7 May 1972  Bickershaw Festival, Wigan, UK.  Set 2 (part)

Lineage:  SBDMR>DATx?>ZA2>CDR>Sound Forge>CDR with patches from Betty Board>DAT>CDR.  Filler from poor SBD cassette.

2 CDs (2 x 74)

Disc 1

Dark Star >                   19.31

Drums >                        02.32

The Other One >           31.04

Sing Me Back Home        11.29

Disc 2

Stage chat                     02.56

Sugar Magnolia             07.59

Lovelight>                     13.02

GDTRFB >                      08.55

NFA                               03.49

E  OMSN                       04.50

Filler  Happy Birthday Billy etc          01.55

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16 May 1972  Radio Luxembourg (208 metres MW - The Station of the ****Stars****)  (Complete)

Lineage:  SBD>FM reel>[?]>DAT>CDR>Sound Forge>CDR

2 CDs (80 + 74)

Disc 1 (Set 1)

Intro (Kid Jensen)           00.39

Bertha                            06.18

Me & My Uncle                03.40

Mr Charlie                       03.55

Sugaree                           07.18

Black Throated Wind       06.09

Chinatown Shuffle           03.01

China Cat Sunflower >    05.58

I Know You Rider            05.54

BIODTL                          03.39

It Hurts Me Too              06.59

Tennessee Jed                 08.48

Playing in the Band        11.42

Promised Land                03.09

Disc 2 (Set 2)

Set 2 Intro (Kid Jensen)  00.27

Truckin' >                       11.44

Drums >                          02.22

The Other One                19.51

Sing Me Back Home          10.02

Sugar Magnolia >            06.53

Not Fade Away >             04.01

GDTRFB >                       07.24

NFA reprise                     03.20

E  OMSN                        04.42

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16 April 1972 Aarhus, Denmark.  Set 2 part

Lineage  not known

1 CD (74)

Good Lovin'                   20.15

Cumberland Blues          06.38

El Paso                          04.47

Deal                              05.09

Truckin'  //                   15.35

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7 May  Bickershaw

I'm confident that this remastered version is the best in circulation.  To cut a long story short I got in touch with David Hollister, doyen of DAT > CDR masters in the US, whose copy is Tiedrich's Resources for Tapers reference, and he sent me his copy - which turned out to be identical to the copy Gavin Lawson has earlier sent me. 

This version starts with Dark Star (but missed the first 3 notes which I've patched in from a poor denoised and re-equalised SBD cassette.  It's OK!!  You'd hardly know if you hadn't been told).  It is not the Betty Board, the circulating copy of which only starts in the 1st verse of TOO (33 mins late!). 

The Dark Star's a true beauty, er blissfully spatial in the 72nd degree......... but the source contains a lot of broadband noise - a bit like there's glass reverberating intermittently but frequently on your speakers (or, if you're grooving in the cans, inside your head).  Sometimes it's one channel, sometimes the other, sometimes both.  Real irritating.  David Hollister confirms that the noise is on the original master reel and that he had not tried treating it because broadband noise is not susceptible to general scrubbing.  So, to cut another long story short, I've been through each and every burst of noise in Dark Star, channel by channel, and tried to clean each one individually.  Well, it's one way of getting into the music ))    The result's not perfect and never would be, but all the noises are attenuated and some are removed.  It's definitely very OK, the basic sound is first class.  Most important, the MUSIC IS OUTTASIGHT. 

The other problem with the source is a 30 sec cut in TOO and the absence of stage announcements (in particular Weir's "we've forgotten how to play St Stephen....... maybe we could go back and listen to our records and cop our licks" rap).  (Weir was really on good stage rap form on this tour).  I've patched in the music and announcements from BBD>DAT>CDR (Betty Board), courtesy of Steve Nicholls.  And I'm particularly pleased with the music splice that concludes in the 2nd verse of The Other One. 

I had wondered whether to use the Betty as the master source from when it enters in TOO onwards, but comparative listening shows the non-Betty is the better and clearer sound - drums are crisper, instruments brighter - whereas the Betty has some bass saturation and is slightly muddier in the middle.   (Very appropriate for Bickershaw, ha ha.) 

Finally, as a reminder of the atmospherix of the event, I've added a few other moments of the concert from the poor quality cassette as a brief filler.  In particular 'Happy Birthday Billy' and Weir explaining that, to keep warm, they are playing under 30 knots of jet breath from hot air heaters and getting dizzy with the smell of kerosene.....   

For those who don't know (or need help remembering) just how wet, muddy and great it all was, you can read more about the Bickershaw festival - personal accounts, photos, programme extracts etc - on this site

http//tinpan.fortunecity.com/ebony/546/dead.html

Pity you can't hear when the fireworks were launched in Dark Star!  Or maybe that was what the broadband noise was §§§!!!

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Radio Luxembourg

The 1st set of this has long been in circulation from a CD bootleg 'Dead DeLuxe' - good but mono and a bit trebly.  Set 2 in stereo got around on cassette too.  Chris Jones sent me a copy of the complete concert in stereo CDR which sounds much better but runs nearly a semitone too fast - about 4% - which made some parts, especially Weir in Truckin' > TOO, begin to sound like the Grateful Chipmunks.  I've slowed the whole gig to play at concert pitch (though in fact the pitch is not absolutely consistent throughout Set 2).  I've also swapped channels so that Garcia's on the left.  Also some 5 seconds of really rude diginoise towards the end of the OMSN guitar solo have been repaired from cassette, a few other anomalies sorted, and Weir's advice to the radio audience on what to do between sets has been patched in from Dead Deluxe.  Indeed Weir does another great front man job, eventually delivering THE news on the hour  "Everything's gonna be just fine".   

The sound is great notwithstanding quite a lot of hiss, more noticeable in Set 2 (esp SMBH).  But after some experimentation with various noise reduction algorithms I concluded that trying to denoise would cut the warm brightness of the Europe 72 instrumental tone - and that would be a sin. 

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Aarhus

Indebted to Keith Hunter for this.  Only just entered circulation.  No treatment from me save the removal of an excess of glitch ticks. 

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