BAND: GRATEFUL DEAD SHOW DATE: 06/25/92 VENUE: SOLDIER FIELD LOCATION: CHICAGO, IL SET(S): I / II LINEAGE: SETS I / II: SBD > RF Digital Earpiece Monitor Mix Buss (mix was fed to Kreutzman/Hart) > Vault Archive ADAT > 24-bit/96 kHz 2-track Mixdown DAT (Marin County Source) > SSSB LINEAGE: ENCORE ONLY: SBD > GD MASTER D > D > SSSB AUDIO RATING: AR1 MEDIA REQUIRED: DAT: 1x180 min. CD-R / MINI DISC: 3 RELEASED ON: 03/05/02 OFFICIAL SHOW NOTES: Steve Miller and James Cotton joined in during Set II; segue into "So Many Roads" has distinct "Watchtower" elongated "tease"; any/all editing, fades, NR, hiss elimination, phase shifting, time smear correction, digital jitter elimination, EQ, and quantization noise elimination (when down-converting audio for CD-R mastering), were all performed using 24-bit / 96 kHz digital realm processing at Serafin Station Studio B using the "code name Harpoon" editing software (beta Ver. 0.928.4 Build 88) JAY'S PERSONAL COMMENTS: WOW! This about describes this show in a single word. It's an aural experience that most people will never get to personally participate in. By this, I'm talking about the audio you hear is what Mickey and Billy were hearing in their earpiece monitors. The vocals, bass, and guitars were all in the "center" of the mix, with the keyboards just panned slightly to the right for "effect"; both of the percussionists were able to hear themselves and their playing in their ear monitors exactly like it would be heard if you were physically standing in front of them, on stage. It takes a little getting used to, when you listen to this show. And you'll hear the difference in how the show sounded to the audience once the encore, Gloria, begins (as this came from the GD master archive recording). The first thing you'll notice is that the guitars, keyboards, and vocals seem to have less "volume" to it. And you'd be correct in picking up on that. This is because of the dynamic headroom required by the drums and other percussion instruments! You really get to hear the backbeats, the snares, the toms, and the kick bass very clearly, which is what Billy and Mickey required. When the encore comes on, you get to experience the "regular mix", where you have the compression and limiting turned on; that's because the drums, which would naturally be louder, with their quick "attack and release" characteristics. The next thing you will notice is that during between-song tuning, or in ultra-extreme quiet passages, is an "unusually strange noise" coming from the right channel. This was determined to be RF (radio frequency) interference, affecting the monitor mixers' transmitter to the earpiece monitor receivers. Chicago is a "very noisy" RF-filled city, especially near downtown, which is not far from Soldier Field. What you're hearing is what's technically called "multipath interference", and it could have been much worse. Even though the band was using what was then the top of the line transmitters and receivers, they could not fully eliminate this interference. It won't bother your listening pleasure except during little snippets of "Space" when there's almost no audio from instruments. I've eliminated as much of this multipath noise as I could without causing aural anomalies to creep in by using a spectral NR filter designed by the editing software (the software looked and analyzed the noise, and chose the best set of NR techniques required). I would advice anyone listening to this show to keep the volume a little lower than normal for several reasons: 1) the drum beats MAY begin to damage your speakers slightly... 2) if you have a lower power amplifier, it may not be able to have enough "reserve power" to quickly respond to the very loud drum beats, so you may hear distortion (which is NOT there) caused by your amplifier's inability to provide the circuits with enough voltage. 3) During Space, the locomotive air horns really blast loudly, and without any forewarning! I know of 2 people who have blown out speakers listening to my version of the 6/20/92 show with these same air horns! I'm getting a little technical here, but forewarned is forearmed! On to the show itself: SET I: A 9.5 minute opening Bertha sets the stage for the evening's energy. Good solid opener which goes right into Greatest Story. You can hear Jerry and Bobby both asking for more volume in their earpieces... just small "cue words" that the mixing engineer knows how to interpret. West L.A. is where Mickey begins using his MIDI snare sampler... usually his snare has the "snare grille" disabled, making it sound more like a tom drum than a snare (Billy almost always uses the natural snare sound), and it does sound a bit "phony", especially in the mix here. It has a very quick attack and fade, due to the noise gate used on the percussion instruments. This is similar to what you hear at the end of Greatest Story, when every time Billy hits one drum, you hear the audience's volume kick in and then die off. The noise gate's purpose it to keep unwanted noise from other things from getting into the channel/mike it's linked to. Typical Me & My Uncle > Big River combo, but at the end of it, the RF transmitter on the left channel begins to fail. The engineers are "on top of things", and they simply re-route it to a different transmitter. This happens several times during the remainder