China Cat Sunflower--> | 1970-07-12 | Grateful Dead

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3:19:59

Transferrer:

Rob Darst;Jim Cooper;Jim Cotsman

SHNID:

gd1970-07-12.aud.composite.130938.flac16

Source:

Combination of the two audience recordings shnid 9379 and shnid 122707; edits were limited to volume, speed, cross-fades at the beginning and end of patches, and such elimination or reduction of drops, static, clicks, and bumps as I could obtain without losing any music; see info files for details

Taper Notes:

View NotesThis is a combination of the two audience recordings available for this date: shnid 9379 (identity of taper not given) and shnid 122707 (taped by Jim Cooper). Since no soundboard circulates for this show, we are very fortunate indeed to have these two recordings. Thanks, guys!

Source 1 (shnid 9379): AUD>MC>C>C>D>CD>EAC>SHN
edits/encoding by J. Cotsman

Source 2 (shnid 122707): Jim Cooper's Hitachi TRQ-222 Cassette recording > CDR > WAV > FLAC
Recorded by Jim Cooper using a Hitachi TRQ-222 Cassette recorder and 2 Hitachi microphones from Row H, about the 30th row, center.

Each source has advantages and disadvantages. 9379 is more complete and has less audience chatter during quiet passages, but it has more distortion during loud passages. Cooper's recording is generally clearer, especially during loud passages, but it is less complete and has more microphone noise and audience chatter. Happily, these two recordings complement each other more often than not. For details on which source is used when, see the notes below.

NOTES

(1) The dates for this show (July 12) and the one preceding it (July 11) were incorrectly reversed in most previous sources. Many attendees have pointed out the error, and one of the tapers of the previous night's show, Marty Weinberg, even announces helpfully, "It's Saturday night, July 11, 1970." (This announcement can be heard on shnid 108156, just before Easy Wind.) Both were "midnight shows," so technically this show was performed in the early morning of Monday, July 13, but it is the concert billed as "July 12." 

(2) The provenance of the "Night of the Living Dead" introduction to the electric set is uncertain. 
This music accompanied a film; some attendees remember this as a clip from "The Night of the Living Dead," while reporter Tom Zito wrote afterwards of seeing "spacemen wrapped in plastic bags emerge from graves." It has generally been assumed that the music was the film's audio track. However, I think it is more likely that the Grateful Dead accompanied the film with a live improvisation. I have reached this tentative conclusion for three reasons:

(a) The music we hear is not from the soundtrack of The Night of the Living Dead.

(b) The introduction sounds like the Grateful Dead playing scary-movie music.

(c) On 9379, at a little over a minute into Morning Dew, a guy near the microphone says, "...[inaudible] one of the most cosmic versions of this song that I've ever heard, opening up like that [inaudible]. It was really scary." Since the opening of Morning Dew itself is not unusual, he must have been referring to the "introduction," and since he viewed the introduction as part of Morning Dew, he must have had reason to believe that the Grateful Dead performed it.

(3) I did not apply EQ or high-frequency noise reduction to either source. My edits were limited to volume, speed, cross-fades at the beginning and end of patches, and such elimination or reduction of drops, static, clicks, and bumps as I could obtain without losing any music. 122707 runs 3-5 percent slower than 9379; I matched the speed of 122707 to 9379 in all cases. Edits were done in WaveLab Elements 7, with gentle use of the iZotope Ozone Declicker.

(a) Acoustic Set: 

A mono version of the left channel of 9379 supplies most of the acoustic set. From Monkey and the Engineer until A Voice From On High, the right channel of 9379 is mostly hiss and does not add to the listening experience. The taper fixed the problem after Rosalie McFall, so the final three songs are in stereo.

Friend of the Devil, missing in 9379, comes entirely from 122707. As luck would have it, this is the best-sounding recording of any acoustic tune captured in 122707. For the most part, the acoustic set in 122707 is plagued by mike noise, static, and loud audience chatter, but during FOTD, these problems are largely absent.

Given that this show includes the only known version of So Sad, I devoted special attention to this track. The performance is very delicate and hard to hear over the chattering of the audience. The version included here is a mono version of the left channel of 9379 until 1:18, at which point it becomes a matrix of the left channel of 9379 and the right channel of 122707. (The recording of So Sad on 122707 cuts in at this point, and the right channel is free of the static that plagues the left channel.) For the second half of the song, at least, this combination brings out more detail than any other approach that I could devise. (Many thanks to Light Into Ashes for the suggestion!) It is a beautiful performance; perhaps the band would have played the song again, if the audience had only shut up and listened.

(b) NRPS Set:

By the time NPRS takes the stage, both tapers have solved most of their technical difficulties. As noted above, 122707 is generally clearer than 9379, but it is incomplete and more vulnerable to audience chatter. 
122707 supplies the first three songs and Lodi, and 9379 supplies the final four. Dirty Business and Last Lonely Eagle, the quieter songs, are composites. 9379 supplies the first 2:43 of Dirty Business, and 122707 supplies the rest. In 9379, Last Lonely Eagle is missing Garcia's entire solo: it seems to have been deliberately cut out, perhaps because it was partially damaged. 122707 supplies the missing passage at 2:01-2:44, and for once the audience is relatively quiet.

(c) Electric Set:

9379 supplies the Night of the Living Dead introduction. Morning Dew is a composite: 122707 supplies the beginning and end, and 9379 supplies 0:35-4:14. 122707 supplies the rest of the set through I Know You Rider, which is patched with 9379 at 1:30-2:41 and 3:58-3:59. 122707 ends at that point, so 9379 is the only source for the final two tunes, Viola Lee Blues and Uncle John's Band.

In several places, 122707 features protracted bursts of static in the right channel. I patched these with the left channel. This occurs in Casey Jones (1:05-1:51), Good Lovin' (1:22-1:38, 2:22-3:18, 9:57-12:34), and China Cat Sunflower (2:49-2:53).

Enjoy!
Rob Darst
August 11, 2014