Accept - 'Alive At The Agora' [Demoominizer's Remaster]
Recorded at The Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, Ohio, USA on the 27th May 1984.
FM Broadcast. Exact lineage unknown.
Track List:
01. Intro
02. Fast As A Shark
03. Losers And Winners
04. Turn Me On
05. Princess Of The Dawn
06. Neon Nights
07. Fight It Back
08. London Leatherboys
09. Head Over Heels
10. Flash Rockin' Man
11. Balls To The Wall
For many the Agora '84 show is the definitive Accept bootleg. It's a great performance from the 'Balls to the Wall' era, which sits quite comfortably alongside their official live releases from the 'Metal Heart' period.
The source for this remaster is the commonly circulated 'The Agora '84' recording, available fairly commonly these days on various blogs and torrent sites (as such, I've exluded the source from this particular torrent), but which had a number of stark limitations. What follows is a list of ammendments.
Tracking, on the original source, was all over the place. There were lots of annoying edits here and there, random moments of silence with nothing but hiss, audio drop outs and the like. These have been fixed by hand and the whole recording has been re-tracked. This re-tracked version, minus any additional remastering, is present in the folder labelled 'original master'. The most potentially offensive edit is a creative one on my part - I moved 'Balls to the Wall' to the end of the show, to make it more consistent with their remaining discography. Those who dislike this are more than welcome to piss on my grave upon my death (leave a message in the comments and I'll be sure to send you the address following my untimely/timely demise).
The original recording did not need any particularly strong EQing, as it was well balanced, despite being fairly obviously cassette sourced. I have attempted to give more presence to the cymbals and the lower frequencies however, to give the recording more punch. At the same time, the upper range, in general, is not as strong. This was done in effort to lessen the bias of the cassette source. Additionally, there is a greater stereo presence to the middle frequencies in particular. Yes, I have used a dynamic range compressor.
I don't by any means consider this a masterpiece of remastering, but I've not seen a new version of the show in aeons, and the show deserves more attention. My best case scenario is people listen to this and go 'this is so damn awful we simply must find the pre-fm source!' At which point my version will be made redundant and I would sincerely love nothing more. Or even better, we get an official release!
In the meantime, I hope the results here aren't too offensive. If nothing else it gets an at least decent version of a crackin' show back into circulation.
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