Electric Light Orchestra
Boston Garden
Boston, Massachusetts
September 27, 1978
"Out of the Blue" Tour

A Balrog audience recording remastered by Balrog and Lestat using the Magic Bullet.*
Audio format: 44.1kHz/16-bit (CD-R burning)

01. Opening
02. Standin' in the Rain
03. Night in the City
04. Turn to Stone
05. Can't Get It Out of My Head
06. Cello Solo (Hugh McDowell)
07. Tightrope
08. Telephone Line
09. Rockaria!
10. Violin Solo (Mik Kaminski)
11. Strange Magic
12. Showdown
13. Mr. Blue Sky
14. Sweet Talkin' Woman
15. Do Ya
16. Livin' Thing
17. Ma-Ma-Ma Belle
18. Roll Over Beethoven
19. Closing

Jeff Lynne
Bev Bevan
Richard Tandy
Kelly Groucett
Mik Kaminski
Hugh McDowell
Melvyn Gale

Recording lineage: Nakamichi CM-100/CP-1 -> Nakamichi 550 -> Maxell UD XL II C90

Transfer lineage: Maxell UD XL II C90 -> Sony WM-D6C -> line level converter -> Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 3rd Gen -> Adobe Audition 3.00 -> WAV 48KHz/24-bit -> Special Processing -> FLAC

* The Magic Bullet is a whimsical name given to a process for improving the sound quality of audience recordings discovered by Balrog after years of research. The process is less precise but much less labor-intensive than the iterative process used by Lestat in the past. Lestat's process still produces finer results but the time and effort saved by the Magic Bullet is significant. Its efficiency has allowed us to remaster and share some old master tapes that otherwise would never have seen the light of day (see Notes at end).

Balrog Notes:

This master tape has been sitting in a drawer for more than 44 years at the time of this writing. It's a good thing that it was recorded on Maxell cassettes. Otherwise, it might be unplayable. It's also a good thing that the WM-D6C can play back tapes made on a Nakamichi 550 with no loss of fidelity.

Why has this concert been waiting so long? The sound system's audio quality was quite disappointing given how much time, effort, and expense must have gone into creating the extraordinary, animated, flying-saucer stage that embodied the cover of Electric Light Orchestra's "Out of the Blue" album. There were no sound system stacks like the ones most artists toured with, only speakers on the stage itself.

The raw recording sounds like most audience tapes made in the old Boston Garden, which had awful acoustics. The only artists I heard who had sound systems good enough to completely overcome the acoustics in that old building were Yes, same year interestingly when they introduced their in-the-round staging with omnidirectional "flying" p.a. system, and Pink Floyd's quadraphonic system.

Why resurrect this recording now? It demonstrates a new remastering technology that's much less labor-intensive than that which Lestat has used in the past. It's made what was a decent recording of a poor sound system in an awful venue into something quite enjoyable. If you have a recording that you think would benefit from this technology, send me (Balrog) a private message.

For those of you who remember the previous BLG projects, I regret to say that Gromek is no longer creating artwork for these recordings. We remain eternally in his debt for the ones he did.

I didn't take photographs at the concert but I've included a news article and some images found on the web. If you search YouTube for "Electric Light Orchestra 1978" you can find some videos that give you an idea of what the show was like.

Hugh McDowell's cello solo ends with "Flight of the Bumblebee," an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Its composition is intended to musically evoke the seemingly chaotic and rapidly changing flying pattern of a bumblebee.

The normal set list for this show included "Evil Woman" between "Sweet Talkin' Woman" and "Do Ya" but for reasons unknown they didn't play it in Boston. There may have been some kind of technical problem because there was a relatively long gap of dead air where "Evil Woman" would have been, which I've closed up.

Do Not Alter or Sell This Recording in Any Form

Lestat and I emphatically curse and condemn anyone who would publicly distribute any altered copy of this torrent and/or make the recording into a commercial bootleg, as has happened to so many of our projects in the past.

Magic Bullet Notes

There are three other Magic Bullet recordings in circulation and more are coming:

Electric Light Orchestra 1978-09-27 Boston Garden (high-resolution)
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=749221

Boston 1978-11-06 Boston Garden
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=752573

Yes 1976-06-10 Providence Civic Center
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=753780
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=753858

Once again: if you have a recording that you think would benefit from this remastering technology, send me (Balrog) a private message.

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

Images for this show:











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