Mickey Hart & Friends
10/10/92
Shoreline Amphitheatre
Mountain View, CA

Nakamichi CM-300s w/CP-2 Omnis >Sony WM-D6C Cassette Master
XLIIS Master Transferred: Sony TC-D5M >Tascam DR100mkII (24bit/48khz)
(Recorded From Lawn Repeater Stacks, Left)

WAV >iZotope RX4 advanced & Har-Bal 3.0
Frequencies balanced for additional clarity and some compression to bring the recording some additional presence.

WAV >Audacity (Track Splits, Down Sample / Dither To 16bit/44.1khz) >FLAC (Level 8) + Tags Via xACT 2.37

(Recorded, Transferred, Audacity + FLAC & Tags By OldNeumanntapr)
(iZotope/Har-Bal Post Production by Flying -M-)

(NEED SET LIST)

Native American Indian Benefit, â€œAll Our Colors, The Good Road Concert"

w/Carlos Santana, Steve Miller, Kitaro, D'CuCKOO, Michael Shrieve, etc.

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
These performances were Bill Graham's last big festival that he was working on before he died the previous year. I'm sorry that he never lived to actually see them performed. On the surface it seemed these benefit concerts were held to commemorate the 500 year anniversary of Columbus 'discovering' the new world. 1492-1992. Actually, it was more to open people's eyes to the suffering and misery that the Native American people have endured during that 500 year history. One of the Native American speakers between sets commented, "Why do we celebrate Columbus? He was LOST!!" Santana headlined on Saturday and Bonnie Raitt headlined on Sunday. Saturday was billed as â€˜All Our Colors, The Good Road Concert" and Sunday was billed as 'Healing The Sacred Hoop'. I remember that between songs, Bonnie remarked that there were a bunch of young girls trying to get into John Lee Hooker's dressing room. "That's what I call 'Healing The Sacred Hoop'", she said. They were awesome shows. Some of the sets were kind of quiet and have more crowd noise on the recordings than I would have liked. I'm kind of amazed that there are not more recordings of these shows out there. I recorded both days up on the lawn with Nakamichi CM-300s with CP-2 omni capsules->Sony WM-D6C. The music went on from about 3pm to around midnight, so bringing in enough blank tape was a major problem. Another big problem was that since the shows started so early in the afternoon it was nearly impossible to hide recording equipment in broad daylight. I rode up to the shows with my friends Dave and Brian and it wasn't until I was putting my equipment together in the back seat of the car that I discovered that I had the CP-2 omni capsules on the mics instead of the CP-1 cardioid caps. I was really upset because the omnis add a lot more crowd noise because they lack the side and rear isolation that the cardioids have. My previous recording had been in a bar back home the week before and we did a matrix mix with a feed off of the soundboard plus the two CM-300 omnis that were hung from the ceiling. I had forgotten to replace the omni capsules, which I hardly ever used, with the CP-1 cardioids.

I got everything in OK on Saturday but Sunday I had a problem. (This saga became one of my best ever taping stories in the years to come!) Because it was kind of cold at night I had brought extra clothing to both stay warm and conceal equipment. I had taken a long-sleeved flannel shirt and wrapped up the mics and knotted the sleeves together. I hid the D6 and cables and a couple of tapes with an ace bandage wrapped around my crotch and had no other option but to put the mics at the bottom of a backpack with misc. crap on top of it. I looked for a line with a security guy that seemed to be doing a minimum of searching and had Dave and Brian go through the turnstiles ahead of me. At the last second a supervisor took over my line just as I stepped up to the search. My heart kind of did a double beat but I hoped for the best. I always relied on the old magician's sleight-of-hand trick of showing them what you wanted them to see while at the same time distracting them from what you wanted to hide. While my friends went through the turnstiles the supervisor was rummaging around in my bag and felt the mics wrapped up in the shirt. "What's This?," he wanted to know and stopped the line. I had to think fast as he was trying but could not untie the knots on the shirt. "It's a beer bottle," says I, after the other guy had already torn my ticket. He pulled me out of line and, yelled at me,"You can't bring that in here!" I stepped out of line and said that I'd get rid of it. Meanwhile, Dave looked back and saw what was going on. I put my hand up in the air palm up and he tossed the car keys to me over the top of the turnstiles. I went back to his car, opened the trunk, and took out two blank cassettes from under my ace bandage and left them in the car. I unwrapped the mics and shoved them down next to the tape deck under the ace bandage and hoped for better luck! When I went back I picked a different line and got through without a problem. The usher at the gate did a double take when he saw that the ticket had been torn already and then signed off on the back by the supervisor. He asked me about it and I said, with my best 'dumb-guy' look, that they had found a beer bottle on me and made me go and get rid of it. What did he say? You guessed it! "You can't bring that in here!!!!" Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dave found me inside as I was making my way to the lawn and asked me about it as I gave him back his keys. I told him I had to lighten the load a bit and had to leave some tape behind. "I guess I just won't tape Don Henley," I said. "Oh you've Got to tape Henley," he said. Later on, about 5 minutes before Henley came on stage, I looked up to see Dave drop two blank tapes in my lap. "How in the hell did you get Those??" I asked. He said that he had gotten cold and asked the people at the gate if he could go out and get his sweatshirt! Naturally, he had another thought in mind as well. I laughed and shook my head. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! That's the closest I've ever come to getting caught taping.

Once night fell, I could get the mics up higher and make a better recording, but in broad daylight I had no other choice but to sit on the ground under the repeater towers and build a little pile of clothing on top of my backpack. I hid the mics in the sleeves on the shirt and ran the mic cables back to the backpack where the D6 was.

The music was pretty good. I couldn't see much of the stage, especially in the daytime, because the view screens were not on. I remember that the Hooker / Cooder set and the Lindley / Cooder set was kind of quiet. Those sets have more crowd noise on them, plus the omni caps sure didn't help matters. It would have been nice to have the shotguns but they are a little noticeable!

I finally got around to making 24 bit digital transfers of the master cassettes. Thanks so much to Flying M for the post production. These sets sound a lot better now.


Do NOT Convert To MP3.
Enjoy! Share freely, donâ€™t sell, play nice, donâ€™t run with scissors, etc. ;)

