Alex Chilton
NYC, NY; USA
Gerde's Folk City
3 September 1985
[mono audience recording; total running time: 01:23:36]

cassette side A (43:00):
001 Margie [songwriters: Con Conrad; Benny Davis; J. Russell Robinson; performed by: Eddie Cantor; Fats Domino; Cab Calloway; Jim Reeves] (2:44)
[edit here - from original tape transfer]
002 Nobody's Fool (3:34)
003 Calm Down (4:14)
004 B-A-B-Y (3:03)
[edit here - from original tape transfer]
005 Fraulein [Bobby Helms] (3:30)
006 comments (0:38)
007 Honkin' Down The Highway [Brian Wilson] (3:42)
008 comments (0:12)
009 Motel Blues [Loudon Wainwright III] (2:47)
[edit here - from original tape transfer]
010 comments (0:37)
011 Let Me Get Close To You (2:53)
012 Guitar Polka [Al Dexter and His Troppers; 1946] (1:28)
[edit here - from original tape transfer]
013 Save Our Love For Me [Buddy Johnson] (5:11)
[edit here - from original tape transfer]
014 comments (0:26)
015 Disco Lady [Johnnie Taylor] (5:34)
016 Bangkok (2:20)

cassette side B (40:50):
017 In The Street (2:56)
018 comments - tuning (2:40)
[edit here - from original tape transfer]
019 comments (0:32)
020 Rock Hard (3:26)
021 Thank You John [Wilson Turbinton aka Willie Tee; 1965] (3:41)
022 I Can't Seem To Make You Mine (3:46)
023 Chicken Ain't Nothin' But A Bird [Furry Lewis] (2:03)
024 Lost My Job (3:26)
025 Paradise (2:27)
026 I'm Gonna Make You Mine [Lou Christie] false start (0:47)
027 I'm Gonna Make You Mine [Lou Christie] (5:16)
[edit here - from original tape transfer]
028 Solar System [Beach Boys] (3:16)
029 The Look Of Love [Burt Bacharach] (3:21)
030 September Gurls (3:06)

I don't believe I've ever traded out this tape, oddly enough, although it is one of my personal favorites of all the shows I've ever recorded. I had seen Alex earlier that year in Minneapolis, with The Replacements, and we had a couple of chuckles about that show when we bumped into each other again, here at Folk City. He chided me about the tape deck I was using to record this set, and we both kind of figured that it would be whatever it would be.

For reasons I can't figure out, I had written the date as "3.8.85" on the actual cassette; and as "3 September 1985" on the cassette sleeve. One of those dates is certainly correct, and I'm leaning towards September, unless someone can prove that it was August. I've done some pretty exhaustive searching on the internet, and haven't found anything one way or the other - not even so much as a review of the show! Maybe digging through old issues of the Village Voice could turn up something...? At any rate, the same searches have reassured me that none of this material has been officially released in the meantime. I had started working on this cassette a couple of years earlier, but too many other projects got in the way. With Alex's recent unexpected departure this year, I decided to give it some attention, and I hope you'll enjoy hearing it as much as I still do after all these years. 24-bit might seem like overkill, considering the source recording, but I knew I wanted to do some work on the audio, which I fell made it much more listenable. I've included a text file which details what adjustments I've made to this transfer.

I was in between decent stereo cassette recorders when this show happened, and I grabbed the only thing available to record it, which was a table-top mono deck, similar to the RQ-2102 model (which can still be found online pretty easily). Not the optimum situation, but it seemed like that or nothing at the time. I stood in front of the P.A. speaker on the right side of the stage for the entire set, and cradled the deck so the built-in condenser mic was facing the stage. The beginning of the set was plagued with feedback, but somewhere along the way, the sound improved. All said, the recording turned out better than I might have expected, although somewhere over time, I made an un-wise decision to transfer the original to another cassette, converting it to faux-stereo, and adding a bit of EQ in the process. I don't think those changes helped at all, but apparently at the time, I was confident enough with the results that I decided not to keep the original tape. Ouch. For this "re-constructed master" version, I converted the 2-channel transfer back to mono, and applied some very light digital EQ to remove some of the abrasive audio qulaity the 1st-gen copy contained. Although this is far from audiophile quality, I really do believe that this version is a vast improvement over what I started with.

The 16-bit version will follow, after a few folks have completed downloading this version.

I know some people like to make artwork for their collections, but I would like to ask that those kinds of things aren't posted on my uploads, please. I just want to make it clear that I'm into sharing music, but I feel like the whole thing about posting artwork publicly de-values the merits of the music itself, and makes it into something that resembles a bootleg. I can't make anyone agree with me, but I'm asking that people will please respect my request, which will definitely influence how much music I share in the future. If someone wants to make a little sleeve or something for their own personal collection, they can always do that on their own. Anyway, thanks, and please enjoy the music.

This recording is presented courtesy of Sonic Archives.