Wolfgang's Vault

Just what the name says.
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JWB
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Postby JWB » Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:41 am

Nirvana had Andy Wallace, the remix engineer of "Nevermind", record one of their sets with the Westwood One mobile. Many tracks were released on CD and recycled as radio broadcasts dozens of times. Luckily there is an ultra-rare Geffen promo cassette of Andy's complete uncompressed mix making the rounds. It's a great show and several tracks made it to the official live album.

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Jeff T.
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Postby Jeff T. » Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:09 pm

Indeed, these recorded efforts by broadcast networks are not given enough credit for preserving history, providing fans more of their favorite artists, and for providing additional live material to the labels for use as b-sides, etc.

My favorite Westwood One Superstars show would be the Bob Dylan with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers 1986 show supposed to be from the LA Forum. Blistering performances of Masters of War and Positively 4th Street, and includes rare tracks I Forgot More, and Lucky Old Sun. The recording and mix are both awesome. You know when you put on one of these shows for the first time after you get lucky and find one for sale, and you pray for full on fidelity and clear clean mastering, and then the damn thing rocks like hell and sounds like Little Feat Waiting for columbus fer crise sakes.

It's really a knock-out performance and recording! One of those I go back to alot over the years.

I did try and keep from wearing out my radio shows by playing cassettes or Maxell Hi-Fi VHS copies of them over the years. So when I installed my GoldWave Mastering pc work station, I had quite a few original radio show sets in nice condition to enjoy working from.
Last edited by Jeff T. on Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Jeff T.
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Postby Jeff T. » Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:17 pm

Oh, and I just remembered, WB Records had a series called THE WARNER BROTHERS MUSIC SHOW. Single LP promo shows with no commercials or anouncer. The most popular shows in the Series were Talking Heads 1979 in Cleveland, Van Morrison Live at the Roxy 1978, Robert Palmer, and Nicolete Larson at the Roxy. The Larson recording has been issued by Rhino Handmade I think I read a while back.

Anyway, the Heads and the Van live LPs were so popular that counterfiets exist.

Talking Heads in Cleveland 79 must be the Agora, where else? Anyway, the show starts off slow and drags slightly....picking up steam as it flips sides, and by the middle of the second side the show is blazing and on fire!!! One of those legendary radio shows that helped this band break through.
Last edited by Jeff T. on Sat Jan 13, 2007 1:19 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Jeff T.
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Postby Jeff T. » Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:36 pm

David R. Modny wrote:There was a re-broadcast (different edit) of the show in the late 90's. Thus, a KBFH/ DIR network radio promo silver disc exists. Having not heard the CD boot, I'd assume it's lifted from that? As I recall, My Wife was on the re-broadcast. There have probably been other re-airings as well over the last 30 years. All the radio concert series networks tended to slightly alter the track lineups when possible on re-airings - making collecting them all the more frustrating when trying to assemble complete or near-complete shows.


Yes, it was a bummer to score a few CDs issued for radio of the Biscuit and find several songs missing. At least in a few cases a new previously unaired song would appear. My Wife must have been one of these tracks late to surface. I had a 1987 KBFH radio CD of that Who performance, but it had a bad case of digititis with ticks and clicks running through most of it. I found many of the first gen KBFH CDs for radio to be pressed with short lifespans. Almost intentionally pressed to not last. DISCTRONICS is seen on the inner ring of these CDs that turn into a pumpkin six months after broadcast.

Another show that was originally only about 21 or so minutes was The Edgar Winter Group in 1973. Later broadcasts would shorten the playing time yet by a song or two. But in one case the shortened set list added Rock & Roll Boogie Woogie Blues which was missing from all earlier b'casts. This is the tour with Ronnie Montrose on guitar, They Only Come Out at Night album was zooming up the charts, and this would prove to be Edgar's commercial peak. I saw the tour, and it was unreal! A really good theatrical show. So I am dying to hear the rest of this recording if it survives.
Last edited by Jeff T. on Sat Jan 13, 2007 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

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JWB
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Postby JWB » Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:51 pm

That would explain why my Aerosmith KBFH disc has digital errors through the whole thing.

