Miracle Orchestra
Wetlands Lounge
New York, NY
6/5/1999



Original Master Recording:  Scheops CMC6/MK21 (subcard) -> Sonosax -> Teac DAP20(master @ 16 bit/48khz)

DAT playback:  Sony R-500 -> Sound Devices 722 digital input (@24/48)

Mastered: Soundforge Pro 10.0c - *All file manipulation in Soundforge done at 24 bits*. Sample rate conversion 48khz to 44.1khz using iZotope 64-Bit SRC set higher than "Highest Quality" setting w/anti-alias filter.  24 bit file then processed with SOX 14.3.2 (as recommended, keeping the file at 24 bits during the processing) to remove pre-emphasis which was applied by the Teac A>D converter.  Then back to Soundforge for volume normalization and dithering to 16 bits using using iZotope MBIT+ with Ultra noise shaping, with high dither settings. Tracked in CDWav.

1.  tuning
2.  intro
3.  Sweaty Rumpshaker
4.  Call It 9
5.  Canvas
6.  Ella Vader
7.  The Secret Life Of Juan Valdez
8.  banter - announcing Tap Bar weekly run (starting June 18th)
9.  What A Mess
10. banter - welcoming Oteil
11. Mahaparusa Das *
12. Eurohaus Destroyer ->
13. So Far
14. Inevitable
15. banter - upcoming summer residency
16. Freedom
17. banter - hot and sweaty
18. Backscratch
19. Boob
20. Miracle Theme
21. banter - have to drive to Creekside
22. Bad Haircut
23. banter - goodnight, crowd calls for more
24. She
25. thanks


* = w/Oteil Burbridge on bass

Jambands.com night: Miracle Orchestra, Moon Boot Lover, Percy Hill, Disco Biscuits, Lake Trout, Juggling Suns, and Jiggle The Handle all played on this night. Sector 9, Ulu, Conehead Buddah, Blindman's Sun, and the Living Daylights all played the previous night. Oteil Burbridge and/or Butch trucks sat in with most of the bands.

Taper notes:
Ah....Miracle Orchestra....I knew I was going to get to some of your music in the BARN series eventually -- it was inevitable!  These guys were a barely-known, young (at the time) adventurous and very technically adept band that Bill "The Genius" Mulvey discovered quite by accident (they were playing downstairs at Wetlands one night and though I didn't see them, they gave out a free cassette of their music which we picked up and proceeded to have the cab driver play through TWICE on our way back from TriBeCa to the Upper East Side!) and liked a lot.  They were all young (still in college), from Boston, and their music was mostly jazz-fusion-ish -- which is Jazz with some Prog-Rock tendancies and some middle-eastern and electronica influence, and definitely featured long jams in their songs.  As a frame of reference -- if you like(d) Schleigho, Ulu, and those sort of bands, you'll probably hear something similar in these guys.

What is pretty remarkable is that they were very young and would trek down from Boston to play gigs that I can't imagine paid much money -- like this set in the basement of Wetlands (while other bands were playing upstairs), or a weekly gig at the Tap Bar of the Knitting Factory.  They managed to build a small but devoted fan base in this manner.

I'm not exactly sure why/when they broke up, but most of the band members do have other current projects -- with the most prominent being that Garrett Sayers is now the bassist for The Motet (and living in Colorado) as well as for Kyle Hollingsworth (String Cheese Incident's keyboardist)'s solo project.  Bill Carbone, the drummer, seems to be leading a Jamaican-style Dub/Funk/Jazz band called BUru Style and spent a number of years as Melvin Sparks (RIP)'s drummer.  I'm not really sure what the other guys are up to, though.

I saw these guys a TON, including nearly every week at the upcoming Knitting Factory residency mentioned during this gig, and it's about time I got one of their shows up, here as BARN87 which I got to as part of my work putting out all of my recordings from the Jambands.com weekend at Wetlands 6/4-5/1999 (still to come:  Lake Trout & Jiggle The Handle).  In general this is a very nice recording made with the mics hung above the "stage" area.  I will warn that the vocals on the 3 songs with vocals are very low in the mix.

This was a pretty easy show to work on and process, but frankly, I never knew the names of most of these songs and there are not a ton of other shows on the Archive for me to compare to, so figuring out the song titles was a huge challenge.  After 3 days of scraping other archive shows (most which are unfortunately NOT tracked or labled), the 4 songs they have on MySpace, and some sample MP3 clips on Amazon.com, I got MOST of the song titles, and I'm throwing in the towel.  I got most of the song titles, but PLEASE comment here on archive.org if you know any of the ones I didn't get, and I'll add the title to this page.

