Audience

CDR

3

DVD 3245; lineage: Stealth recorded and minimally produced by mrsaureus, sittin at the front of the second floor section left of center. Core-Sound High End Binaurals (DPA-4060 capsules) to Sony PCM-M10 (48 kHZ, 24 bit), WavePad Sound Editor to chop and FLAC only.

This is an audience recording that aims to document the experience of being in the crowd at the show, and features occasionally loud but appropriate crowd noise. This is the first time this recording is being shared.

Iíve never seen Paul McCartney before, and it was sloshing around in that category of things I certainly intended to do but comfortably deferred.† After all, unlike the Stones, there seemed to be plenty of product on the shelves.† Then the middle of last week, with the news about Maxwells, came a startling awareness of the fragility of things starting with ìMî, and I hopped onto stubhub tout de suite to catch while catch can.
†
I was in luck, because Paul was playing a only week later at Barclays Center, a venue Iíd never been to, but wanted to check out.† And so it was that my son Pete and I sloshed over to that gigantic cup of cappucino in Prospect Heights in a driving rainon Monday†night to see most of what is left of the Beatles.
†
Now Iím a Beatles fan, of course. Not being a Beatles fan is an essentially intractable position, and many would consider it a mild form of mental illness, but I donít consider myself a rabid Beatles fan.† The songs are so familiar that for me theyíve lost most of their gloss, but here is one of the things I love about live music:† like the prospect of being hanged, it focusses the mind.† Expertly performed by a consummate professional who comes off as an unassuming all-around good guy, the songs were a dazzling, titanic, almost endless procession of breathtaking musical genius which I was able to consider freshly, as if hearing them for the first time.† Paul played a generous two and half hour set with two encores, and still left an entire concert of A list material unplayed.† Only during a new song about a rainy day did the otherwise rapt audience briefly disengage, and highlights from Wings slipped in here and there without embarassing themselves.† Even the inanely bombastic Live and Let Die was served up cheerful and hot, with a palette of pyrotechnics that goosed the excitable crowd.
†
Barclays?† Shame about the Bakery, but I donít think it ruins the neighborhood.† There was a big rail yard there before anyway, so itís not like it squatted down in the middle of Union Square or something.† It seems a little smaller than the Garden and a little more provincial, sort of like the mirror image of the Prudential Center in Newark.† When the articulated camera at the stage lip turned on the crowd during the fevered pre-encore rave up of Hey Jude, a whole passel of celebrities were spotlighted like deer, including Jerry Seinfeld and family, Martin Scorcese and Jimmy Fallon, and Iím guessing that was as much like being at a Knickís game as Barclays will ever get.

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