moe.
Wakeme's (Mike Kelter) backyard pool birthday party
Morganville, NJ
6/2/1996

Original master recording:  SBD + 1 Oktava MC-012 microphone (the other one wasn't working) at the far side of the pool -> Mackie 1202 -> Denon DTR-80p (m)

Transfer: DAT master playback on Sony R500->.flac file recorded on Sound Devices 722 digital input

Mastered: Soundforge Pro 10.0b - *All file manipulation in Soundforge done at 24 bits*.   Volume normalization, sample rate conversion 48khz to 44.1khz using iZotope 64-Bit SRC set higher than "Highest Quality" setting w/anti-alias filter, then dithered back to 16 bits using using iZotope MBIT+ with Ultra noise shaping, High dither settings. Tracked in CDWav.

Set 1
1.  Jam & announcements ->
2.  CalifornIA (w/pennywhistle)
3.  tuning/banter - plenty of balls for everyone, Emily Navarro's birthday
4.  Time Again
5.  Mexico
6.  tuning/banter - we'd play something you know, but...
7.  Meat
8.  setbreak announce

Set 2
1.  Jam w/Al on drums (w/o Chris Mazur)
2.  Happy Birthday singalong led by Mike's dad
3.  Akimbo ^
4.  Ugly American ^
5.  32 Things
6.  She Sends Me
7.  banter - able to hear vocals?/tuning
8.  Time Ed
9.  tuning/banter - reroute the power
10. Recreational Chemistry (hillbilly version)
11. banter - pick a tune pick a version
12. Moth (reggae version)
13. banter/tuning
14. YOY (disco version)
15. banter - stop when you get it right
16. St. Augustine (metal version) &
17. banter - lots of dessert


^ = w/Mike's friend Josh ? on keyboards
& = beginning is cut due to DAT tape filp
Meat teases in California
Dixie teases in Time Again

Mastering notes
I removed momentary hum and/or dropouts at S1T1(00:12-00:13, 00:23, 00:24, 00:56, 2:41, 6:50-51, other times)
smoothed out bad volume fluctionations between 3 and 6 min in 1st track
I copied from L>R and from R>L channel whenever there was some buzz in one of the channels but not the other.  And there was one instance where there was a buzz in both channels for a second or 2 during which the music was unlistenable, so I removed it entirely.
I used SoundForge 10.0's "Repair>Click And Crackle Removal" option which did a pretty good job with cleaning up individual instances of wind noise
You can hear Wakeme, Mike Kelter -- the birthday boy, talking right into the mics at S1T1(00:31) about setting up his video camera
I believe there was a power failure right at the moment of the "funny" in Mexico, as there was just blank space on my recording recording at that point.

Recorded, mastered, and tracked by Scott Bernstein


Taper notes:
OK, here we go with BARN25.....wow, this show REALLY needs to be out there, and has been a REALLY long time coming.  1996 -- by any standards a banner year for moe. -- new tunes, new enthusiasm, lots of new fans and venue growth....but smack dab in the middle of this year, the band plays Michael "Wakeme" Kelter's birthday pool party in Morganville, NJ?!  I knew about it coming up but wasn't close enough to Wakeme to get invited myself, BUT Jesse Jarnow did get the invite, and since each invitee got to bring one guest, I was lucky enough to get the nod from Jesse.  Not to mention that at least he knew it would get taped....

What a glorious day it was -- with the band at their loosest and best (but not TOO loose as it was an afternoon show and kids were in attendance), so the performance was not too alcohol-infused as to get sloppy, and they felt no pressure to play any songs in particular.  The band hung out, ate pizza and cake with the rest of us, and Chris Mazur even brought his dog, who didn't always get along too well with the Kelter family dog, as you can hear on the recording.  But one listen to what was going on in this show and you'll hear lots and lots of fireworks, beyond the clearly one-time-only "pick a song, pick a version" stuff at the end of the show...

So this recording took me over 4 months of work to complete -- by far the longest it's taken me to get through the processing of any recording so far.  Of course, not 4 months continuously, but 4 months of making some progress, getting frustrated, putting it away, and then coming back to it.  There were so many things wrong with it, it's hard to detail them all.  Let's start with me running a matrix -- but running it with a borrowed set of never-before-used Russian-made Oktava MC-012 microphones.  At the time the vendor was pitching them as the Russian Neumann knockoffs (or maybe Schoeps knockoffs).  Well, based on the fact that you still have probably never heard of this microphone brand (with good reason!), the prinicple of "let the buyer beware" prevails again.  Needless to say, I ran about 30 feet of RCA cable from the soundboard, hooked up the mics, and was getting  horrible buzzing and eventually one channel with an audience mic and one channel without, which after a few minutes, I realized was because only one of the mics was working!  Add to that the fact that a few times throughout the show I had loose RCA cables which needed to be secured (or contributed buzzing to the recording) AND the fact that I didn't have any windscreens for these mics, you'll start to see the problems mounting.