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Postby David R. Modny » Sat Jan 13, 2007 2:15 am

To make matters worse (or better...depending on ones opinion) KBFH switched to Mistsui CD-R's in mid 2000 for their show distribution. Kind of shoots their collectable value to hell, IMO.

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Postby David R. Modny » Sat Jan 13, 2007 2:22 am

Jeff T. wrote:
Talking Heads in Cleveland 79 must be the Agora, where else?


I think we "Clevelanders" were fortunate that we were able to get so many great and historic shows recorded at the Agora during that era - either via WMMS's Coffeebreak Concerts and Prime Time concerts or the shows that were videotaped as well for their short-run late night TV concert series on Channel 8 (e.g. the Rundgren show).

I'd reckon the Springsteen show is probably the most famous Agora radio show, but there were so many other semi-historic ones as well. Many artists at the dawn of their career...The Cars, Meatloaf, etc. The 'MMS tape vault has got to be one of the great treasure troves for recorded live concerts!

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Postby Jeff T. » Sat Jan 13, 2007 3:05 am

David R. Modny wrote:I think we "Clevelanders" were fortunate that we were able to get so many great and historic shows recorded at the Agora during that era - either via WMMS's Coffeebreak Concerts and Prime Time concerts or the shows that were videotaped as well for their short-run late night TV concert series on Channel 8 (e.g. the Rundgren show).

I'd reckon the Springsteen show is probably the most famous Agora radio show, but there were so many other interesting ones as well. Many artists at the dawn of their career...The Cars, Meatloaf, etc. The 'MMS tape vault has got to be one of the great treasure troves for recorded live concerts!


Yes, I have many. The Springsteen show was/is legendary, like the Roxy 78 one. Somewhere along the line, someone got into the WMMS tape vault and ran off CDRs of all the masters. Beautiful transfers with no announcers, no problems. One can spot those Cleveland Agora original masters on CD-Rs because they originally were done with no track marks. The whole CD is one long track. And they sound completely pre-b'cast sourced. I snatched up 14 or 15 of them in one trade back when snail mail was still happening.

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Postby Rspaight » Sat Jan 13, 2007 9:43 am

I've heard several radio CDs that are full of glitches. I suspect this was intentional to reduce the appeal of listening to them on anything other than FM.

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Postby Xenu » Sat Jan 13, 2007 1:25 pm

David R. Modny wrote:To make matters worse (or better...depending on ones opinion) KBFH switched to Mistsui CD-R's in mid 2000 for their show distribution. Kind of shoots their collectable value to hell, IMO.


Yeah, same with some other radio shows (I think "American Gold" switched over, too).

I wonder: is there an online community for trading this sort of thing?
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Postby Jeff T. » Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:34 pm

Xenu wrote:
David R. Modny wrote:To make matters worse (or better...depending on ones opinion) KBFH switched to Mistsui CD-R's in mid 2000 for their show distribution. Kind of shoots their collectable value to hell, IMO.


Yeah, same with some other radio shows (I think "American Gold" switched over, too).

I wonder: is there an online community for trading this sort of thing?


There are many online trading places for trading these sort of things.

The Bootleg Zone is a good destination, as is the usenet group alt.music.bootlegs which used to be "the" place to trade CDRs.

