Pat Metheny Group
1982 July 21
Midland Theater
Kansas City, MO

master audience tape > wav (24 bit/48 khz) > flac

Pat Metheny: guitars, guitar synthesizer
Lyle Mays: piano, synthesizers, autoharp
Steve Rodby: acoustic bass, electric bass
Dan Gottlieb: drums
Nana Vasconcelos: voice, percussion, berimbau

Total time 83:59
549 MB

01. Phase Dance  7:41
02. Broadway Blues  8:14
03. James  7:17
04. (Pat's remarks)  1:27
05. Offramp  11:23
06. "It's For You"  6:52
07. Are You Going With Me?  8:19
08. The Bat part II >  3:40
09. (solo berimbau) > Ozark  7:45
10. K.C. Blues  10:03
11. (It's Just) Talk  5:35
12. Solo Guitar (incorporating elements of Midwestern Nights Dream, Goin' Ahead, and September Fifteenth)  5:37

Missing from this recording:
- Mars (Close To Home)
- Jaco
- Song For Bilbao
- (Cross) The Heartland
- American Garage

I think that everybody who collects Pat Metheny shows knows about the MAAP#2
project for the Midland Theater show in 1982. It's a very nice soundboard show
of the 7-21-1982 concert. It's dated wrong, I know because I was there and have
the tape and ticket stub to prove it. I was very excited when I found about it
myself because I had a second gen copy of the soundboard tapes as well as my
audience tape and the production was a cleaned up and complete version. The
concert was a great show filled with many new songs at the time. 

I was back in Kansas City over the holidays and had the opportunity to return
to the Midland Theater to see the Nutcracker ballet from the second row. I was
marvelling at the beauty of the theater, so ornate, so baroque, so SMALL! I
couldn't get over how small it seemed, maybe 1200 people could fit in there.
It's hard to believe the PMG was playing there because not too many music
events happened there to my recollection. Downtown Kansas City is full of such
fine theaters - the Folly, the Capri, the Midland, the Empire (still not
refurbished), the Music Hall and further uptown is, of course, the Uptown.
These were all built in the 1930's and 1940's during KC's heyday as a jazz and
social mecca. They are all still in service and in great shape. 

When I came home I was inspired to take my master tape of this PMG concert that
I had recorded and finally convert it to digital. I took the opportunity to
convert it to 24 bit/48 khz format just to make it sound as good as possible. I
never really did like the soundboard version because I had this tape and
listened to it quite alot. This is the REAL DEAL - a fine sounding master
audience tape of Metheny in his early days playing basically at home in a
beautiful theater. There's just one thing wrong - I didn't get the entire
concert recorded and here's why: 

I sat in the center of the loge, very near the entry door. I did record the
entire concert up to the encore. While everybody was applauding like crazy
prior to the encore I was checking the tape to see how much was left. I had to
flick my bic to see the tape. The usher must have thought I was puffing and
came to investigate. He saw my tape deck and asked me to come out into the
lobby. I thought quickly and slipped the first tape to my girlfriend and told
her not to let them have it under any conditions. I went out and listened to
the usher/goon try to scare me about taping. I had to give up the tape that was
in the recorder. I basically just gave him the evil eye and didn't say a word.
I was finally let back in to see the encore. 

It's too bad because the Closer to Home section that was on that tape was
brilliant. It was dark on stage and I couldn't see just what was going on and,
for the life of me, couldn't tell how they were making all of those noises.
It's one of the larger disappointments of my taping career that I had to
relinquish that tape but I was glad I managed to keep the other tape containing
the first 90 minutes. 

So here it is, the apparently only audience tape of the famous Midland Theater
concert, never before been circulated, and in glorious hi-resolution 24 bit
format. Get this and rejoice in my good fortune and bad luck and reflect on the
joys of Metheny music from back in the early days. 

NOTE: I'm not going to be seeding a 16 bit version of this. If somebody else
wants to then that's fine with me. If you want to convert it for audio CD use
I'd suggest getting dbPoweramp, it's free and easy to use. Please note, though,
when you convert it to 16 bit you have to check for SBE's. I don't do that in
24 bit format since it isn't intended for CD sector sizing. 
