Relisten

View NotesThis is the last of three shows that Low played that day -- the others were a live broadcast on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic, and an afternoon show at Borders.

This is a long and interesting set with a few oddities.  One of them is the sound quality -- it starts out kind of lousy, almost as if the taper is trying to hide his microphone.  Then it improves quite a bit, turning into a pretty good stereo analog audience recording.  Then, when "Rope" starts, there's a tape cut, and the sound changes again, becoming more compressed, with a noticeably smaller stereo image.  I'm not sure what to think is going on.  This show was also videotaped:  maybe the last part of the concert was dubbed from the video source?  The taper did have a 1st gen copy of the video from this show.  Or maybe the taper just moved his mics when he changed tapes, who knows...

There were also some significant speed issues on the original tape -- the first third of the concert ran about 5% slow, the second third (from "Stars Gone Out") about 2% slow, and the last part (starting with "Rope") was fine.  I corrected these issues on playback using the pitch control on my tape deck -- it was easy, since there was a tape cut at every speed change.  And thanks to the speed correction, the whole thing fits (barely) on one CD.

It's a nice setlist with some uncommon songs, including "See-through, "Jack Smith", "Stars Gone Out" (the beginning of which is missing), "Prisoner", and "Rope".

And about that last one ("Rope"), a warning:  for those of you with tender ears, an expletive or two is shouted by nearby audience members when a talkative young woman won't shut up.  Not a big deal for most, and some of it made me chuckle ("This ain't no .38 Special concert!"), but it's a little jarring and I wanted to give you a heads-up in case you're playing this at work, around your kids, etc.

Thanks to B.D.G. for sharing his tape with me!

Taper: unknown

37:01

Transferrer:

goldenband

SHNID:

Low1996-04-11.KCRW.flac16

Source:

FM > DAT (?) > cassette > DAT > DAT

Lineage:

DAT > Audiomedia III > Sound Designer II > WAV > SHN > WAV > Audacity (tracking) > xACT (SBEs fixed) > FLAC (level 8)

Taper Notes:

View NotesI remember first hearing this set shortly after it was recorded, as a murky RealAudio stream in the early days of the WWW.  It was the first live Low I ever heard, actually, since I didn't see them in person until the following year.  Anyway, here's a much nicer copy from an off-air recording.  There's some hiss from the cassette, but otherwise it's very clean.

Do You Know How To Waltz? is faded out before the end, with various announcements over the last minute or two of music.  Nice to hear Same, even with the mistake in the lyrics, and I always thought this was a really good performance of Transmission too.

Taper: unknown

Low1996-04-11.Borders.DAT.flac16

Lineage:

Panasonic rackmount DAT > Audiomedia III > Sound Designer II > Logic Audio 4.x > SR convert > L1 > WAV > SHN > xACT > .flac