had heavy coats that further concealed the gear. (It was really cold up on that lawn in November!) I opened the bag when we went through security, being careful to not let the gate people notice the added weight of the recorder inside, and we went in without a hitch. I ran the Nakamichi microphones in a Levi jacket, with holes sewn into the front two pockets so the capsules would protrude. I used hollowed out 35 mm film can lids to go over the microphone bodies to keep them from falling through the bottom of the pockets. As long as I stood near the repeater speakers it worked really well. I also had long hair that I wore down to further conceal the microphones. The recorder went into a hip pack so I was totally self contained. This was a really emotional weekend, with the recent death of Bill Graham. Tracy Chapman dedicated ‘Amazing Grace’ to Bill during her set. Nils Lofgren, who played the most touching set of any Bridge set I ever saw, made repeated references to Bill and told a story of getting caught by Graham trying to sneak into the Fillmore East. Nils Lofgren’s song ‘Big Tears Fall’ was very powerful. Nils asked the crowd if there were any parents in the crowd, and I remember thinking of our daughter Lucy, who was born in May of ’91 and was at home with Nikki’s folks while we went to the shows. I had just recorded two very emotional Grateful Dead shows at the Oakland Coliseum on October 27 and October 31. The 10/27/91 show was the first Dead show after Bill’s helicopter crash, (They opened with Bill’s favorite Dead song ’Sugar Magnolia’), and the Halloween show featured Ken Kesey as a special guest. After the Bridge School Benefit show, Nikki and I drove my ’67 VW camper bus to Atherton where we parked in front of my friend Karl’s friend’s parent’s house. Sunday morning we got up early and drove to Golden Gate Park to record the Bill Graham Benefit, which was another emotional all day event. It was billed as ‘Laughter, Love, And Music’. It was quite the weekend. I heard later that Dave, who didn’t stay overnight to see the Sunday Bill Graham memorial concert, ran out of gas driving his friends home in the middle of the night near Santa Margarita, CA.

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

Doctor Who: The Time of the Doctor

doctor

One of the many reasons Doctor Who has had such a fantastically long run time as a series is that The Doctor regenerates. That wasn’t always supposed to be true but when the First Doctor (William Hartnell) got sick the show was such a huge success the producers came upon this idea to keep it running.

The Doctor is an alien, who says when he dies, he doesn’t really die, but becomes someone else? Well, he’ll always be The Doctor, but he can be played by a different actor and have a different personality. Patrick Troughton took on the role of The Second Doctor and the rest is history.

It was a genius idea. Whenever an actor gets tired of playing the role someone else will take his (or her) place. A new Doctor is born with an updated personality. This also allows the series to change with the times.

It also allows fans to constantly argue over which Doctor is the best.

A Doctor’s regeneration is always a big deal. Matt Smith was one of the most popular Doctors ever and so when he decided to leave the character you just knew his departure would be huge.

It was. So huge in fact they tied it into a Christmas Episode (an annual tradition). The Time of the Doctor wrapped up several storylines and more. And then some more. As you can read in my review it is a lot of fun, but also an overstuffed mess.

Elmo’s World: All About Animals

elmo

Here we are again with another review of a Sesame Street DVD. It is strange to look back on these reviews. When my daughter was younger we watched Sesame Street nearly every day. It was a huge part of our lives. But then she grew up and grew out of Sesame Street and I haven’t thought about them in several years.

And now I’m reading my old reviews – brings back memories.

I never found Elmo to be as obnoxious as some parents. But I will admit that trying to watch multiple episodes of Elmo’s World back to back was a bit more than I could take.

Here’s my review.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Late Night With The Devil (2023)

poster

Late Night With The Devil is a sort-of found found-footage horror film about a late-night talk show that goes horribly wrong one Halloween night. Other than a short intro setting things up the entirety of the film takes place in real-time as we are watching tapes of the show from 1977. During what would be the commercial breaks we see behind-the-scenes footage as the host, guests, and crew relax, prep, and talk about the show without the cameras sending images to the world.

Night Owls with Jack Delroy is a typical late-night show from the 1970s. Think The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson a show the movie references several times as Night Owls is never able to gain the same ratings Carson does.

It is hosted by Jack Delroy (a terrific David Dastmalchian). The film’s introduction lets us know he’s incredibly ambitious and constantly let down that his show doesn’t get better ratings. After his wife dies of cancer (the episode in which she appears, clearly very sick and telling stories of their relationship gives the show its highest ratings to date) he is a changed man. The show never recovers and is on the verge of cancellation.

