HW10

Music Hall, Boston. 24th April 1974

The Show

This evening's performance in the middle of the 2nd American Selling
England tour was frustrating and brilliant at the same time. The equipment
problems that plagued this tour were particularly bad this night, and at
times you can hear Gabriel and Colins losing some of their usual tolerance
in the face of continual microphone problems. Gabriel comments at one point
that "we'll go professional next week", and Colins; "I bet you wish you'd
gone to the pictures". The intro to 'I Know What I Like' is aborted at one
point.

Never-the-less, this is a great musical performance, and one of the better
recordings of a show from this tour. Firth of Fifth is given a particularly
emotive performance, and Phil varies some of his vocal lines in More Fool
Me nicely.

There is also an interview with Mike and Phil, inlcuding the end of their
performance in the studio of 'More Fool Me', which was broadcast on
Boston's WBCN radio, and which seems to be previously unknown.

The Recording

This recording has been remastered from Steve Hopkins' transcription of his
master tape, which he generously sent me. The recording was made on a Sony
TC-55 with built in condenser microphone. The tape was transfered using a
Nakamichi DR-2 cassette deck to Sony TCD-60ES  DAT recorder at 44.1KHz with
Super Bit Mapping (which really improves the clarity of the sound), before
being transfered to CD.

The recording is mono, but clear and with significant detail. The only
limitation with this tape is that it does not represent the entire show, as
The Battle of Epping Forest, and possibly Horizons (if they performed it
this evening) are missing. There are also a few minor edits in the
recording, and one of these may have omitted Phil's one-handed drum solo,
which one is tempted to think they must have performed given the amount of
technical difficulties.

This recording has been widely in circulation, most commonly through the
Highland disc 'More Fool Me'. I don't have a copy of this, but my
impression is that while it is a complete transcription sourced from a low
generation tape, it is very bright in the upper midrange, and lacking in
richness in the bass. The master tape by contrast, is more balanced
overall, and with a rich bass presence.

The afternoon before the show, Phil and Mike came into Boston's WCBN
studios, performed 'More Fool Me' and gave a short interview. This
interview has not been previously in circulation, but Steve had a recording
of it, unfortunately missing all but the last 50 secs or so of 'More Fool
Me'. But at least it exists and is included in this release.

The Remaster

I took only one channel of Steve's transcription, so as to optimise for
mono. I denoised the recording minimally, mostly just to sharpen up the
treble a little. Eq balance was pretty good, although I attenuated the
lower midrange a little around 200Hz to compensate for a slight boxiness in
the microphone.

I have made a few small crossfade edits at points where the tape was turned
on and off during some of the technical hold ups in the show to provide a
little more continuity. I cannot pick the point at which Epping Forest is
missing from the recording, I assume it must have been played, especially
as Phil and Mike comment in the interview about the show running nearly two
hours - this recording comes in at just over 90 mins.

There are also a few squeaky noises on the master recording, which may come
from the cassete recorder, or even the seating at the venue. These sounds
were quite distracting, so I have removed them. There was a very noticable
one at the beginning of Tony's piano intro to Firth of Fifth, and others in
the opening section of Musical Box.






