Stranger > | 1994-11-25 | God Street Wine

2:27:50
Taper:
Scott Bernstein and Geoff Tischman
Transferrer:
Scott Bernstein
SHNID:
gsw1994-11-25
Source:
Audience
Taper Notes:
View Notesotal time: 2:27:51

Recorded by Scott Bernstein (+Geoff Tischman)

Transferred (5/5/2020, plus 4 more attempts on 2/2/2024), tracked (2/6/2024), mastered (2/5-10/2024) and posted (2/12/2024) by Scott Bernstein

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Taper Notes:
Continuing my deep dive into my God Street Wine recordings, I present to you BARN239 -- the 2nd night of my 3 night run of Thanksgiving GSW shows from 1994.  This was a BIG night for GSW -- moving up to the BIG stage in the BIG room of the legendary Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY.  The theme of the night is BIG.  This is a BIG performance for them (confirmed on the tapes of the show the next night when Lo says that this was the largest capacity show they had performed at this point -- jumping from their first performance at the 1000 capacity venue Irving Plaza in June 1993 to the much lager and more prestigous Capitol Theatre in Port Chester).  Note that this was the Capitol Theatre many many years before it was purchased and renovated by Pete Shapiro (this was also well before he purchased The Wetlands from Larry Bloch).  This was The Capitol Theater in its kinda shabby state of disrepair -- and still had seats in the orchestra level and was 100% general admission (which meant you could enter and sit wherever you wanted).

After taking one day off for Thanksgiving, the band return with a HOT, well planned performance.  After starting with an opening waltz, the band make their way into "Molly" and "Tina's Town" -- a double shot of promotion for their major label release ($1.99 Romances) that came out just about 6 weeks before.  Then they take a nice detour into the fun "Who's Driving" before featuring the more recent composition "Twitchin'" and another one from $1.99 Romances, "Crazy Head".  So far, so good.  Now that the band is warmed up and the band really kick things up a notch with a spectacular version of the infrequently played "Fourth of July" -- the band really take this song for a smoking 10+ minute ride.  Bringing things back down for a little bit of a breather with "The Ballroom" (also from the album), the band raise the bar again with a funky "Feel The Pressure"...and continue the bar-raising with a rockin' "Snake Eyes" to bring the first set to a close.

Returning for the 2nd set, the band is clearly determined to leave its mark on this legendary venue.  After a brief foray into John Coltrane's masterpiece "A Love Supreme", the band kick into gear with a really funky take on "The Princess Henrietta" which includes some kind of on-stage antics involving a container of Draino (mentioned in the lyrics) -- though I have no recollection of what the antics were.  Then after a trip through "Thirsty" from the album, the anthematic "Borderline", and their classic "Waiting For The Tide", we get to the real meat of the show.  Or maybe the real nut of the show -- introduced by Lo as the band's "message song" (every band has one!) "Peanut Butter Jar", the band's homage to the delicious nut butter.  This is far and away the most over-the-top version of this semi-rarity that I've ever heard -- total instanity.  Listen closely as one of the guys (Aaron?) does his best Frank Zappa imitation mid-song.  Where to go after that?  The band crash into "Crashing Down" which is INCENDIARY, played at a breakneck speed with funky bass.  After cooling things down a bit with a beautiful "Stranger", the band play a guitar shredding version of the newish (at the time) "Warm In Here".  They top the set off with an absolutely sublime take on their reggae-fied "Driving West" (one of their songs which first hooked me back in '93) with a unique intro and tight and dirty big bass guitar grooves.

Closing things up with an encore completely from left field, the band comes back with a quiet take on Jobim's masterpiece "The Girl From Ipanema" before wrapping up the night with one of their great rockers, "Nightingale" (also from $1.99 Romances).  WHAT A SHOW!

A couple of production notes about this recording:  Every recording that I work on is literally like the proverbial "box of chocolates" -- I never know what is going to be "inside" when I start to work on it.  This one took a lot of work to get to you in its current form.  First of all, just trying to transfer the DAT was problematic -- it took me 5 attempts to pull off a (mostly) clean transfer.  Most of my DATs play back OK, but they don't always.  DAT is a problematic medium due to its small size, tight tolerances for tracking, and the ravages of time.  You will hear that it cuts in somewhat abruptly (no crowd cheering to start) and there are a couple of minor "zits" of shakiness in the first minute or so.  Then during the encore, I could not get a clean play through of "Nightingale" (missing about a minute and a half of the song) and during my 5th attempt at transferring the recording, the tape broke while trying to play it back.  So...to complete the song, I patched in the missing section from Eric Budke's soundboard recording which is posted to the archive.  (This really makes the difference between the way my audience recording sounds and the way the soundboard sounds -- in my opinion, the audience recording BLOWS away the soundboard -- in every way except for the vocal presence.)  That wasn't the only challenge that I faced with this recording.  This was a case where there was someone REALLY REALLY close to the microphones who was very zealously clapping loudly through most of the show.  I spent about 5 hours seeking out these claps (and some related loud "woo"ing) and meticulously cleaning them up from the recording -- all so you guys can really enjoy this show in its full glory.

ENJOY!