"A Night At The Gate" Village Gate NYC 1976-01-05 FM Reel-to-reel REMASTERED

Notes October 2010:

In the 600 or so torrents I've done for Dime (a number I still find staggering), all but the first six months or so are neatly archived on DVDr with a sort of poorly organized index. The torrents prior to then, from June through November 2005 either exist on scattered cdrs or don't exist at all anymore. They include a four-part series of 1960's artists performing in the present day (that one is still on Sugarmegs, though).

I've made several attempts at recombining the early torrents into some cohesive form without success. Every once in a while I stumble upon the early discs. It's then that a determination has to be made whether to update the text file only, or to do the whole thing over. I have much better equipment now than I did back then, and this particular torrent is a great example as to why you need the best you can possibly get when transferring your valuable tapes to the digital format.

This reel tape is a complete puzzlement to me. In the preceding five and a half years I've gotten better at recognizing speed shifts, tracking errors and most importantly phase-shifted mono. This particular tape is unfortunately none of the above.

The thought was to restore this set again into stereo, or to determine if it's phase-shifted mono and to make it a mono recording. After looking at the large number of hours the first post took to make, and after actually finding and examining the original reel again, the decision was made to leave the original post alone and to provide you with the best possible remastering I could manage.

For the most part, the left channel is weak and sometimes distorted. In the beginning there is no stereo separation apparent, and in the end I'm not sure there is either. This tape either has bleed-through to the other side or they had transmission troubles at the Village Gate while this show was being broadcasted over WRVR FM. Playing the tape in reverse while flipped does not solve anything either, this is not an azimuth problem. so, for this remastering, you are getting the right channel only. The astounding jump in clarity is not the results of that process, it's a result of the newer equipment.

Finally, you might be asking just why I've spent so much effort with such an obscure set of material.

It's the music, man!!!! Another night of roundtabling the musicians, similar to the ECM night torrent that's been posted three times since 2005. You can't escape this music. It's great. And, there you go.

Original notes:
-------
This 7 1/2 inch reel was acquired at a flea market in the early 1980's, rather than being taped directly off the air by me. Coincidentally, the flip side of the tape was the broadcast just prior to the one previously torrented featuring Ralph Towner and The Gateway Trio. Like the previous torrent, this broadcast also features unique musician combinations and music that sometimes vastly differs from the commercial releases.

Unfortunately, most of the beginning set is missing, but luckily you know who is playing. Again, it's somewhat mindblowing:

(apparently improvised group of musicians, but if you know better, tell us!)

Eric Kloss
Terry Silverlight
Kenny Barron
Harvie Swartz
Vic Juris

The two other groups are:

Barry Miles' Silverlight

Bill Washer
Harvie Swartz
Bruce Ditmas (instead of Barry's brother Terry Silverlight)
Barry Miles

Chico Hamilton and His Sextet

Arthur Blythe
Walt Conley, Jr.
Rodney Jones Singer III
Abdullah
Steve Turre
Chico Hamilton

Your Host: Les Davis

Silverlight was touring for the Magic Theatre album, which does feature Terry on drums. The tracks were announced, which is why I can give you a setlist for his part of the show. Chico Hamilton was touring for the Peregrinations album, but completely abandoned the vocalizations for this performance. The format of that LP did not get good reviews, but this set is fantastic. It may be that these tracks follow that album somewhat, but I have no way of comparison as the Peregrinations album is long out of print, and has never been reissued on CD. There are also no on-line mp3 song samples to listen to, either. After extensive Googling I gave up on identifying the titles and just assigned jam numbers to them. If you could help with a track list, assuming there is one, it would be great!

Setlist:

End Jam
Intro of Chico Hamilton
Chico Jam 1
Chico Jam 2
Chico Jam 3
Chico Jam 4
Chico Jam 5
Chico Jam 6
Chico's Band Intros
Les Davis
Intro of Barry Miles' Silverlight
Los Viajeros
Silverlight Band Intros
The Battle/I've Touched Your Soul
Big A/Les Davis' closing remarks

Technical notes: Extensive restoration of the left channel was required. The volume and noise varied a lot, which may have originated at the mixing desk during the broadcast. I did the best I could with it, but there is still some hiss in spots. No EQ was performed.

Lineage: BASF reel -> Sound Forge -> Left channel volume up (differing amounts in differing locations) ->Noise reduction left channel only (12-20db depending upon location) ->Track Splitup ->Flac extraction using Flac Frontend, Level 8, sectors aligned and verified.

mp3 samples are in the comments section, give it a listen!

Enjoy!

A DoinkerTape