R.E.M. Robyn Hitchcock Clive Gregson and Christine Collister Billy Bragg Larry Groce / Bob Thompson Mountain Stage band Mountain Stage 28 April 1991 - Part 1 Capitol Plaza Music Hall, Charleston, West Virgina EX Pre-FM FM Broadcast m off master tape > CD > Audacity (minor adjustments where stated) > TLH > FLAC CD 1 01 Mountain stage programme intro 02 Announcer + Michael Stipe 03 World Leader Pretend - REM 04 Radio Song - REM 05 Fall on Me - REM 06 It's the end of the world as we know it - REM 07 radio announcements - REM 08 Positively 4th Street - Larry Groce 09 Oceanside - Robyn Hitchcock 10 Arms of Love - Robyn Hitchcock 11 Wild Moutain Thyme - Robyn Hitchcock 12 So You Think You're in Love - Robyn Hitchcock 13 Announcer 14 The Minute You're Gone - Clive Gregson and Christine Collister 15 Here I Go Again - Clive Gregson and Christine Collister 16 I Shake Rattle and I Roll - Clive Gregson and Christine Collister 17 I Know Something You Don't Know - Clive Gregson and Christine Collister 18 Brother's Keeper - Bob Thompson CD 2 01 Billy Bragg introduces his 1st song 02 The Marching Song of the Covert Batallions - Billy Bragg 03 Accident Waiting to Happen - Billy Bragg 04 Tank Part Salute - Billy Bragg 05 Waiting For The Great Leap Forward - Billy Bragg bonus 06 Waiting For The Great Leap Forward - Billy Bragg (mixed in Audacity to deal with dropout through most of this song) This has been a joy to transfer, listen to and now to share. I was generously sent a copy of a pre FM broadcast tape of this fantastic show, after I seeded a few REM 1991 gigs, and appealed for a fuller version of this show. Thankfully my prayers / this request was answered. The first part of the R.E.M. concert from this show needs little introduction – it’s (arguably, or at least depending on who you talk to) R.E.M. at their peak, doing a beautiful acoustic show – and now in the closest to master quality you’ll find easily. The other artists’ - hard to single out any as they are all superlative - tracks that I never heard much until recent times reveal more, and become more and more enjoyable. Robyn Hitchcock has a lovely ethereal violin accompaniment to some of the songs in his set, similar to that used to great effect on Moss Elixir and the transfixing show I saw him do at the Phoenix Festival (Stratford, UK) in the mid 90s - I would love to get a recording of that show, I have looked but never found it! Robyn does some of his wonderful surreal scene setting before Arms of Love. Also Wild Mountain Thyme is blessed with this beautiful violin ...he announces beforehand "this is an old song but I'd like to imagine Bryan Ferry singing it". The performances here have indeed spurred me to investigate Robyn Hitchcock more, and I am very glad that I have. Clive Gregson and Christine Collister, two solo artists that had been working together for a while, do a powerful set too, and Billy Bragg's set ranges from rousing fun, to powerful (that word again, but you’ll hear why when you download all this) and passionate, to quite beautiful with the piano led "Tank Part Salute". The piano continues on the rousing Waiting For The Great Leap Forward unfortunately the sound suffers a little here, so I have offered a separate ‘mix’ of this latter track where I did my best to tackle dropout throughout this song. Larry Groce and the Mountain Stage make their own additions to the broadcast,, which are well worth hearing – I read up on Larry Groce on wiki, and he’s had a successful parallel recording career as presenting the Mountain Stage shows. Both Billy and Robyn do songs that were unreleased at the time, each artist does a strong set, so I urge you to download and listen to the songs in full, you will be glad you did. Enjoy the show! TECHNICAL DETAILS - for those curious. The (pre) broadcast tape I was sent was for the most part had not been edited: there was the odd fade out at the end of segments, or tape sides but all the music seemed (and even the announcements) seemed complete. Through a large part of the recording, I found the right channel was louder by, on average, 3dbs. After careful consideration, I reduced the gain on all the tracks affected. It does seem the bias may have been caused by a recording issue at master stage or duplication to off master (ie the tape I was sent) stage. During the Billy Bragg set that the EQ/right channel issue goes from being barely noticeable to quite pronounced. However this broadcast set has been rarely shared in such a complete form, and I have been keen to avoid ‘working’ on anything unless I considered it absolutely necessary. Aside from the gain fix, and alternative edit of one of Billy’s tracks I have provided, where the right channel EQ issue becomes a hum (the more alert amongst you will notice it) I left it as is. I felt this kind of surgery is best left to those with more knowledge and tools than I have - if you do fancy tackling this - or the other REM project I suggest below, good luck to you and thanks! :) To my surprise, like with the radio broadcasts, even the pre-broadcast version is in mono (on Part 2, which will be seeded separately) from the REM day announcement up to Swan Swan Hummingbird, perhaps to save on recording and mixing costs. I was tempted to do a little work on the mono bit, but decided against it, with the intention of sending as raw a transfer where possible. It is pretty clear for mono, being from a pre-FM tape. Also surprisingly, the stereo portion that followed ran too fast - I always assumed the bootlegged versions running too fast was due to tape copying issues, but seems it stems from these masters. There was an overlap where the mono portion contained some talking by Michael Stipe – who does of course have a quite distinctive talking voice – and the stereo, faster, portion duplicated said dialogue. So this made establishing that the latter ran fast by 6% quite easy. I duly corrected this in Audacity. Each recording is thoroughly vetted in headphones to ensure a quality result. CAN YOU HELP!? R.E.M. - Snap F.M. radio show, KCRW radio studios, Santa Monica, California 3rd April 1991 I'd love it if someone with really good experience at re-working recordings was able to compile all the extent recordings of this show (I shared four versions on Zomb), including the chat bits, and put them together, and give them more 'sheen' if possible? That I'd love to hear...anyone contemplating such a thing should note as well as the three versions I have seeded, there could well be a fourth (even more complete?) tape recording somewhere to help complete the puzzle...? I am also very keen to get these – Robyn Hitchcock - Phoenix Festival (Stratford, UK) in the mid 1990s Robyn Hitchcock - Kentish Town And Country Club 1991 FM broadcast Kirsty MacColl - Fleadh Festival, Finsbury Park, London, UK 12th June 1993 (this is different from the concert released on the Titanic Days 2CD - that was from 2 years later. This gig has been on FM radio, it was also re-broadcast on 4th August 2008 by BBC 6Music) Iggy Pop 's 1987 tour Cry For Love, Fire Girl * - Fenders Ballroom, Longbeach 23 Feb 1987 Sick of You* - Newcastle City Hall, Newcastle upon Tyne, 15th June, 1987 Sick of You* - Hannover 8 July 1987 Sick of You* - Stadtpark, Hamburg, Germany, 12th July 1987 *also Dirt, Down on the Street, and Sixteen from the above gigs if possible too. Also - Interview San Francisco 1987-03-02 (FM) - including 2 live broadcast tracks - I Got A Right (Oakland 2-28-87) + Real Wild Child (Oakland 2-28-87). I have been kindly sent this interview but I have seen details of a version that included these live tracks. App\Http\Controllers\Api\FileDownloadController::download(): Return value must be of type string, none returned