FRANK ZAPPA and the MOTHERS
Civic Auditorium
Santa Monica, California
August 21, 1970


A First Generation Tape Transfer and Restoration
Some distortion in the loudest sections
Classic TMoQ mono audience recording

Caveat:
Reduced bandwidth from DAT tape recorded at Long Play speed (32 KHz sample rate has a max. freq of 16 KHz)


RECORDED FROM ORCHESTRA SECTION D, ROW 2, SEAT 17
(the ticket stubs were in the R2R box)

SOURCE:
Sennheiser 805 shotgun microphone > Uher 4000 1/2 Track 1/4" x 5" Diameter R2R @ 7 1/2 ips

MY COPY:
Tandberg 9000 > Teac AN-180 > Revox B77

DAT TRANSFER:
Revox B77 > Teac AN-60 > Phase Linear 1000 > Sony DTC 690 @ LP

HARD DRIVE TRANSFER:
Sony DTC-690 > Audigy 4 (via Toslink) > Audacity (conversion to 16/44 and extensive editing) >
CD Wav > Flac (Level 8) > Stamp ID 3 tag editor




DISC 1-
1. Frank Welcomes the Crowd and Introduces the Show
2. Agon
3. Call Any Vegetable
4. A Pound for a Brown on the Bus >
5. Sharlena (tape flip)
6. The Air >
7. Dog Breath (in the Year of the Plague) >
8. Mother People >
9. You Didn't Try to Call Me >
10. King Kong (tape flip)
[42:27]

DISC 2-
01. Frank discusses the concept of 200 Motels
02. Road Ladies
03. Introduction >
04. What Will This Morning Bring Me This Evening >
05. Go to the Club or the Bar (exact title unknown)
06. What Kind Of Girl Do You Think We Are? >
07. Bwana Dik Deluxe >
08. Latex Solar Beef >
09. Daddy Daddy Daddy > (repaired volume dip in middle of song makes noise floor rise for a short bit)
10. Do You Like My New Car? > (tape flip)
11. Happy Together >
12. What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning?
13. Would You Go All The Way
14. Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink (featuring Mark Volman on guitar)
encore:
15. tune up and Frank chats With the crowd
16. Wino Man >
17. Concentration Moon >
18. Mom and Dad (tape flip)
[48:44]

concert [91:11]

Frank Zappa-guitar & vocals
Howard Kaylan-vocals
Mark Volman-vocals & guitar
Ian Underwood-sax, keyboards & clarinet
Don Preston-Mini-Moog
Jim Pons-bass
Aynsley Dunbar-drums



This is another Trade Mark of Quality (TMoQ) classic early 70's recording.
I originally copied the 5" diameter master reels from a Tandberg to my Revox B77 in 1986.
From the Revox copy I transferred to a DAT in the 1990's and the first generation reels were tossed out.
A bad move but my tape had so many dropouts and the tape was deteriorating and it seemed worthless.
I never thought that I would have the only first generation copy around.

Restoration process:

The first task was to review and fix the original splices of the tape flips, which occur about every 22 minutes (5'' tape at 7 1/2 ips).
The bigger technical challenge was cleaning up the dropouts from the master tapes, my reel copy and the DAT copy.
A lot of time was spent removing and smoothing out the hundreds of the micro-gaps, flatspots, ticks, pops and volume fluctuations found on this tape.
The worst sections were during the first few minutes of each disc (beginning of each master tape reel) and again from "Mom and Dad" to the end (the third reel).
This cleanup has removed the majority of the audio disturbances found on the master tapes.

During "Daddy Daddy Daddy" the volume of the master tape dropped and this was brought back to the correct levels during the editing.
The noise floor rises considerably during this section and is found between 1:17 and 1:27 of disc 2 track 9.

I originally made this without any filters and the bass was so heavy it was hard to listen to.
Normally I avoid using any digital sound shaping like the plague but this time it really helped out.

An equalization of -7dB below 400 Hz was applied to remove the muddy booming (and it is still a bit bass heavy).
Next the louder passages were distorted so to reduce the harshness the max volume was reduced using a very light compression.
The overall amplitude was then raised by 4dB to compensate.
These changes improved the sound quality but increased the background hiss levels.
So finally a very light (15%) inverting noise filter was applied to reduce this hiss a little bit (I really hate noise reduction but this worked).
Care was taken not to apply any noise cancellation to the low frequencies thus avoiding any metallic or hollow sound and leaving a mild layer of hiss on the recording.

If these post production actions are unacceptable zappateers has a version without these sonic modifications.
My feeling is that this torrent is easier on your ears than the version there but that is up to you to decide.

As a note.
This comes from a copy of the actual masters (3 - 5" diameter reel to reel tapes) and is the complete concert (minus tape flip loss).
Relegated to the dark corners of my collection due to the technical issues this recording is now cleaned up and worthy to be shared.
Still not perfect but this recording sounds so much better now.
Hope you all enjoy this restoration of a precious historical document.

For historical reference only and not intended for resale or any commercial use.
Enjoy
-M- 5/2010

(July 2013 Rev A - additional cleaning of remaining glitches, tags added, text page and cover updated, new MD5 created because of the tagging of files with song info)
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