I traded from late 1999 to about the end of 2003 all over the net. I would google KBFH, BBC, WW1, Superstars, Source, Supergroups, King Biscuit, and then email any trading sites offering trades. It was very time consuming. But I had a desk job at a company where I had no interest in advancing at all. So I used company time to establish internet trading partners, and had a really good couple of years. I met some newbe traders that way. It was good to hekp out the new kids just getting into trading, as they would come back months later offering to trade for more discs. I would be stunned with the finds that these so called newbes would dig up for me. Ultrasonic Sound Studios out of Long Island NY did some live FM b'casts that are a bit hard to find in nice quality. It was a great time seeing tons of old vinyl boots get upgraded from original tapes. Radio Shows that had been taped from the air and booted, would again surface but this time mastered from pre-FM sources. The Kinks 1974 BBC was one that arrived and totally blew me away. Some had the BBC Rock Hour LP of that one and did a nice job!

It seems now FLAC is the way it is done. I tried that once and it said 16 hours left to go, and so I gave up.

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Postby JWB » Sun Jan 14, 2007 10:43 pm

Jeff T. wrote: It seems now FLAC is the way it is done. I tried that once and it said 16 hours left to go, and so I gave up.


It depends on what your speed is, where you're downloading from, and how many people are connected. Sometimes it takes an hour and sometimes it takes days. And just because it says "16 hours left" doesn't mean it's true. That only applies to how fast things are moving at that very moment. I uploaded a Nirvana concert today and 12 people completed the download within two or three hours. Pearl Jam's concerts which are sold in FLAC only take less than an hour to download.

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Postby David R. Modny » Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:48 am

Jeff T. wrote:
It seems now FLAC is the way it is done. I tried that once and it said 16 hours left to go, and so I gave up.


FLAC is just a lossless file format. As JWB noted, it's the distribution means that determine how fast one will be able to download. With the Usenet binary groups it's a simple matter of someone uploading the file, and then a "one way journey" to download - speed and retention determined by the receiver's binary server and ISP service. With torrent tracker sites, it's completely dependent on the number of seeds at any given time. It can be brutally fast...or painfully slow! If one is port firewalled, it also throws a monkey wrench into the equation as to the number of seeders a person will be able to connect with. Torrent tracker sites usually also have minimum upload ratio requirements, as their life blood is people sticking around to re-seed what they've leeched. Unlike binaries, there's no "centralized" server involved.

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Postby Xenu » Mon Jan 15, 2007 11:50 am

Jeff T. wrote:There are many online trading places for trading these sort of things.


By "these sorts of things" I meant literally "radio shows," and not necessarily live ones. For example, I have several installments of "American Gold," which is hardly a "live" thing...that said, I find them fascinating. I wonder if there's a website devoted to syndicated radio programs, cuesheets and all?
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Postby Jeff T. » Mon Jan 15, 2007 5:23 pm

Xenu wrote:
Jeff T. wrote:There are many online trading places for trading these sort of things.


By "these sorts of things" I meant literally "radio shows," and not necessarily live ones. For example, I have several installments of "American Gold," which is hardly a "live" thing...that said, I find them fascinating. I wonder if there's a website devoted to syndicated radio programs, cuesheets and all?


I would ebay search them. Bound to be found cheap!

Interesting thing is that I have made friends on ebay for trading. Losing bidders email after auctions of mine making trade offers on the shows that got sniped out from under them. Or even during an auction sometimes I have received requests for CDRs of the item. I have also emailed others on ebay asking about copies of the rare ones. I have had about 60% success when emailing ebayers about potential trades of radio shows. It can happen.

But now I feel a new era in my life has arrived. All those radio shows and boots I gathered from trading and buying/selling - it feels like the time has come to sit back listen and enjoy them. The search and seek has come full circle. I still love my collection and find the music exciting. But the hunt for soundboards radio shows or otherwise might be about over. :(

I have plenty of stuff I have yet to fully listen to. The Kinks "Schoolboys" tour was an interesting concept in rock theater, and I own a couple of shows from that tour I need to listen to, ...one audience and one board tape I think I recall.

I think I'll blow out all my WW1 shows next month on ebay. All except the Dylan 1986 anyway. It's not like any of my friends have ever asked me to play some killer samples of them anyway. I know it's sad.