Audience

CDR

2

DVD 312; lineage: audience recording on a Sony D-6 with unknown mics (may have been the external stereo mic that came with the unit). Lineage: Source 1 master cassette > cassette > HD > wav; Source 2 master cassette > cassette > cassette > HD > wav. Encoding: CDWave > flac frontend > flac
Recorded by: wishes to remain anonymous. Transfer by: Pantagruel

Notes:

I got this show direct from the taper. I think I only ever made one analog copy back in the day, for the only other Laurie Anderson fan I knew at the time, which turned out to be a great stroke of luck. I've always wanted to transfer and seed this show, but I despaired at having lost the second cassette, which held the end of the show. I hated the idea of not being able to present the whole thing. Turns out there was a happy ending after all.

Source 1 is a first gen cassette, roughly 90 minutes' worth. Source 2 is a second gen cassette, and provides the last three tracks, about 15 minutes. My 1st gen tape 2 (which contained those last three tracks) was stolen by a certain blighter (you know who you are, you BLIGHTER!) who wanted the Pink Floyd filler (11-16-74, which in those days was an exceptionally great sounding PF recording). Alert Dime member dadoun to the rescue! dadoun still had his 2nd gen cassettes that I had copied for him 23 years ago, so finally I was able to do a transfer of the entire show. Interestingly, dadoun and I had lost touch with each other for over 20 years. We reconnected quite recently. Can you guess how? Via Dime! Man, is this place great or what? So without Dime, we would not have a complete recording of this show. Extra-special thanks to dadoun, who provided the 2nd gen source, the setlist and helped me with the tracking. He also had the priviledge of seeing this show. He is a gentleman, a scholar and a genuine Laurie Anderson aficionado. Here are a few of his observations about this show:

"A couple of comments about the show through my dim memory of all those years
ago. In the opening binary rap vocoder monologue, Laurie was dressed up in
bandages like Nash the Slash, she also did the flashlight in the mouth bit.
Throughout the show there were quite a few back projections and other
effects (for example the cartoon elements from the cover of Mister
Heartbreak were animated on a back projection during the performance of
Sharkey's Day) and I think at least one of the percussion pieces was
actually a solo by the fabulous David Van Tieghem.

"The violin pieces were also a little out of the ordinary - earlier she was
well known for her experiments with tape-bow violin (Laurie collectors will
probably know "Ethics is the Aesthetics of the Future"), this violin was the
next stage - no strings and no tape head, but an actuator that triggered the
playback of a sound file with the bow and fingering controlling the speed
and pitch of the playback. There was actually a techie on stage after the
show whose principal job seemed to be answering questions about the
equipment and technology.

"I've seen a number of Laurie Anderson shows since but this was my first and
the only one that totally blew my mind, a really classic performance in the
tradition of "great American humor" that was way ahead of its time ... "

There are various minor flaws; odd cuts, tape flips, mic bumping noises, fades, static, and a little oversaturation here and there. The first minute or so is monaural, due to a loose mic cable. One channel was silent until the taper corrected the problem, so I used the good channel to fill in the silence and make for a slightly better listening experience. There is some static during Sharkey's Day -- it sounds like a digital artefact, but it's not. It's on my 1st gen cassette, and I believe it's on the master as well. There's a nasty cut toward the end of Sharkey's Night. I inserted a little cross-fade to make it more tolerable.

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