Thursday, February 06, 2025

Dawn of the Dread: Bob Marley 80



Bob Marley & The Wailers - Running Away/Crazy Baldheads


I know I've done this guy a good few times -- as recently as his 75th b'day 5 years ago, and several before that -- but I'mma make like Steely Dan and do it again anyway, just to more widely circulate the best version of a super legendary and popular ROIO I know well deserves what I feel is a substantial auditory upgrade.

Well, to start off with, it isn't exactly of Indeterminate Origin, so there's that.

Up to now, the ROIOverse has been pretty clear that impresario of distinction Bill "Wolfgang" Graham taped this show on his snazzy black-n-white video recorder as it all went down in The Town.

That VHS master audio has circulated for about 6 years as the definitive version of it, but I think there's more to the story.

I say this because Wolfgang's Vault has it up and streaming, with a few seconds less of the spoken introduction than is on the videotape.

What may have happened was that BG rolled the videotape deck and then immediately rolled a reel-to-reel or cassette audio recorder simultaneously. Maybe he was that into Reggae.

Whatever the truth is, the VHS audio is really flat sounding and does not go above 15 kHz -- standard for video of that time as well as FM broadcasts. The version on Bill's Vault Of Surreptitiously Captured Concerts -- with about 1.5 seconds less of Bob Marley exalting Jah and Haile Selassie I at the start -- goes tastily up to the full preFM 20 kHz standard... even when coming down from a technically lossy 320/48k stream.

This might not seem at all significant, and I realize that for most folks it isn't, but for this show in particular -- it's been my all time favorite BMW recording for awhile, by the way -- that extra 5 kHz up top makes a huuuuuuuuge difference in the listening experience, which I always seek to optimize into a territory where it isn't entirely evident that what you're hips are shaking to like ice cubes in a cocktail glass is actually a bootleg.

This is especially operative in this case, because this is one of a passel of BMW performances enhanced by the presence of dub effects, which whoever was doing it live as the music went on did to great effect, with tremendous taste and maximal drama.

The dubby element is what makes this my personal all-time go-to tape of these guys... it isn't just that it's in Oakland. Although that helps, as we know.

There's even a show-stopping closer of the anthemic Get Up, Stand Up, where the dub scientist goes totally hog wild and The Rolling Stones show up, ensuring that the East Bay peeps really got more than their money's worth that evening.

So that's why I'm repeating myself like this, because this version of this show (yes it's iconic, performed by an icon's icon iconically) really does sound head and dreadlocks above all the currently circulating versions, all of which I was sure to listen to and spectrally analyze before doing it. And there were/are a few, trust me.


Bob Marley & the Wailers
Oakland Auditorium
Oakland, California USA
11.30.1979

01 Positive Vibration
02 Wake Up and Live
03 Concrete Jungle
04 Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)
05 I Shot the Sheriff
06 Running Away/Crazy Baldheads
07 Ambush In the Night
08 The Heathen
09 War/No More Trouble
10 No Woman, No Cry
11 Lively Up Yourself
12 Africa Unite
13 One Drop
14 Exodus
15 Is This Love? 
16 Jammin'
17 Ride Natty Ride
18 Roots, Rock, Reggae
19 Natty Dread
20 Get Up, Stand Up

Total time: 1:46:54
disc break goes after Track 10

Bob Marley - vocals & guitar
Aston "Family Man" Barrett - bass
Carlton Barrett - drums
Al Anderson - guitar
Junior Marvin - guitar & occasional crowd exhortations
Earl "Wire" Lindo - organ, clavinet
Tyrone Downie - keyboards
Alvin "Seeco" Patterson - percussion
Devon Evans - percussion
David Madden - trumpet
Glen DaCosta - saxophone
Rita Marley - vocals
Judy Mowatt - vocals
Donald Kinsey - guitar on Track 20
Ron Wood - guitar on Track 20
with dub effects throughout by an unidentified dub scientist

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault
spectral analysis is lossless to 20 kHz, making this equivalent to a preFM source
beginning of Lively Up Yourself is patched & tempo adjusted from an HD YouTube file 
of a documentary depicting BMW in and around Western Springs, Auckland NZ 4.16.1979
1st few seconds of the spoken intro to the show is patched from the master VHS audio of this event
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked, repaired & slightly remastered -- with tape flip in Ambush In the Night somewhat smoothed -- by EN, February 2025
635 MB FLAC/direct link

Another important note: in the VHS master audio iteration of this one, two songs are patched with what sounds like a 477th generation cassette that doesn't go much above 8,000k. So just for fun, I patched one with the only song footage in a documentary I found.
This was a short film made about Bob Marley in New Zealand in the Spring of 1979 -- because I felt that that version was the best sonic match for this tune, crappy as it still is. But that song was seldom performed on the Wailers' 1979 world tour, so I picked the only one I felt suitable.

As for the other song, I didn't try to patch it, but instead tried to smooth the tape flip in it to make it flow in a musically semi-reasonable way. Again, it is what it is!

Either way, neither of these instances of sonic compromise really detract much from the overall blazing, incantatory vibe of these 107 minutes of redemption songs.

I have one more post that I am working on, that I will time to hit automatically after the move next Friday, if all goes well. But I wanted to make sure I got this up here, not just for the sonic upgrade quotient but to honor someone whose unforgettable music only gains resonance as the decades fly by like three little birds.--J.


2.6.1945 - 5.11.1981

Monday, February 03, 2025

A Real Grandmother for Ya: Johnny "Guitar" Watson 90

 
Johnny "Guitar" Watson - Ain't That a Bitch


I am pretty tired from everything real and imagined that goes with moving, but I'm not gonna miss this milestone birthday for a long-gone legend of all times and forevers.

