Phish
"The Great Went"
Loring Airforce Base
Limesone, Maine
8/16/1997

Original recording:
Set 1: Neumann TLM170 FOB -> Tascam DA-P1 (m)
Set 2 & 3: Neumann TLM170 FOB -> Sonosax SX-M1 -> Apogee AD500E -> Tascam DA-P1 (m)


Transfer: Sony R500->Sound Devices 722

Mastered: Soundforge Audio Studio 10.0a - slight volume normalization, some attempts to clean up glitches listed below (high pass filtering, "LP pop and click removal" on the affected areas), also brought down the volume of most of the firecracker pops before normalizing. Sample rate conversion 48khz to 44.1khz using iZotope 64-Bit SRC set higher than "Highest Quality" setting w/anti-alias filter. All file manipulation in Soundforge done at 24 bits, then dithered back to 16 bits using using iZotope MBIT+ with Ultra noise shaping, High dither settings. Tracked in CDWav.


Set 1/disc 1
1. Makisupa Policeman ->
2. Harpua
3. Chalkdust Torture
4. banter - kinda like the soundcheck
5. Theme From The Bottom
6. Punch You In The Eye ->
7. banter - the biggest city in Maine right now, the Port-o-let Piazza
8. Ghost
9. Ginseng Sullivan

Disc 2
10. You Enjoy Myself ->
11. Train Song ->
12. Character Zero
13. The Squirming Coil
14. outro

Set 2/disc 3
1. crowd/tuning
2. Wolfman's Brother ->
3. Simple ->
4. The Odd Couple Theme Song ->
5. My Soul
6. jam ->
7. Slave To The Traffic Light
8. Rocky Top
9. Julius
10. crowd

Set 3/disc 4
1. crowd/tuning
2. Halley's Comet ->
3. Cities ->
4. Llama
5. Lawn Boy
6. Limb By Limb ->
7. Funky Bitch (w/fireworks)
8. encore break
9. Contact
10. Lovin' Cup
11. crowd

Taper notes:
This is BARN15, the most recent release in my continuing process of transferring my DAT master recordings to a more usable format and in the process putting them out there for you to enjoy.

As I was trying to unravel in my brain the mystery of why my 1st set used somewhat different gear than the other 2 sets (I used no preamp in the 1st set but used a pre-amp and borrowed Apogee AD500 for the rest set of the weekend), amazingly I was able to remember what happened. The traffic, as anyone who was up in Maine for these shows, was unberably slow-moving. It was so slow moving that as we approached the announced showtime, it was becoming evident that there was no way I was going to make it into the show in time to record if I waited in the car with my friends to get into the lot....so I decided to hoof it into the venue....even though we were more than 2 miles away, and it was nearly 100 degrees out! I had my huge festival batteries (20+ pounds) with me, and this was before I had a bag with wheels on it like I do now (all I had was a shoulder bag with all of my gear in it). Anyway, I hoofed it as fast as I could into the venue, and was nearly dehydrated and with painful shoulders and back, I made it in and to the spot where my other friends were taping with just minutes before they started! I set up all of my gear as quickly as possible, but when they were starting, my Sonosax (mic preamp and phantom power) would NOT power up! So I quickly yanked it out and plugged my mics right into the deck. It took a few seconds before I realized it wasn't quite set properly (hence the slight distortion in the 1st 42 seconds of the show)....but it worked!

The 1st set doesn't sound quite as good as the rest of the show, though it does sound nice....but the other sets -- get ready to have your socks knocked off! If memory serves, during the break between the 1st and second set, Eric Vandercar and Dr. Rob Shiner helped me find the bad connection on my external battery pack for the Sonosax and resolder it. And to top it off, (again, if memory serves), Gary Fox had an extra Apogee 500E which he wasn't using that I threw into the mix, just for its superior A>D capibilities.


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Recording flaws (all in set 1):
Missing the first few seconds of Makisupa Policemean as I was unable to get my Sonosax to power up.
At 00:09, 00:27, 1:43, 2:21, 2:23 -- wind noise? (I might not have had my wind screens on initially in the rush to set up? Can't recall, but the problem seems to go away after a few minutes). I've tried to minimize them as best I could in SoundForge.
In 1st 42 seconds of the show, there are some moments of slight distortion and compressed levels until I turned on 10db pad on the Tascam DA-P1, and then some slight volume fluctuation for a short while after that while I got the levels tuned (though I have minimized this issue in Sound Forge so that the volume fluctuations are nearly undetectable).
*There are no flaws noted in the other sets*
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Original DAT recording by Scott Bernstein.
Transferred and mastered by Scott Bernstein, 12/29-30/2009.


