Audience Devotional Tree
Round 25 - March, 2004

GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, June 9, 1973
RFK Stadium - Washington, DC
audience recording

AUDMR > DAT > SHN

Recorded by Adam Grow with an Electro-Voice RE-15 super 
cardioid dynamic microphone > Nagra III Reel to Reel 
deck at 7.5 ips, full track 1/4" tape, mono.  
Master Reel: Maxell UD-35-7 Ultra Dynamic

Recorded from field level about 1/2 way back from the 
stage to the end of the field with mic in hand on an 
Atlas sound reducing sleeve.

A>D by Adam Grow - February, 2004
DAT>SHN by Noah Weiner - March, 2004

Pioneer RT-1050 Reel to Reel (Master Reel playback) with 
1/2 track head nest > Sony PCM R300 DAT deck (record) 
with Super Bit Mapping function OFF, sample rate 44.1 kHz, 
16 bit samples > Fostex D5 DAT deck (playback) > Turtle 
Beach Montego II Digital I/O > Sound Forge (wav editing 
and track IDs) > SHNTOOL (SBE fix) > MKW Audio Compression 
Toolkit (shn)

01 [07:55] Loose Lucy
02 [08:02] Row Jimmy
03 [05:05] Box Of Rain
04 [06:16] //China Cat Sunflower > 
05 [04:12] I//Know You Rider
06 [04:53] Greatest Story Ever Told
07 [02:52] Me And My Uncle
08 [06:36] Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo
09 [11:13] Eyes Of The World >
10 [05:34] China Doll

tt [62:38]

Notes: 

Master reel contains an analog splice at 00:30 in "I Know 
You Rider" to repair a master tape flip.  This splice work 
was not touched digitally at all.

Clapping:  Just about every "near to mic" clap heard on this 
tape (200+) spiked nearly two (and sometimes three) times as 
high as the music when viewed on the screen via Sound Forge. 
The music never peaked over 40%.  Because of this, each clap 
was hand-normalized down to the max level of the music around 
it.  This was done a) to allow the final product to be 
normalized to optimal listening levels, and b) to preserve 
the aural presence of the claps as "near to mic."  Sound 
Forge *could* have removed each clap completely, as they 
appear on the screen exactly as a digital "tick" does.  The 
end product here preserves the essence of the natural tape 
nicely, while allowing for maximum enjoyment of the music 
therein.

Adam recorded this entire show.  However, a few years after, 
he decided to edit out parts in which "crowd interference" 
made things un-listenable on certain songs.  The interfering 
rowdy neighbors around the taper were so extreme (talking, 
shouting, carrying on) that they made losing these songs 
the lesser of two evils.  The edits were done directly to 
the master reel.  The edited out songs were discarded.  No 
copy of the complete master tape was ever made.  One can 
hear occasional glimmers of just how intrusive the crowd 
could be on these remaining songs.  While it is disappointing 
to the archivist nature of our craft that aims to preserve 
these old recordings in their entirety, we are certainly 
very lucky to have what remains from this tape.  A Nagra 
deck smuggled into RFK in a backpack by a fellow sporting 
a very convincing, yet completely forged, Ft. Lauderdale Free 
Press laminated ID card with photo (no one paid Adam any 
mind as he strolled in early enough to set up in a perfect 
spot) is certainly something that rings true with other 
mythical-like early year recording stories.  Partial as it 
is, this tape sheds a truly interesting aural perspective 
on the events of this great musical weekend.  The Nagra 
running at 7-1/2 ips certainly makes for a vivid reproduction 
of what it was like to sit center field for the Dead on 
this date.

SHNTOOL:
D:\Music\gd1973-06-10aud>shntool len *shn
    length     expanded size   cdr  WAVE  probs   filename
     7:55.47      83900588     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t01.shn
     8:02.65      85177724     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t02.shn
     5:05.61      53945516     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t03.shn
     6:16.07      66342908     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t04.shn
     4:12.03      44459900     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t05.shn
     4:53.04      51694652     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t06.shn
     2:52.46      30449036     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t07.shn
     6:36.30      69925004     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t08.shn
    11:13.69     118879532     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t09.shn
     5:34.54      59044652     ---   --    -xx    gd1973-06-09t10.shn
    62:43.11     663819512 B                      (totals for 10 files)