This guy started in the Fifties and rode the bull until his early passing 30+ years ago, where else but during a gig.

An inestimable influence on other, subsequent guitar slingers, he was a huge shadow on the playing on Frank Zappa, for instance.

He even guested on a few FZ compositions in the 1970s.

He began as basically a Blues artist, but reinvented himself as a Funkateer as music progressed through the '60s into the '70s.

His stage raps are thought to have helped set the template for hip-hop too.

One of the handful of artists to have died onstage, he had a heart attack one night in 1996 during the final verse of Gangster of Love -- his signature song --  and keeled over, to be pronounced dead soon after. How Gangster is that?

There aren't a helluva lotta ROIOs of him, and the most famous one got released officially some time ago.

Thankfully I spotted this wild set streaming on The Site Formerly Known As House Of Theft, and dressed it all up nice once I discovered it to be essentially lossless north of the FM signal it was likely taped for.

The band is only called out by JGW by first names in this, and I did what I could to further identify who is playing, but some of them remain mysterious, for which I apologize in advance.

So here's Johnny "Guitar" Watson -- born this day in 1935 -- live in NYC just before he departed this realm, setting the Funk on fire as usual.


Johnny "Guitar" Watson
Tramps
New York City, New York USA
2.17.1995
late show

01 introduction of JGW/Johnny G. Is Back
02 Superman Lover
03 I Want to Ta-Ta You Baby
04 Ain't That a Bitch
05 Doing Wrong Woman
06 Hook Me Up
07 Bow Wow
08 A Real Mother for Ya
09 Gangster of Love

Total time: 1:30:47
disc break goes after Track 05

Johnny "Guitar" Watson - guitar & vocals
"Sanford" - drums & percussion
Les Falconer - drums & percussion
"Jo Ellen" - keyboards
"Fabulous Fingers" Rob McDonald - bass & vocals
The Never Too Late Horns:
"Andre" - alto saxophone & vocals
Steve Baxter - trombone
unidentified - tenor saxophone & vocals
unidentified - trumpet & vocals

320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked, denoised & slightly remastered by EN, February 2025
515 MB FLAC/direct link

This is a steamroller of a set, with JGW riding the chart success of his big comeback record at the time and thrilling a sweaty and packed house all the way down to their dancin' shoes.

Hard to conceive that he was gone a little over a year later, but that's why we're here at the Page Of Old Music No One Cares About, right? To ensure that people of the highest, most elevated musical caliber -- prime example: Johnny "Guitar" Watson -- never really die.--J.


2.3.1935 - 5.17.1996

Sunday, February 02, 2025

So Long, Marianne



Marianne Faithfull - Brain Drain


Shall I see you tonight, sister
bathed in magic greet?
Shall we meet on the hilltop
where the two roads meet?

We will form the circle,
hold our hands and chant
Let the great one know
what it is we want

Danger is great joy,
dark is bright as fire
Happy is our family,
lonely is our ward

Sister, we are waiting
on the rock and chain
Fly fast through the airwaves
meet with pride and truth

Danger is great joy,
dark is bright as fire
Happy is our family
lonely is our ward

Father, we are waiting
for you to appear
Do you feel the panic,
can you see the fear?
Mother, we are waiting
for you to give consent
If there's to be a marriage,
we need contempt

Danger is great joy,
dark is bright as fire
Happy is our family,
lonely is our ward

Da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da
(remember, death is far away and life is sweet)


Marianne Faithfull
The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
Naropa University
Boulder, Colorado USA
1988-89

01 I Fear I Am Like Phoebe Cates (poem)
02 Working Class Hero
03 Brain Drain
04 Morning Come
05 Take It Easy
06 Strange Weather
07 The Ballad of Lucy Jordan (false start)
08 The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
09 She's Got a Problem
10 Times Square
11 Sign of Judgement
12 Falling from Grace
13 Guilt
14 introduction by Marianne Faithfull
15 Falling from Grace
16 Guilt
17 Strange Weather
18 Brain Drain
19 Farewell, Angelina
20 Blue Millionaire
21 Foreign Eyes
22 Working Class Hero
23 Why'd Ya Do It?
24 Boulevard of Broken Dreams
25 Times Square
26 Marianne Faithfull closing announcement 
27 I've Heard It Said (a cappella)

Total time: 1:29:44
disc break goes after Track 13
Tracks 01-11: 7.16.1988
Tracks 12-13: 7.28.1989
Tracks 14-26: 7.29.1989
Track 27: 7.20.1989

Marianne Faithfull - vocals
Steven Taylor - guitar (Tracks 01-11)
Barry Reynolds - guitar & vocals (Tracks 12-26)
with an unidentified harmonica player (Track 18)

256/48k audio streamed from the Naropa Archives 
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, assembled and slightly remastered by EN, February 2025
436 MB FLAC/direct link


As everybody knows by now, Marianne Faithfull passed away a couple of days ago, after many decades of iconhood that will soon belong to the ages.

There's a bunch of ROIOs I could have just posted, the usual ones.

Instead, I thought a figure of this uncompromising stature deserved a less autonomically rote approach, so I spent the time since she passed whipping up this little 90-minute excursion into her world and a good example of what made her what she was to millions.

This dates from the late Eighties, when she taught workshops in songwriting at the then-new Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and features some searingly emotional, naked and heartfelt acoustic performances with just a single guitar accompanying her.

I'm working on February amidst moving into the new home, but I wanted to put this up here as we all remember Marianne faithfully, with the sort of uncut, raw gem befitting a rare jewel such as she.--J.


12.29.1946 - 1.30.2025