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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Live at Music Hall, Cleveland, OH, April 21, 1972 [REMASTER][FLAC]



This is one of the hottest and best sounding recordings by one of the greatest bands ever!!! The Mahavishnu Orchestra was a jazz-rock fusion group, led by John McLaughlin, that debuted in 1971 and dissolved in 1976 and reunited briefly from 1984 to 1987. Their musical style was an unprecedented virtuoso blending of genres: they combined the high-volume electrified rock sound that had been pioneered by Jimi Hendrix (who McLaughlin had jammed with on his initial arrival in New York as part of the Tony Williams Lifetime), complex rhythms in unusual time signatures that reflected McLaughlin's interest in Indian classical music as well as funk, an improvisational concept that was rooted in jazz as well as Indian music, and harmonic influence from European classical music. According to John McLaughlin, Columbia refused a live release of this show. John McLaughlin himself feels that this show in Cleveland is one of the best that The Mahavishnu Orchestra has ever done. As Irony would have it, Columbia asked their engineer and Gregg Bendian to assist with the release of this live CD. A mix was made and sent for approval to John McLaughlin. No word from Columbia since. Enjoy !!!


Emperor Nobody Remaster


Lineage: FLAC files from another tracker>WAV via Trader's Little Helper>SoundForge 9>FLAC 8, sectors aligned, via TLH


Nobody notes on the remaster

This isn't currently on the tracker and only circulates (as far as I know) from 2 sources, the silver CD bootleg "Wild Strings" (sourced from what sounds like a slightly generated cassette tape) and what sounds like a first-generation DAT from the soundboard master of the mix mentioned in the original notes above. This second, cleaner source unfortunately suffers from a horrifying digital clipping that comes in towards the end of "The Dance of Maya" and continues through to the end of the set, making the second half of this (absolutely face-frying) performance essentially unlistenable. I grabbed this version from another tracker and set about the arduous process of making the nasty and unfortunate clipping issues go away, and I was fairly successful if I do say so myself. It wasn't really all that hard, given that the bulk of the disastrous noise was in the kick-drum sound, making it easier to isolate and eliminate all the deleterious, nails- on-a-blackboard-in-Hell distorto-crunch. I should also mention that although this commonly circulates as being from the Emerson Gymnasium on the campus of Case Western University, it is indeed from the Music Hall as TMO didn't play Case Western until February of 1973 (and with a more "Birds of Fire"-oriented setlist). As for the performance, I don't know what to say other than Columbia are, once again, idiots. According to what I read the hang-up with the official release of this came in 2004, when the suits at the label offered the five band members 1972 scale wages (!!!) for their services... what amounted to $250 apiece. So I guess the band politely refused and the thing got shelved forever, another lost diamond left to languish in the greedy vaults of shame because some asshats, deaf to anything but the illusion of profit, can't even show a shred of respect for what a whole lot of people think is THE BEST CONCERT RECORDING ever made of what yet more feel is THE BEST BAND EVER. I took the time to fix this up and make it sound the best I could because we'll likely never get to hear this on the official release for which it begs, but on balance I think this version sounds pretty damn spiffy so have at it and see what you think... at least we'll get it circulating without mountains of hiss and ear-splitting clipping anyway. Once again the situation makes but two demands, and those are simply that you groove like you mean it and that you share like you'll die if you don't.

e. nobody
oakland, ca
usa



Musicians:

John McLaughlin - guitar
Jan Hammer - keyboards
Jerry Goodman - violin
Rick Laird - bass
Billy Cobham - drums


Setlist:

1. introduction
2. Meeting of the Spirits
3. You Know You Know
4. The Dance of Maya
5. The Noonward Race


Total time: 1:02:06



Format: FLAC



Enjoy !!!




See comments for the links

5 comments:

Dr. Fusion said...

Part1
http://lix.in/-405393

Part2
http://lix.in/-41da34

Part3
http://lix.in/-4360d5

Part4
http://lix.in/-47f4b8

Part5
http://lix.in/-4c889b

Anonymous said...

INCREDIBLE!!!!!! Thanks Doc.

Unknown said...

Thank you very much:Big improvement!

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! The people at Columbia are indeed idiots.

Neroon001 said...

what an amazing concert from a once in a lifetime band.Thank you very much for sharing this!!!!

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