The Halloween Episode that we watch is a last-ditch effort to get the ratings they desperately need. Guests for the night include a hokey medium called Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss) a former magician turned skeptic, and June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) a parapsychologist who has brought with her Lily D’abo (Ingrid Torelli) a teenaged girl who survived a Church of Satan-esque cult and now is believed to be possed by a demon.

It is well made. The sets and costumes look very much like how a talk show circa the 1970s looks. They have the feel of everything exactly right. There are some nice jump scares but mostly it creates an increasingly creepy mood that eventually blows up into holy-crap territory.

I liked a lot of it, but I gotta admit I just don’t love this type of found-footage horror movie. I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theaters and absolutely loved it. But that film showed us edited versions of the found footage. Or at least they periodically stopped the cameras allowing us to jump forward in time, skipping the boring bits.

Films like this, which exist in real time become tedious to me. We see the opening credits to Night Owls and then we watch it unfold just as a real audience might have watched it from home. The behind-the-scenes footage during the commercial breaks is shot in black-and-white and breaks things up a bit, but it still unfolds in real-time.

There is an opening monologue filled with the types of dumb jokes all these shows have. There is a sidekick who riffs along with Jack. Cristou, the first guest talks like any of those so-called psychics you can find on late-night television and morning Zoo radio programs.

Obviously, any horror movie had to build towards the scares. You don’t start things immediately off with the horror or you have nowhere to go. But making me sit through a late-night talk show, something I have come to loathe in real life, just isn’t the way to go to win my heart.

It does get there in the end. It gets terrifically scary as the tension revs up and the demon possession seems more and more real. It is definitely worth watching, especially if you are a fan of found footage films. For me I can’t help but feel a little disappointed, even while recognizing the skill by which is it made.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2008)

bluera

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with Wes Anderson. It is mostly love these days as I think he has grown as a filmmaker, but there was a period in the mid-2000s when I worried he was going to become a director who was more style than substance.

The two films that caused this worry were The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited. Upon initial viewings I was unimpressed. They were very clever and stylish, but their stories left something to be desired. Or so I felt back then. I’ve since revisited and reassessed, but at the time I was disappointed with them.

With The Royal Tennenbaums and Rushmore he had become one of my favorite directors and so that disappointment was huge.

Then came The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It was magnificent. It is a stop-motion film based on the Roald Dahl story and both the story and the animation fit Anderson’s sensibilities to a “T.” It is clever and funny, beautiful, and a wee bit touching.

The Criterion Collection put out a magnificent version of it on home video a few years back and you can read my review here.

Blues Traveler – Santa Barbara, CA (07/18/92)

Blues Traveler
July 18th, 1992
Santa Barbara County Bowl
Santa Barbara, CA

Master:
Nakamichi CM-300s/cp1’s on T-bar >Sony WM-D6C>Cass(m) >HHb CDR 800
Recorded from the 8th row, left-hand side.

Recorded & Transferred By OldNeumanntapr
FLAC’d By Dave Mallick
FLAC Tags + Front-Cover Artwork By OldNeumanntapr

Conversion:
XLIIS Cass Master Transferred: Sony TC-D5M >HHb CDR 800,
CD > xACT 1.69 >FLAC
FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.53

  1. 100 Years [04:45.24]
  2. Should I Stay Or Should I Go? [08:14.31]
  3. Crash Burn > [03:45.15]
  4. Dropping Some NYC [03:56.43]
  5. What’s For Breakfast [04:44.44]
  6. Ivory Tusk [06:37.67]
  7. Crystal Flame [12:36.36]
  8. Sweet Talking Hippie [13:53.38]
  9. Johnny B. Goode [03:24.41]
    Total: [61:58.39]

Notes:

Apparent tape stoppage between tracks 6 and 7, flip between tracks 7 and 8.

Taper Notes-
This was the second time that I saw Blues Traveler. They are a good band and a great opening act! (They opened for the Allman Brothers Band.) Not many tapers at the Bowl, from what I remember. I was one of the closest to the stage, in the 8th row.

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

The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1957)

blueray

Sometimes while going through these old Cinema Sentries Reviews I come across a film that I have no memory of watching. Obviously, I did watch it because I wrote a review and I don’t make those things up, but the memory has faded. Honestly, my memory fades on most movies I’ve seen, but usually, I can remember watching them or at least a little of the plot.

If you had asked me yesterday if I’d seen The Inn of the Sixth Happiness I’d probably have said “yes.” First I probably would have asked who starred in it, but the title has a certain familiar ring to it. But I wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea of what it was about or if I liked it.

My review was mostly favorable, so I that’s good. I guess. Anyway, you can read my review here.