Thursday, January 13, 2011

Jean-Luc Ponty - 1991-10-05 - Boston, Mass

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1 comment:

Dr. Forrester said...

Jean-Luc Ponty and Africa Project
Berklee Performance Center
Boston, Mass. U.S.A.
October 5, 1991
(1st show of 2)
performance quality: A (very good)
recording quality: B+ (ditto)
source: 1st generation audience tape
lineage: Naka. CM-100 mikes (maybe 300's?) >
Sony D-5 cassette deck (dolby off) >
master cassettes > my cassettes
(copied Naka. to Naka. no dolby, both Maxell XLII-S) >
soundforge 4.5 > FLAC 6 > torrent.
A Stud Muffin Production. Even for the Doctor,
this is one fine recording.
A You Are There production, for sure.
setlist: disc 1 55:44
1: mum mai
2: saca saca
3: fan mote
4: kono
5: munamboa
6: yeke yeke
disc 2 64:05
7: band introductions
8: open mind
9: baba kol
10: elephants in love
11: toccola
12: chakata (Fela Kuti)
13: rum and zouc
14: bottle bot
comments:
This is the complete 1st of 2 sold-out shows from Boston with Africa Project,
a fine performance and a great recording. There is some background noise when
Ponty is talking, but none when the music is playing, everything comes through,
well, like a Stud Muffin Production. I know the Doctor likes Ponty alot, and has
shared a couple of his great recordings with me. This is one of his best of all,
I think. No music is cut, both flips were between songs and unlike some who gave
me recordings on cassette, he usually makes sure to give me the whole thing complete
as he has it. Haven't seen the Doctor (or any doctor) in years, hope he's doing well
and seeing (recording) lots of Clapton, McLaughlin and Roxy Music concerts.
I did not do any fade in or fade out in this except at the end of the concert,
so if you save to DAT or disc, you won't lose any continuity on this. There are several
places you can break this up (without editing or awkward start to disc 2) if burning to
disc and want different break point. Ponty talks about the music before most of these
songs, explaining the origin and inspiration behind them, and the tracking of each song
begins where that talk begins, not where the song begins as I sometimes do instead.
All the new songs of this tour (all but 3 in this concert) have African names (so too
the musicians in this tour) and my spelling here may be wrong on some or all of them.
This was the tour of the CD "Toccota" and all the music is of African influence, a very
new direction for Jean-Luc Ponty music and in this show anyway, a very good one.
Since their names are all African and I was not able to figure out correct spelling,
I haven't listed them (even though I prefer to list all players of a band when I can),
I didn't try to list them, but Jean-Luc introduces them and as I always do when a band
introduces their players, I put a seperate "band introductions" track in the file so
you can hear for yourself who is playing with Ponty in this unique and very interesting
collaberation. There are a few "familiar" Ponty songs but most of it is about African
culture, very different for him musically and as is so often true of Ponty music, this
is not the same old thing as yesterday. Ponty's never done anything like this before or
since, I've never heard his other bands play any of the "toccola" music he was promoting
on this tour. I doubt any of his other bands could play it. So if you didn't hear this
tour, and like the "Toccola" CD, here's another chance to hear a really nice recording
and show of the Africa Project. The talking about it is rather quiet, tough to hear clearly,
but all the music comes through strong.

January 13, 2011 at 2:51 PM

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