Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Pink Floyd - 1970-05-01 - Since We Were Teenagers - Santa Monica, CA


Here

2 comments:

Dr. Forrester said...

Pink Floyd - Since We Were Teenagers - MQR 004

Civic Auditorium - Santa Monica, CA, USA
May 1st 1970

Source: Audience
Sound Quality: EX

Taper: Dub Taylor
Recording equipment: Nagra R2R > 5" Reel Master
Playback: Tandberg R2R > Revox B-77 > M.M.'s 1st Generation Reels
Transfer: Reel[1] > Sony DAT > DAT(0) > Audigy 4 Pro > Nero Wav Editor > CDWav >
CDR(0) > CDR(1) > EAC > FLAC

Restored and Enhanced by MQR - creamcheese, }{eywood and WRomanus

Total time = 121:53m

Set One 51:18
1. GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS
2. ASTRONOMY DOMINE
3. Tune Ups
4. CYMBALINE
5. THE AMAZING PUDDING

Set Two 79:08
1. Tune Ups
2. THE EMBRYO
3. GREEN IS THE COLOUR
4. CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE, EUGENE
5. SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN
6. INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE
7. A SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS

Magna Qualitas Records is proud to present "Since We Were Teenagers", this fully restored and remastered recording from Santa Monica as our fourth release. Due to our continuing work on everything related to Zabriskie Point, which led to the new revision of the Omayyad album, we've decided to complete the restoration of this excellent recording. GBC torrented this recording (provided by Rudy and M.M.) originally a while back, and his notes reflect the many instances of dropouts, damages and cuts in the tape. All this has been restored here using pieces of other shows or relocating pieces from this show.

Dr. Forrester said...

Originally Grantchester Meadows only ran about 30 seconds. Apparently that is where the taper started recording. We have patched the majority of the song in from the previous show in San Francisco on April 29, but since the very beginning of that fades in we decided to restore that as well from the KQED tape. We wanted the birds before the song to be there. The 30 seconds of the song that existed on the tape for this show are all there, but now the whole song exists in a form that is nearly impossible to tell its from more than one show. from 0 to 0:34 April 30 - KQED. From 0:34 to 7:13 April 29 - Fillmore East. From 7:13 to 7:37 (end) May 1 - Santa Monica

Astronomy Domine had a small part missing due to a damaged portion of the tape. This was patched with a piece from slightly earlier in the song. The buildup was a bit oversaturated and was all at one continuous loud volume, so this was readjusted to better reflect the gradually increasing intensity of the song.

The original little patch from Santa Monica 1970-10-23 is still in place in Cymbaline. It was done so well I can't even tell where it is, so why mess with perfection?

A dull spot in the tape at about 14 minutes into The Amazing Pudding was repaired.

The missing part of Careful was spliced in from Port Talbot 1969-12-06, curiously this concert was during the Sessions for Zabriskie Point. We searched long and hard through dozens of shows to find a tape where the performance was similar enough to the one at Santa Monica (and with similar sound quality) to fill the missing section. Quite a lot was missing, so it had to be done. The patch exists from 2:33 to 3:48.

Drop-outs and other anomalies were cleaned up or otherwise repaired. The volume of the whole thing was adjusted in various places to make the dynamics more pleasant, and because the tape sounds like the taper was adjusting the gain on the fly as the show went on in order to compensate for very quiet passages. A lot of the between song banter and tuneups and the tape effects during Cymbaline were very quiet, so they were brought up a bit. The distorted sections of the show were carefully restored to avoid a lot of the oversaturation they originally contained. Several spots where the high end dulled down a bit, likely from deterioration of the master, were EQd separately and patched in in order to compensate for the tonal changes. Noise Reduction was carefully applied in three stages, and the whole thing now appears for the first time in stereo due to the usage of a very sophisticated and well sounding (although freely available) stereo processing plugin. The tape flips were all patched by relocating audience from different parts of the show so the whole thing is now a continuous piece for each set.

This release is certainly not perfect. Many wrinkles and crumples were present in the master tape, and although we did our best, there's not a lot that can be done to fix them. It is, however, probably the best it has ever sounded since we were teenagers, maybe even as it ever will...

July 2011