Spin Doctors
Red Rocks Amphitheater
Morrison, CO
8/3/1996

Original master recording:  Neumann TLM-170 (cardiods) -> Stewart BPS1 power supply -> Teac DAP20 DAT (digital patch) -> Denon DTR-80p (master @ 16/48)

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 14.4 (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, clap removal, and dithering to 16 bits using using iZotope MBIT+ with Ultra noise shaping, with high dither settings. Tracked in CDWav.

1.  Jimmy Olsen's Blues (cuts in)
2.  To Make Me Blue
3.  About A Train
4.  banter - kinda funky
5.  What Time Is It? ->
6.  Shinbone Alley ->
7.  drum solo ->
8.  bass solo ->
9.  Shinbone Alley (reprise)
10. Two Princes ->
11. She Used To Be Mine
12. You've Got To Believe In Something


The Spin Doctors opened for the Allman Brothers Band on this night.


Taper notes:
This is BARN125 -- the companion set to BARN124, which was the Allman Brothers Band's phenomenal performance from this same night.  To recap a bit, a few of friends and I flew out to the musical Mecca of Red Rocks in Colorado (a place I'd always heard stories about, plus see the famous U2 Live at Red Rocks and heard any number of amazing Grateful Dead shows from) for the sure-to-be-epic 4 night Phish run in August of 1996.  As a bonus, we got to see the Allman Brothers (with the Spin Doctors opening) the night before the Phish run started.  As it turns out, the Allmans played one their best show I've ever seen there, and I managed to capture (and now transfer and post) the Spin Doctors hour-long opening set as well.

This was an interesting time for the band -- they had already experienced the full heights of their popularity in the 92-94 era, when Eric Schenkman quit the band in early '94.  They continued on with new guitarist Anthony Krizan, who was a pretty good fit for the band as he could play Eric's licks well and contributed to a number of new songs that the band wrote (and released on the "You've Got To Believe In Something" album) in this period.  They did a long string of shows at the small venues where they got their start in NYC in this era, to sort of get their groove back, and were trying to keep from being a has-been nostalgia kind of act.  Also just around this time, they added the young but already very accomplished Ivan Neville to their lineup to play keyboards and add vocals, which he does very well at this show.  In the future, he actually wound up writing a number of tunes for the band to perform (and one made it on their next album "Here Comes The Bride"), and Anthony would leave the band by the following year, being replaced again by Eran Tabib.  There was only a short overlap between Anthony and Ivan in the band.  Worse times were to come, with (eventually) Mark White qutting the band and them going dorman for a few years until they eventually patched things up with Eric Schenkman, their original guitarist.  Of course, the tunes they wrote and performed when he was not in the band have seemingly been abandoned for only tunes written and performed by the original quartet.

So this is a pretty standard festival/opener setlist for the time -- but the addition of Ivan on keys makes everything a little bit more interesting and certainly a bit more funky -- in particular he takes an awesome solo in the semi-deep classic "About A Train" (with a slightly different arrangement and alternate [and not a good, in my opinion] lyrics), adds a huge organ and clavinet solo in "What Time Is It?", harmony vocals in "She Used To Be Mine", and an interesting piano intro to "You've Got To Believe In Something".  Generally this is a well-played if not particularly interesting show....the only semi-weak link in the show was a sorta rough segue between "What Time?" and "Shinbone" but the songs on either side of the segue are probably the best moments of the show.  Shinbone has a bass and drum solo sandwiched in the middle.

Anyway, not the best or most interesting Spin Doctors set, but this completes the ABB show from the same night.  There will be tons of much better Spin Doctors shows to come out of my archive.  But this is an interesting curiosity due to the presence of Ivan Neville, especially if you're a fan of his current Dumpstaphunk project.

Enjoy!

Scott

