Chick Corea and John McLaughlin Duet
The Blue Note
New York City, NY
2016-12-07
Set 1

Source-audience WAV capture on Roland Edirol R-05 (internal mics)> EAC> Audacity> TLH> DIME

Chick Corea- piano
John McLaughlin-electric guitar

01- Chick Corea and John McLaughlin Opening remarks 2:45
02-My Romance 7:22
03-JM remarks 1:19
04-Bemsha Swing 5:48
05-JM again 0:45
06-A Lotus on Irish Streams 8:37
06-Chick and John speak again 1:40
07-Round Midnight 9:03
08 More stage talk from both 2:20
09-Waltz for Debby 10:59
10-Blue Monk 9:37
11-Chick speaks 1:11
12-Solar 8:13
13-Happy Birthday and Gayle introduction 2:46
14-Someday My Prince Will Come (with Gayle Moran Corea) 8:31

8 years ago I was lucky enough to "gain entry" to the Blue Note to see, and record, this momentous pairing of 2 of my absolute musical heroes from the time I was cutting my own musical teeth in the early 70's fusion heyday. I'd seen them on the Five Peace Band tour a few years earlier than this, and I knew they'd played duo before at Montreux, but this would be a great chance to see them in this kind of intimate setting.
I'd shared this here shortly after the show, and someone else reseeded that share a few years after that. I'm bringing this back again now, and offering it as a bit of an upgrade due to improved tracking and sonics achieved through tools in Audacity. That said, it's still going to have imperfect sound (John didn't have a great guitar sound on his electric that night), and the closely packed audience was eating, drinking, and being merry throughout. A little of that was trimmed out in a few "dead air" spots, but you'll still get a sense of cutlery clinking, wait staff earning their tips, and the effects o "another martini". The applause and a few of the louder whoops have been toned down now from how they'd been in the earlier shares of the show. There's also still about a cumulative 14 minutes of stage talk from Chick and John. They definitely were buddies who shared a lot of history (and each of them had been Gayle Moran's boss on the bandstand!). I didn't trim any of that because it really captured the laid back atmosphere of how this show went down.
A few of my notes from the first share are pasted in below:

"Historic. What else can you say. Not too many times that these 2 icons play together publicly in this duo format. Here they were to mark Chick's 75th birthday.
This was a one night event (2 sets-so if anyone got set 2, please share it!) before 4 nights of RTF meets Mahavishnu with presumably more electric keys from Chick and a rhythm section of Victor Wooten and Lenny White (Lenny was seated nearby at this show).Same sharing request goes out to anyone with a recording of these 4 nights.
These guys obviously have an amazing amount of regard and affection for each other and, as previously mentioned, a shared history. Therefore, the emphasis here was on fun and creation. You'll hear Chick say "Welcome to our living room.", and that was the feeling. The audience were guests at a private jam between 2 amazing artists."

The samples below will give a good sense of what to expect here. Enjoy, and too bad no official releases from these many 2016 nights celebrating Chick from the Blue Note have yet come across to us.