of the show, but it's not as noticeable! When they think they have the original transmitter working (which doesn't ever happen this night), they still leave the replacement on, so that Billy doesn't lose his mix! Smart thinking... it almost sound "totally mono" for the short bursts of time this happens, and unless you are REALLY listening to the music, and not enjoying it, you're never going to notice it (they only try this during lulls and once during a section of Long Way To Go Home, and in a short section of Drums/Space). Nothing to take away from the musical pleasure you're getting from this show. The remainder of Set I is unremarkable in the song choices, or how they're played. During Ramble On Rose, there's some slight RF distortion (it's not diginoise, as that looks very unique when examining the audio waveform) for about 1 minute total, but again, it's not taking much, if anything, away from the music itself. It can be slightly annoying to those who have excellent hearing and great audio equipment, as that's when you'd hear it most. On the "average" home audio system (and I tried this using the multiple types of speakers I use to check to see if shows sound okay on consumer audio speakers), it's barely noticeable. Only on very high-end speakers is it going to cause anyone any "disagreement". Nothing I could do about this, outside of editing out the sections, which makes no sense. I listened to the GD Master digital recording, and it's noticeable on there as well (again to the degree mentioned above). SET II: An energetic Aiko kicks off the 2nd half. Solid, good mix, everyone's got their acts together. A short break and then a 10 minute Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, which Bobby rocks on (I can just picture how much spittle he showered the audience with!). Another short break.... hmmm, is there a problem here, or was this planned? I was told it was technical in nature, not planned, as you'll soon find out. During the intermission, the techs thought they had the left channel RF transmitter fixed, and it seemed to be working correctly for the first 2 songs. They removed the backup unit from the rack, and felt that the problem had been solved. And, JERRY SPEAKS! He actually comes forward and thanks Steve Miller and James Cotton for their work on GMLS! It's unusual to hear Jerry talk, and it was great to hear the guest players being acknowledged by "Da Man"! To me, it shows that he respects their talents, and their sitting in this evening. To have Jerry acknowledge you on stage has to be one of the greatest accolades a guest musician could have gotten. Unfortunately, during Long Way to Go Home, the next song up, it dies again. This time, it was lengthy. I corrected the "problem" (as it was VERY disturbing to the enjoyment of the show) by cloning (using slight reverb and delay FX added so it didn't sound 100% mono) the right channel's audio onto the affected left channel (while leaving the highly decreased original left channel volume still in the mix!). I really hate to "alter" a show's audio in such a drastic measure, but it seemed "correct" to do, since the main mixer master recording didn't have this error on it. And rather than "substituting" the master mix for the problem section, which would have made it sound radically different, I simply did what I considered to be the best "least offensive" corrective action. After that problem was corrected during the show, they left the backup transmitter in place, literally sitting on the stage floor! And Long Way continued without a hitch (and a nice version it was, too!) The next song kind of set me back, as I wasn't ready to hear Saint Of Circumstance without the usual Lost Sailor lead-in! Unusual move, but nothing about the Dead strikes me as being "unusual" anymore. It segues VERY nicely into a 10 minute, and quite emotional, He's Gone. Drums > Space! Ah, the love songs for people who need a bathroom break! And this was a LONG version, a little over 30 minutes. Billy and Mickey ripped off some great chops, but Mickey began his MIDI percussion session a little earlier than "normal". Billy didn't seem to mind, leaving when he felt the time was right. Some nice sequences were in this evening's show, and people who listened to all of Space weren't left unfulfilled. The only unusual part came when Mickey went to hit a certain instrument, and the volume was bit too high in it's setting. It was meant to have a snare drum type of sound base, but for the first few times it was enabled, it was distorted. The people at the SBD finally got the volume down to a better level, although it was still slightly distorted. (NOTE: This was NOT recording overload, as the waveforms were not clipped. It was just too much volume at the SBD input, causing the digital distortion). Space ended up with a pretty good free-form jam by Weir, Garcia, and Lesh. They were all off on their tangents, and it worked nicely. Then you hear the slight "click" from Jerry's FX rack, and you know the sound is going to change soon and the next song will begin. I really love when Jerry plays a segue into, and especially the opening notes of The Wheel. It's totally unmistakable in it's sound, with the reverb and delay, and that clean sound that Jerry does so well. Unfortunately, as it had happened a lot of times in the past, the vocal channels