There

Enjoy!


Scott

A rundown of my previous BARN archival releases (all can be found on archive.org except as noted):
BARN1 - Col Bruce Hampton and the Code Talkers at Bret & Joyce's wedding 9/17/2005
BARN2 - Col Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit (w/guest Warren Haynes for all of set 2) Wetlands 11/20/1993
BARN3 - moe. Wetlands 7/8/1995
BARN4 - Dan Bern Bottom Line 7/31/1998 (late show)
BARN5 - moe. Birch Hill 10/31/1996
BARN6 - moe. Maxwells 1/20/1996
BARN7 - Dan Bern Central Park Summerstage 9/19/1997
BARN8 - Dan Bern, Bottom Line 8/1/1998
BARN9 - moe. Bayou 4/5/1997
BARN10 - moe. Irving Plaza 4/4/1997
BARN11 - moe. AKA 9/7/1995
BARN12 - Yolk AKA 9/7/1995
BARN13 - Robert Walter/Johnny Vidacovich/James Singleton/Donald Harrison Preservation Hall 4/30/08
BARN14 - Phish Las Vegas, NV 10/31/1998 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN15 - Phish Great Went @ Loring AFB, Limestone, ME 8/16/1997 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN16 - Phish Great Went @ Loring AFB, Limestone, ME 8/17/1997 (on bt.etree.org), includes orchestra set - by request
BARN17 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/4/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN18 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/6/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN19 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/7/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN20 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/5/1996 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN21 - God Street Wine, Irving Plaza, NYC 6/24/1993
BARN22 - Leftover Salmon, Wetlands, NYC 10/1/1994
BARN23 - Anders Osborne, Manny's Carwash, NYC 11/5/1997
BARN24 - Anders Osborne, Manny's Carwash, NYC 11/6/1997
BARN25 - moe. Pool Party, Morganville, NJ 6/2/1996
BARN26 - Widespread Panic, Stone Pony, Asbury Park, NJ 11/7/1992 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN27 - Stew ["Passing Strange"], The Turning Point, Piermont, NY 4/6/2003 (on bt.etree.org. dimeadozen.org)
BARN28 - Stew ["Passing Strange"], Joe's Pub, New York, NY 5/22/2003 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN29 - Percy Hill, Lion's Den, NYC 3/16/1996
BARN30 - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Irving Plaza, 8/3/1995
BARN31 - Percy Hill, Wetlands, NYC 6/8/1996
BARN32 - Bad Livers, Mercury Lounge, NYC, 11/15/1999 (opening for Leftover Salmon)
BARN33 - Bad Livers, Mercury Lounge, NYC, 11/16/1999 (opening for Leftover Salmon)
BARN34 - G. Love And Special Sauce, Central Park Summerstage, NYC 6/18/1995
BARN35 - The Band, The Great Lawn, Central Park, NYC 5/16/1993 (on dimeadozen.org)
BARN36 - The Band, Mountain Stage Radio broadcast, Charleston, WV, recorded 4/4/1996 (on dimeadozen.org)
*** Start of New Orelans Jazzfest Appreciation mini-series (note that BARN13 technically belongs in this series) ***
BARN37 - Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA, 5/5/2008
BARN38 - Steve Kimock Band, Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA, 5/6/2001 (2AM show)
BARN39 - The Funky Meters, Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA, 5/6/2001 (11PM show) (on bt.etree.org)
BARN40 - Anders Osborne, Tower Records instore, New Orleans, LA, 5/7/2001 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN41 - Joe Krown Trio w/Walter "Wolfman" Washington, Russell Batiste + special guest Mike Gordon, Tipitina's, New Orleans, 5/5/2008
BARN42 - Russell Batiste and Friends, The Howlin' Wolf, New Orleans, 5/1/2008 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN43 - Global Noize, The Howlin' Wolf, New Orleans, 5/1/2008 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN44 - Deep Banana Blackout, The Howlin' Wolf, New Orleans, LA 5/6/2000
BARN45 - Bela Fleck And The Flecktones, The Saenger Theater, New Orleans, LA 5/5/2000
