Blue Öyster Cult
2021-11-04
Belly-Up Tavern, Solana Beach, California, USA
(2:21:56)

1. intro (3:17)
2. Transmaniacon MC (3:44)
3. Before The Kiss, A Redcap (5:54)
4. That Was Me (3:52)
5. Golden Age Of Leather (7:24)
6. Burning For You (5:18)
7. Career Of Evil (4:33)
8. Shooting Shark (10:19)
9. ETI (5:47)
10. Box In My Head (3:57)
11. Train True (5:07)
12. Harvester Of Eyes (4:51)
13. Tainted Blood (4:37)
14. Then Came The Last Days Of May (12:01)
15. Buck's Boogie (9:54)
16. Godzilla (4:30)
17. Buck's Noodle (3:11)
18. (Don't Fear) The Reaper (9:47)
19. The Alchemist (7:21)
20. ME-262 (3:29)
21. I Love The Night (7:36)
22. Astronomy (8:17)
23. Cities On Flame (7:01)

lineage: AUD (by ijwthstd) > SP-CMC-4U mic > Sound Devices A10 > WAV 16/44 > edits by Jerry1970: Audacity (normalisation, limits during applause, EQ, mixing channels, split into tracks) > FLAC 16/44.1 level 8

The source recording was downloaded from the ijwthstd Mystery Drive in a single, untracked and unedited 16/44.1 WAV, as they shared it I think less than 24 hours after the show! I thought this was a good and special show: unusually long, and several songs from the latest album. The sound was a bit boom-y, with the low drowning out the high in cases. I don't know the venue but the in-house venue sound and size of the venue are most likely cause of that. I really wanted to keep this recording and listen to it some more so I decided to do a bit of work on it. A clearer sound, hopefully getting a bit more guitar instead of drums and bass. I got ijwthstd's permission to share this here with you.

The recording had a lot of clipping - recorded or transferred just a little too loud. So normalisation first. Then it took a whlie to find the right settings. It just takes longer to check settings in different sections of the recording when it's so long, of course.

During the last minutes of Reaper and during the second half of Cities On Flame, the left channel needed some amplification to keep a good balance. Maybe the taper moved around a bit? Some elements in the audience were unable to restrain their enthusiasm during the songs. Singing along, not always in tune, shouting, howling, whistling. Good reason to move a bit. I limited a lot of this audience noise between the songs but a few loud claps and shouts during the music.

The balance seemed a bit off, too wide perhaps, and a bit too much on the right channel. I mixed the two channels with 20% of the right go into the left channel. That removed some of the wideness and made it a bit more coherent.

The end result is not perfect. I would have like some more mid-range, but some EQ in that department didn't make the overall sound better, and moving more from one channel into the other would make it nearing mono, so I preferred it this way. It's a matter of taste of course, I can only hope you like what you hear.

The vocals were a bit low in the mix, nothing I could do about that. Fortunately, BÖC are the kind of band that don't rely on the vocals for a good listening experience, at least to me. In some sections it's the second guitar drowning out the lead guitar, which must have been the venue mix as well, so that was also not something I could do anything about. And I could not do anything about Eric's voice... I hope he can hold it until I get one more chance to see them live, but I fear the worst.

Enjoy!
Jerry1970

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: