Honest Man | 1998-11-18 | Little Feat

2:00:51
SBD
Rating:
6.00 / 2 ratings
SHNID:
lf1998-11-18.shnf
Source:
SBD
Taper Notes:
View NotesThe original tapes used for this gig were secured in January 1999, along with many other tapes of Little Feat and similar bands, from a tape collector who was returning States side after being on overseas secondment for the company he worked for. He apparently had transferred his entire collection to minidisc / CDR prior to relocating back himself and no longer
had any need of the tapes and had effectively swapped the entire collection for some local artwork at a weekend market. Luckily for us (and you), we heard of this transaction and eventually obtained access to the tapes.

The Keswick Theatre tapes were recorded from the sound board and we estimate that the recordings you are listening to are probably no more than one or two DAT generations down from the master. (A word to the wise, for any DAT traders out there, just because you are trading / copying DATs does
not mean that you are not introducing "noise" into the recordings each time you make a copy. The two DATs which we obtained this gig on had definite evidence of two, possibly even three, distinct "noise levels", due to poor
connecting cables used in the copying, as well as a huge D.C. (varying) offset, which was, to put it bluntly, damn hard to clean up. In short, please take care of your equipment and take pride in the copies you make for others.)

After the tapes were cleaned of the majority of the "noise" (microphone noise was left on the tape, as this is part of the "live experience"), they needed to be equalised. The extent of the equalisation required to get to the stage that you now hear, showed that the sound board which the tapes had emanated from had either some extremely weird presets or the sound
recordist had one too many joints prior to the gig. One can understand the vocals being high up in the mix, but having the tom-toms and snare drum 15-20 dB higher than everything else seems somewhat excessive to us.

The original tapes were sourced (at bargain basement prices) by Lorraine, who also was responsible for the cleaning, equalising & (where applicable) the repair of the tapes. Lorraine was suitably assisted by her team at Big L Productions.