BARN46 - Medeski Martin And Wood, The Saenger Theater, New Orleans, LA 5/6/2000 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN47 - String Cheese Incident, The Saenger Theater, New Orleans, LA 5/5/2000
BARN48 - Soulive, House Of Blues Parish, New Orleans, LA 5/5/2001
BARN49 - String Cheese Incident, Cajun Queen Riverboat, New Orleans, LA 5/3/2000
BARN50 - New Mastersounds, House Of Blues Parish, New Orleans, LA 5/2/2008
BARN51 - Funky Meters, Bonnaroo, Manchester, TN 6/13/2003 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN52 - George Porter And The Runnin' Pardners, Village Underground, NYC, 5/19/2001
BARN53 - Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Tramps, NYC 10/29/1993 late show
BARN54 - The Meters, Tramps, NYC 5/15/93 late show (on dimeadozen)
BARN55 - The Meters, Tramps, NYC 10/29/93 late show (on dimeadozen)
BARN56 - Wild Magnolias, Wetlands, NYC 2/10/2000 (on bt.etree.org)
*** end of New Orelans Jazzfest Appreciation mini-series ***
BARN57 - Blues Traveler, Livingston Gym @ Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 4/17/1993
BARN58 - Phish, Greek Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, 10/29/1998 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN59 - Jazz Is Dead, Bottom Line, NYC 2/7/1998 (late show only) (on bt.etree.org)
BARN60 - Grateful Dead, Cal Expo Amphitheatre, Sacramento, CA 5/27/1993
BARN61 - The Dude Of Life (w/Trey Anastasio and Jon Fishman for entire show, plus Page McConnell for a bunch), Wetlands, NYC 2/5/1994 - on bt.etree.org
BARN62 - ALO, High Sierra Music Festival Main Stage, Quincy, CA 7/3/2005
BARN63 - Leo Kottke & Mike Gordon, High Sierra Music Festival Main Stage, Quincy, CA 7/3/2005 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN64 - Dan Bern, The Bottom Line, NYC 11/11/1998
BARN65 - Galactic, Knitting Factory, NYC 10/18/1997 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN66 - Bruce Hornsby And The Range, Paramount Theater, NYC 12/7/1993 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN67 - God Street Wine, Irving Plaza, NYC 8/26/1993
BARN68 - Warren Haynes Midnight Southern Jam - Wetlands, NYC 8/5/1993 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN69 - Dave Matthews And Friends (Trey Anastasio, Tim Reynolds, Tony Hall, Brady Blade, Ray Paczkowski) Bonnaroo 6/11/2004 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN70 - Rana at Bret & Joyce's wedding, Whitehall, NY 9/17/2005
BARN71 - Soulive - Baby Juputer, NYC 6/11/1999
BARN72 - Chris Barron, Nightengale Bar, NYC 7/14/1997
BARN73 - Chris Barron, Nightengale Bar, NYC 11/17/1997
BARN74 - George Porter's 60th Birthday w/PBS and friends, Blender Theater, NYC 12/29/2007
BARN75 - Jennifer Hartswick Band with special guest Trey Anastasio, Lion's Den, NYC 11/7/2003 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN76 - moe., Gathering Of The Vibes, Seaside Park, Bridgeport, CT 6/20/1999
BARN77 - Project Logic, Gathering Of The Vibes, Seaside Park, Bridgeport, CT 6/20/1999
BARN78 - Phish - Beacon Theater, NYC 4/13/1994 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN79 - Phish - Beacon Theater, NYC 4/14/1994 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN80 - Phish - Beacon Theater, NYC 4/15/1994 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN81 - The Recipe, Wetlands, NYC 11/12/1999
BARN82 - Ominous Seapods, Wetlands, NYC 6/4/1999
BARN83 - Coby Brown Group, Wetlands, NYC 11/12/1999 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN84 - The Big Wu, Wetlands, NYC 11/12/1999
BARN85 - Moon Boot Lover, Wetlands, NYC 6/5/1999
BARN86 - Percy Hill, Wetlands, NYC 6/5/1999
BARN87 - Miracle Orchestra, Wetlands Lounge, NYC 6/5/1999

Recorded as a co-production by Scott Bernstein, Bill Mulvey, and possibly the late, great Jim Crichton (RIP).  Transferred, mastered, and posted by Scott Bernstein (5/20-26/2011).

Setlist updates thanks to Johnny Kuckens 3/8/2021