weren't turned on ahead of time (although during the last part of Space, you can hear Bobby talk through the monitor channels). So, part of the first verse is lost, as it had happened so many times before. I guess Jerry was pissed off at this, as he wanted this night to be a good show for the audience. Since there was the vocal channels problem with The Wheel, Jerry decided to "give the audience what they came for"! As The Wheel wound down, Weir starts up with the opening chords for Watchtower. No mistaking this opening. It was there. But Jerry wasn't going for it! He let Weir play quite a few riffs without hitting any notes himself. This kind of told Bobby "Not yet, bud"... and the rest of the band was pretty confused, as the next song to be played was NOT talked about during intermission as a possibility! (NOTE: That info comes right from my MC source, who was backstage with the band members). So we wait, and we wait, and we wait, and then... Jerry just begins playing his opening notes to So Many Roads! Oh, this was a treat for all! Listen carefully, and you can hear the audience's delayed reaction being picked up by the stage mikes and going into the earpieces. Even though Jerry flubbed some of the words, you could close your eyes, and visualize a single spotlight shining on Garcia, standing tall and proud, singing this wonderful ballad. His vocals and playing emotions come out in this song, like he's wearing his heart on the sleeve of his tee shirt. An excellent 7+ minute version came out of the mouth and from the fingers of this great musician, and the band didn't let him down... they played a little more subtly than normal, knowing Jerry wants this song to be out there for the people to hear. Roads winds down, and Weir "gets his wish"... Watchtower actually begins now, in earnest. Bobby, also, doesn't disappoint, and he certainly doesn't try to upstage Jerry's last song. Bob puts a lot of himself into this version. But during the opening part, when they're trying to get the levels on Steve Miller and James Cotton just right, all you hear playing in the ear monitors is Billy, Mickey, Phil, and Vince. This lasts for about 45 seconds. Miller does a good job of getting some solo guitar time during this song, and you hear Jerry backing off to let Steve get his "guest player" time in. Jerry fills in a little here and there, but it's mainly Miller who does the lead guitar during this song. Set II winds up with a good old-fashioned rockin' Turn On Your Love Light. James Cotton does a good job on harp, bringing back memories of Pigpen. Sure, it's not the same style they played back in the late 60's, but it's a very respectable rendition. There's a lot of energy from Cotton and Miller, and Jerry gets in his own lead licks as well. Nice 9+ minute version, full of just some great raw rock and roll from everyone involved. I started the encore, Gloria, from it's first note, so as not to "throw people" with the difference in the before-song tuning and noodling. You will hear the big difference now between the audio of the earpiece monitors and what is in the Dead Vault for this show. The song, although it will appear to sound much louder, is actually the same basic "instrument" audio dB level, minus the percussion dynamics that were present for everything up this point. So you can see how the use of compression and limiting can really affect the dynamics of a song. The audio is still crystal clear, there's a bit more separation of instruments in the mix for the encore, but you'll see why people who are really into audio appreciate NOT having compression and limiting put into released shows... it just doesn't give you the "feeling" of what's actually loud and soft, as it would normally sound. There's is still a fair amount of dynamic headroom in Gloria, but nothing like all the music prior to this. I hope you enjoy this show. I'm fond of Chicago shows, being a Chicago born and raised person myself (even the suburb I live in now is only a mile from part of Chicago's southern border). I've been to so many Rosemont and Soldier Field shows, that I have a great love of what the engineers could do with the horrible "tin room" acoustics of the Horizon and the swirling winds in Soldier Field which can really affect the sound. I hope you all will enjoy this unusual, and rare, version of this show. You'll find yourself picturing yourself sitting at the back of the stage, on a drum stool, looking out at the huge audience. With this recording, you'll get more than the "up close and personal" feeling some recordings give you... you're actually "in the band" with this one. It's just a shame that Gloria wasn't included in the copy my MC source sent me for this monitor mix version. But, we live with the hand dealt to us. I'm just happy I could give you this much of a unique perspective with this show. PERSONAL RATINGS: (on a 1 to 10 scale with 10 being excellent) Audio Mix: 8.5 (most of the instrument being solo, due to the monitor setup) Audio Quality: 9.6 (just that little right channel RF noise) Energy Level: 9.6 Show "Completeness": 10.0 Song Selection: Very good Surprises: Jerry's "So Many Roads" "Completeness": 10.0 Song Selection: Very good Surprises: Jerry's "So Many Roads" App\Http\Controllers\Api\FileDownloadController::download(): Return value must be of type string, none returned