Anyway, I have done my best to mostly eliminate wind noise (except for a few bursts I couldn't get rid of), get rid of all of the buzzing (as most of the time it only occurred in one channel or the other, and the stereo image is neglegable on this recording), and attempt to compensate for the many many volume level fluctuations as I was trying to get all of the issues worked out.  I think you'll find that most of the problems are all in the C-I-A and that the problems are fewer and farther between in the first set and the 2nd set is clean except for the occasional wind noise that I did my best to remove.

There is a video floating around of most of this show, and I'm going to do my best to get it converted to a DVD to share...


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 9/17/05
BARN2 - Col Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit (w/guest Warren Haynes for all of set 2) Wetlands 11/20/93
BARN3 - moe. Wetlands 7/8/95
BARN4 - Dan Bern Bottom Line 7/31/98 (late show)
BARN5 - moe. Birch Hill 10/31/96
BARN6 - moe. Maxwells 1/20/96
BARN7 - Dan Bern Central Park Summerstage 9/19/97
BARN8 - Dan Bern, Bottom Line 8/1/98
BARN9 - moe. Bayou 4/5/97
BARN10 - moe. Irving Plaza 4/4/97
BARN11 - moe. AKA 9/7/95
BARN12 - Yolk AKA 9/7/95
BARN13 - Robert Walter/Johnny Vidacovich/James Singleton/Donald Harrison Preservation Hall 4/30/08
BARN14 - Phish Las Vegas, NV 10/31/98 (on bt.etree.org)
BARN15 - Phish Great Went @ Loring AFB, Limestone, ME 8/16/97 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN16 - Phish Great Went @ Loring AFB, Limestone, ME 8/17/97 (on bt.etree.org), includes orchestra set - by request
BARN17 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/4/96 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN18 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/6/96 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN19 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/7/96 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN20 - Phish Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison, CO, 8/5/96 (on bt.etree.org) - by request
BARN21 - God Street Wine, Irving Plaza, NYC 6/24/93
BARN22 - Leftover Salmon, Wetlands, NYC 10/1/94
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



    length     expanded size    cdr  WAVE problems  fmt   ratio  filename
     2:05.06       22064156 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4478  moe1996-06-02s1t01.flac
    18:35.15      196721324 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4920  moe1996-06-02s1t02.flac
     2:56.35       31128764 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3671  moe1996-06-02s1t03.flac
     5:59.70       63492284 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4569  moe1996-06-02s1t04.flac
    13:05.43      138575180 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4722  moe1996-06-02s1t05.flac
     0:24.29        4301852 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3407  moe1996-06-02s1t06.flac
    28:20.10      299903564 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4664  moe1996-06-02s1t07.flac
     0:59.01       10409996 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3388  moe1996-06-02s1t08.flac
     9:29.11      100397516 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3913  moe1996-06-02s2t01.flac
     3:17.45       34856684 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3664  moe1996-06-02s2t02.flac
    15:15.44      161509532 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4660  moe1996-06-02s2t03.flac
     6:42.63       71061020 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4538  moe1996-06-02s2t04.flac
     9:01.21       95481836 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4488  moe1996-06-02s2t05.flac
    15:06.62      159964268 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4542  moe1996-06-02s2t06.flac
     3:24.53       36110300 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3245  moe1996-06-02s2t07.flac
    16:04.55      170179004 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4563  moe1996-06-02s2t08.flac
     2:31.45       26742284 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3050  moe1996-06-02s2t09.flac
     8:39.70       91716284 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4356  moe1996-06-02s2t10.flac
     2:15.68       23973980 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3361  moe1996-06-02s2t11.flac
    11:28.37      121450268 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4350  moe1996-06-02s2t12.flac
     2:42.41       28673276 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3488  moe1996-06-02s2t13.flac
     7:13.37       76468268 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4483  moe1996-06-02s2t14.flac
     0:48.19        8511932 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3218  moe1996-06-02s2t15.flac
     4:17.09       45356012 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.4939  moe1996-06-02s2t16.flac
     0:21.17        3744428 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.3176  moe1996-06-02s2t17.flac
   191:07.06     2022794012 B                            0.4457  (25 files)



