Soundboard

CDR

1

DVD 563; lineage: Multitrack Soundboard Recordings ->
(Rough) Mixdown -> R2R -> ? -> Silver Pressed Bootlegs
-> EAC -> Wavemerge 2.1 -> Adobe Audition 1.5 (Speed Correcting,
Editing, Manual Level Correction, Channel Swopping) ->
Cubase SX3.0 (using Waves linMB/L2, UAD Pultec/EX-1) ->
CdWave -> FLAC (L6) -> You; Used Bootleg sources: 1969: Wintertime Trip & Pure Rock Theatre. Restored, Edited & Mastered by Prof. Stoned, The Who - The 1969 Soundboard Tapes Vol. 1 - Restored & Remastered **Corrected version.**

Tr. 1-6: McDonough Gymnasium, Georgetown University,
Washington D.C. - 2 November 1969

Tr. 7-11: State University of New York,
Long Island (Stonybrook), NY - 18 October 1969

Tr. 12: Venue/date unknown
However, this is certainly not any of the officially available versions:
Leeds University, London Coliseum 14 Dec 1969 or Isle of Wight 1970.

Prof Stoned says:

Here's another WHO project.

This time I have attempted to restore some of the many
SDB tapes from the North American fall tour of 1969 that are floating around.
The problem with all these recordings is that they are not properly labelled,
and in some cases it is impossible to say from which date the recording
originates.

Personally, I believe these are all rough mixes, made from the multitracks.
These shows were recorded for a live album, but the tapes were rejected.
It is claimed that Pete 'burned all of the tapes".
If this is true, I assume he burned the multitrack tapes, and not
the mixdown tapes of which you can hear some here.
There are both reasons whether this could or could not have happened.

One reason why it could be true, is that nothing of these recordings
have been officially issued in any form so far.
But apparantly in 1982, the forthcoming live album "Who's Last" was
considered to be a mix of recently recorded live material paired with
live material from 1969, which would have to be from the fall tour.
Sadly, this plan never materialised, and all we can do for now is hope
that some of this material will find its way on an official release, one day.

The recordings here are sourced from two bootlegs: 1969: Wintertime Trip
(a.k.a. Cops & Robbers & Higher Education) & Pure Rock Theatre.
Many of you already got these. But there's a world of difference in what
you'll hear on those CD's compared to what's on this new version.

How these tapes leaked from the Who Archive is a mystery, but one
can guess that this material was actually stolen by some employee
or 'friend'.

*** About the 1969: Winter Time Trip & Pure Rock Theatre Bootlegs

--- 1969: Winter Time Trip

This one claims to have been compiled from two dates (plus a lost
Pete solo recording from a later date):
The first 13 tracks would be from Georgetown University 1969/11/02
while the next 5 tracks would from Hull, 1970/02/15.
If only it were that simple. But it is not...

The 13 Georgetown University Tracks are a mixture of three sources:

1) The Tommy Part is from the well-known Fillmore East, NYC
1969/10/22 recording.
2) 'Tattoo' & 'Fortune Teller' are from Capitol Theater, Ottawa
1969/10/15. (I will cover this show in Part 2 of this series)
3) And that what remains is actually from Georgetown University
1969/11/02 and presented here as Tr. 1-5.

The 5 Hull Tracks are also a mixture of three (or four) sources:

1) 'Heaven and Hell' and 'Can't Explain' are the same tracks
from Georgetown 1969/11/02, in a slightly cleaner quality.
After extensive comparing and listening, I have become convinced
that "Fortune Teller" is from the same concert, as the overall sound
and the panarama of the mix are so identical to above two tracks,
that -to me- it's virtually impossible that this is from another show .
2) Tattoo' is the same version from Capitol Theater, Ottawa
1969/10/15 and so, the third track that was included twice.
3) 'Young Man Blues' is not identified but is almost certainly
recorded sometime during the October-November 1969
North American tour as well.

In other words, this recording has been mislabelled.
Jon Astley, the producer of all the Who re-issues was reported saying
that the bass guitar was accidently not recorded on the multitracks
of the hull '70 show, which is one reason why it is unlikely that the last
two tracks are from this date.

This bootleg has a gigantic speed problem, on which i will come back later.

--- Pure Rock Theatre

This one is even more complicated.
The sleeve gives no credits, but this collection is taken from various
dates (if not more).

1) The majority comes from Capitol Theater, Ottawa, 1969/10/15
2) Three tracks are from Leeds University, England, 1970/02/14
(The well-known Live at Leeds concert)
3) The five Tracks that can be found on this compilation from
State University of New York, Long Island 1969/10/18
4) One track from Theatre des Champs Elysees, Paris 1970/01/16

The sound quality on this bootleg is quite clean on most of
the tracks, which implies that they come from low generation
tape sources, though it's has some Noise reduction.

*** About The Restoration

--- Georgetown University, 1969/11/02

After studying this material for a while, I decided to make my own
corrected versions of these two boots.

Thus, I assembled the five tracks version of this show
together in the correct order.
I corrected the speed with -1.03 semitones, which is quite
a difference, after comparing them very precisely to
generated E (660 Hz) and G (792 Hz) tones.
Except 'Fortune Teller", which came from the misslabelled
"Hull" portion got a SC of -0.43.

I swopped the channels, so that Pete's guitar was on the right.

Then, I painstakingly compared the two different sources of the
first two tracks. In the end, I became convinced that the so-called
"Hull" versions originate from a lower generation tape source, and so
I used those.

I corrected the speed of these two tracks too (I forgot the exact
level of semitones already...), with the same precision.
These version ran significantly slower, and therefore demanded
a less drastical speed change.

Because the 'Hull' versions were faded out/in, I used
the rejected versions to reconstruct the missing seconds before
and after "Heaven and Hell".
Then, I amplified the right channel everything after "fortune teller"
considerately to get the bass guitar a bit less loud in the mix

--- State University of New York, Long Island 1969/10/18

This one was a lot easier to do.
Unlike any other source found on the two aforementioned
bootlegs, the speed was actually precisely correct on these tracks.
Channels were already in the correct order as well.

The (very important) opening chord of Overture was missing.
I found this so annoying that I decided to borrow
the opening chord of Overture from the 1969/10/22 recording
and edit it seamlessly to this recording.
I think it works quite well. A lot better than without.

This source has about ten seconds of the beginning of
"Eyesight to the blind" before you hear the Reel-to-Reel
machine being turned off.
A very dramatic moment, that I didn't wanna omit.

--- The mystery track from "1969: Winter Time Trip"

I added this track too (Tr. 12).
I gave it a slight speed correction of -0.05 semitones.
Unlike everything else on this comp, YMB is in mono, and of a little
lesser sonic quality.

*** About The Mastering

I attempted to get a 'natural' sounding remaster.
Not the kind that makes your ears bleed, nor that
kind that sounds heavily processed.

I didn't use Noise Reduction for this recording. Hate it.
But unfortunately some severe NR was used in the original
mastering of both "Pure Rock Theatre" & "Winter Time Trip".
So if you hear it, that's where it comes from...

I gave the whole thing a treatment with multiband compression.
Because of the rough nature of the mixes, this made the vocals
and bass guitar sound a lot more coherent in the mix.
I used seven (!) different mastering settings for the whole compilation,
to make the overall sound as good and similair as possible.
I also did some very slightly EQ-ing with the Pultec & the EX-1.
Then I used the L2 for some more volume, but very carefully.
No macho mastering.

A frequency analyses proved this to be lossless.

Enjoy Y'all !!

563

0