Peter Gabriel
Apollo, Manchester, UK
April 29, 1977
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Matrix of two audience recordings:
Audience recording 1: David Lowe tape, unknown generation -> transfer by me
Audience recording 2: 1st gen. tape -> transfer by Nigel Butterworth
Disc 1:
1. Here Comes the Flood - 3.00
2. On the Air - 4.18
3. Moribund the Burgermeister - 4.59
4. Waiting for the Big One - 9.55
5. A Little Song for Little People - 3.46
6. Excuse Me - 3.58
7. Ain't That Peculiar - 5.15
8. Solsbury Hill - 5.10
9. Band Introductions - 1.42
10. Humdrum - 4.19
Disc 2:
1. Slowburn - 7.49
2. All Day and All of the Night - 5.43
3. Here Comes the Flood - 6.36
4. Modern Love - 7.21
5. Down the Dolce Vita - 11.19
6. Back in N.Y.C. - 6.40
Total Running Time: 91.50
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For MUPPET06 I did the September 27, 1977 show at the Manchester Apollo. After the MUPPET06 release kotti passed me on some information, and made me aware that David Lowe had a tape of the April 29, 1977 gig, which also happened to be at the Manchester Apollo, and was in fact the very first rock gig at that venue! :)
Soon I discovered there was a second version of this recording circulating, from a 1st gen. tape, transferred by Nigel Butterworth.
After examination I found that the two versions both were from different tapers, both with a very different sound. The DL source was very distant, but did have the very low and high frequencies (great bass drum, and those cymbals were present as well). The NB source was quite compressed with lots of the mid-range, giving a more raw sound. Both were far from perfect, but the disadvantages of each could be covered up by each other. Thus came the idea to try a matrix. More about that in the WHAT WAS DONE? section.
Back to the show:
MUPPET06 came from the second leg of the tour, this show comes from the first leg. There's some differences. Mostly in the order of the songs, but there's some other changes. Peter covered Marvin Gaye's I Heard it through the Grapevine during the second leg, but here he does another song by Gaye: Ain't That Peculiar. Also, where the second leg had a more polished version of Indigo, here we get an early version of the song under the working title A Little Song for Little People. Also, instead of the encore of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, this time it's Back in NYC.
WHAT WAS DONE?
This release is a so-called matrix, which uses two sources simultaneously. One source had lots of lows and higs, the other mostly mid-range frequencies. They covered each other perfectly, giving the recording a very rich full-spectrum sound, and giving me the chance to have a little more control over the sound than usual: kind of like working with a very simple multi-track :)
It also caused me a lot of head-ache and trouble though ;)
Speed correction was obviously the first step, since the two sources had to be perfectly synchronized. This wasn't as easy as I thought at first: there seemed to be some miniscule speed-fluctations which would result in the two sources going out of sync each minute or so. What I had to do therefore was synchronizing the two sources every minute. Some of the loud songs were painfully difficult to do: All Day and All of the Night and Back in NYC turned out so bad that I decided to use one source only for those.
You'll find that at a few places the two sources seem to go out of sync: I regret this, but since the majority turned out very nice I hope it can be excepted :)
The DL source was mono. Since it was very hissy, I killed some of the ultra-high frequencies that didn't contain music, but did contain hiss. After that some further noise reduction was done, albeit slightly and manually altered. One channel was copied to the other to get two identical channels. After that equalization was done to get an optimal balanced sound.
The NB source was mono as well. I found the right channel to be the best so copied that to the left channel, to get two identical channels again. Equalization was done here as well.
The matrix was 'mixed' in the multi-track feature of Cool Edit. 80% of the show was a mix of the two sources. I balanced the volumes of the two, also did some very slight panning to left and right to create a little stereo. When there was two sources at the same time I also used some additional equalization for each of the sources to accentuate their strengths. Very slight reverb was used as well, with one of the two getting a little more than the other to create some artificial stereo-space again.
The two sources each had some little bits missing, where I would use the other to cover it up. The NB source was missing the first few notes of the Here Comes the Flood piano intro, the beginning of Humdrum, and some audience noise inbetween the encore. The DL source was missing the end of Humdrum, the middle of Slowburn, and also some audience noise inbetween the encore.
As said before, All Day and All of the Night and Back in NYC only use one source: this was the DL source.
After the 32-bit mixdown of these two sources, multi-band compression was done, to create some more dynamics, to flatten some of the excessive bass, and fiddle a bit with the stereo image.
Some final equalization was done and the stereo image was expanded a little again.
Some slight reverb was added as the finishing touch. Hard limiting was used to flat some of the extremely high peaks, the recording was then normalized for optimum dynamic capability on the final CD. Fade-ins and fade-outs were applied, and the recording was converted back to 16-bit with the use of dithering. Finally, this was cut in tracks.
A FINAL NOTE OF IMPORTANCE
On some systems this recording sounds as was intended by me, with a great rich sound, and on some dynamic parts like the intro to On the Air, the loud-quiet contrast in Waiting for the Big One the raw power should really kick in, when all instruments join in.
However, you may find that the bass is way too loud on your system. I found this myself on one system.
What you can do is turn off the 'loudness' button if that was on, and probably the sound is very good then. Else, just lower the bass with the help of your equalizer.
Oh yeah, play it loud!!!!! :)
A FINAL THANK YOU
Thanks to David Lowe for letting me transfer his Manchester tape, and thanks to kotti for making me aware that David Lowe had this tape!
Thanks to Nigel Butterworth for transferring his tape and Jason Bennett for the trade!
Thanks to Alan Hewitt for liner notes!
Thanks to Casimiro Baldanza for helping out with the CD labels in the artwork!
As always, hope you enjoy this remaster, and Happy Holidays!
Jesper Moonen
December 24, 2004
If you have any comments, a question, or perhaps even have an unusual Gabriel recording, which you would like to hear remastered, just send me an e-mail at sledgehammer86@hotmail.com
or visit the Yahoo-group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MUPPET_remasters/
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