| Pink Floyd - Forgotten Floyd Part 3 - Frankfurt Festhalle (24-48) |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Notes |
| Recorded at the Festhalle, Frankfurt, Germany. Excellent audience recording. From the info file: Pink Floyd 'The Forgotten Concerts' Part 3 'The Unreleased Pre-Concert Tape' Frankfurt Festhalle 1989-06-21 master AUD tape 24 bit mastering at 48K This concert is for Shuki Sen Welcome to perhaps the final part of the 'Forgotten Concerts' series,and the rarest of the three shows. The entire 1989 European tour is rare to collectors, and this show has something even more special. For a while before the concert, there was a custom tape played for the audience. It consists of, for lack of better words to describe it, a jungle with birds and thunderstorms and airplanes buzzing the audience. This tape, I have found out, was made by Mr. Gilmour and Co. especially for this show series. I had the good fortune of capturing almost the entire thing from the audience. I'd like to give it to all of you as sort of a present for sticking with me for the previous two torrents. For me, this concert has much more emotional baggage surrounding it, perhaps more than anything else I've ever uploaded. The mechanics of digitizing, splitting, and uploading it were very easy. What's becoming much more difficult is in describing the circumstances around it in a manner which you will also understand: I had left the American Air Force in 1983. After actually being in Wiesbaden when the American hostages returned home after 444 days in Iran, and then later, under different circumstances, being group-forced to sign papers (discredited by the Reagan administration after the news media got hold of them) stating that anything I might publish be first cleared by the CIA, I was emotionally and physically drained. Germany, which had been fun for an American serviceman in 1978, had turned into an unhappy, oppressive experience. Anti-American feelings were peaking, in a way that hasn't repeated itself in Germany. There were 'No Americans' signs posted in many places, people wouldn't talk to you, you couldn't go downtown because quote '50,000 people were demonstrating in an anti-American rally', my car was vandalized, courses in 'counter-terrorist driving' were given, we all had to carry cards which identified Russian diplomats and we had to know how to stop them... it went on and on, and I'm not even describing the asshole management for my particular job. You get the picture. When I left in 1983, I swore I would never go back. I did have one tiny advantage while I was there. I wanted to know what people around me were saying, especially about me. I took a German class to get started. Get this: My instructor spoke English with a British accent. I *learned* German with a British accent! I could sometimes pass myself off as British in a Gasthaus and let my guard down a little. There, I learned one thing I want to pass on to you, before we get to the concert: The news, as broadcasted on television and written in the newspapers, is a slice of a much larger pie. No matter which angle your particular country, or television station, or newspaper, or fellow man spouts, it's just a cut. And, sometimes, a really small, vicious one at that. While in Germany, I found a thriving underground music-collecting scene. Especially at the flea-markets on specific Saturdays, there were many live-tape traders. I have talked about that in great detail in previous torrents. One of them has stayed with me, for life it seems. He supplied the LPS for the 'Pictures of Pink Floyd' restoration project. This is sort of my gift back to him as well. I met my ex-wife in Germany as well. Her American father and German mother lived in Mainz, across the water from Wiesbaden. She would go back on a yearly basis, but I never would. What finally got me to go in 1989, was reconnecting with my German trading friend, and this concert. The Germany I found as an ex-serviceman in 1989 was far different than the one I had left in 1983. Many of the US Service Bases, which had been in existence since 1946, were in the process of being closed. 'The Problem' was leaving, in droves, never to come back. The few military people I did meet were living a more comfortable lifestyle, as the pressure that had existed for me was no longer. When I returned again in 1997, one of the places I had been was now unrecognizable as apartments, another had tall weeds growing in the broken pavement. The enormous building there, built by the French for the Kaiser, and later used by the SS, was now rotting in the breeze with broken windows. So be it. There was a problem to record concerts at the Frankfurt Festhalle in 1989. The security there was very tight, and all bags were inspected. There was one oddity, though. You couldn't bring in recording equipment, of course, but you could bring in your lunch or dinner. When I was growing up, there were these great cookies called Lorna Doones. They were two flaky crackers with a lemon filling. They were also roughly the same size as cassettes. After scouring a German marketplace, I found an equivalent. The end of the package was carefully peeled open with a kitchen knife, about half of the cookies were removed (several were eaten), the bare, wrapped cassettes were put into the middle, and the remainder of the cookies were put back on top. When the package was closed, it was undetectable. Three enormous rolls were bought at the corner bakery. Two of them were stuffed with meat, cheeses, and mustard. They were wrapped in aluminum foil. The third roll was hollowed out, and the cassette deck was put inside. As the shape was somewhat different, plastic bags were rolled and put into the sides before the third roll was wrapped. From outside appearances, you couldn't tell them apart. Even the weight was about the same, I later had trouble figuring out which one was not to eat. It passed through security without them taking a second look inside the bag. I had made a point of not speaking to the guards. Devious little sucker, eh? Auf Die Krumme Tour! The Frankfurt Festhalle, if you have never been there, looks like an American high-school gymnasium, or a basketball court with no seats on the sides. It has a small balcony upstairs which runs along all four walls. The roof has a small rotunda in the middle. The acoustics are horrible. There were also no seats on the floor downstairs, and the concert was general admission, meaning that you could be anywhere you wanted to be. The show was set up for quadrophonic sound. There were speakers on the sides, in the back, and across the stage. Since most of the earlier Pink Floyd audience recordings were missing some of the effects, I chose to stand square in the middle of the hall, near the mixer. Unfortunately, the vocals were mixed to the front only. It shows in the resulting recording. The instrumentation is really, really clear, but the vocals are slightly down and echoey in the mix. I had this thing at the time about absolute quality in recording. I had borrowed this stupid duck-bill yellow baseball cap, which I wore at the show. It was the only baseball cap I could find. There were none in the stores. The microphone was clipped facing upward on the brim, and I stood motionless for the three hours of this show in one position. This tape still sounds mighty fine after all these years. I hope you enjoy it. Lineage 2x Denon HD-M 100 Metal cassettes ->German Fisher deck with auto-reverse record->Sound Forge 6.0 ->Flac This concert is presented in Stereo 2.0 DVD-audio 24 bit, 48K. A direct burn to CDr is playable in your home-entertainment system. Setlist: 'The Tape' SOYCD Signs Of Life Learning To Fly Yet Another Movie A New Machine Pt 1 Terminal Frost A New Machine Pt 2 Sorrow Dogs Of War On The Turning Away One Of These Days Time On The Run The Great Gig In The Sky Wish You Were Here Welcome To The Machine Us And Them Money Another Brick In The Wall Comfortably Numb One Slip Run Like Hell There are occasional distortions, but they are caused by the audience only. The music is fine. Enjoy! A DoinkerTape |