The Decemberists


HMV Institute
Digbeth
Birmingham
UK


Monday 7th March 2011



SP-CMC-8 cardiods > SP-SPSB-11 (no bass roll off) > Roland R-05 (wav, 24bit/44.1k)
master wav > Audacity (see notes below + normalize, fades) > CDWave (tracking) > TLH (FLAC, checksum)



01 intro tape
02 Leslie Anne Levine
03 Calamity Song
04 Rox In The Box
05 Rise To Me
06 The Bagman's Gambit
07 The Engine Driver
08 Won't Want For Love (Margaret In The Taiga)
09 The Crane Wife 1 & 2
10 The Crane Wife 3
11 Annan Water
12 All Arise
13 Down By The Water
14 This Is Why We Fight
15 Sixteen Military Wives
16 crowd
17 Dirty Old Town
18 Don't Carry It All
19 The Mariner's Revenge Song set-up
20 The Mariner's Revenge Song
21 crowd
22 June Hymn




Last time I saw The Decemberists was their last Birmingham show, in 2004. They played to about 30 people on a cold, wet Sunday in October.
Last night couldn't have been more different - much bigger venue, pretty much sold out, great atmosphere, band and audience obviously thoroughly enjoying themselves.



Recording notes:
In the interests of full disclosure, I've included these notes. Over the course of a nearly-two-hour show, these issues don't intrude too much. I'm writing this whilst playing the show back on headphones and thinking 'this has come out pretty well'.

The mics weren't connected into the battery box properly for the first 30 seconds. Thankfully this was only the intro tape. This section is RC-only. I've cloned the RC into the LC. There's a very quiet click and then the sound explodes into glorious stereo ;-)

There were a couple of chatty couples stood just to my left. They had a very loud chat at the start of The Bagman's Gambit. The floor was packed and it was pretty much impossible to move without pissing off numerous other people.

Recorded from the venue floor, central, about 10 rows from the stage. I could probably have done with being a few rows closer. Still trying to find the best spot for taping in this venue. The crowd were generally very quiet during songs, but the applause sections are loud, as are the audience participation sections later in the show. I've used Audacity's limiting and envelope tools on the audience sections.



auto_pilot
March 2011