Gentle Giant
Derek Shulman- vocals
Gary Green- guitar
Kerry Minear- keyboards
Ray Shulman- bass
John T. Weathers- drums
Agora, Cleveland, Ohio U.S.A.
May 13, 1980
runtime: 73:45
setlist:
1: convenience
2: all through the night
3: free hand
4: memories
5: the advent of panurge
6: giant for a day >
7: inside out
8: it's not imagination
9: underground > drums
10: band introductions
11: encore 1: for nobody
12: encore 2: number one
source: master audience tape
Performance quality: B
Recording quality: B/B- (some tape noise, or maybe stage noise.
There were some sound problems at this concert.)
lineage: unknown deck and mikes >
(nothing great but not too bad either)
Maxell XLI cassette master >
(I think Dolby B was on, but I don't know for sure because this
master tape was given to me in a trade.)
soundforge 4.5 > FLAC > torrent.
That, my friends, is what I call a 3 step torrent from me to you.
comments:
The levels in part of it were a bit low, but that's all fixed now. It's
all evened out as it should be, but there is a little bit of background
noise (could be tape hiss, probably P.A. noise, the sound at this show
did not seem to be as good as usual for a GG show. Could just be that
the acoustics in the Agora are lousy or taper didn't have a real good
seat at the concert.) It's not overbearing by any means. Just doesn't
have quite the usual master recording fidelity but I suspect due to
cheesiness of the mike or deck or the use of Dolby which sometimes helps,
more often ruins, a good recording. Thanks much to Russ in Ohio
for the recording. He did a good job not shuffling around and getting
the recording we have here. Now that it's been remastered for CD I'll
be listening to it more often too. I hope he can hear it now. It does
sound alot better now than it did straight from the master, but I can
see why he would want to trade it for the Boston 1980 GG 1st show I
have, which is considerably better sounding (already posted).
This is almost the full Cleveland 1980 show at the Agora. It's
missing the first minute or so (maybe less), of Convenience. This show
lacks the almost inevitable transition from Convenience > All through
the night due to feedback problems onstage. I actually got the master
tape of this in a trade for a copy of my Boston 1980 1st show. (That
was my 1st Gentle Giant torrent), That doesn't happen every day,
especially with a Gentle Giant master! He was happy with the exchange,
I'll bet the Boston one is more to his liking in performance and sound.
I think they only did one show in Cleve. This is for those of you who
can't get enough of them. It's actually a fairly decent recording, he
flipped the tape just after Inside Out, the logical place to do it on
this tour. There were some feedback problems in the 1st song (sound
problems, not recording problems) but it gets better after that. A
standard length GG set, and this source of it almost certainly has not
been torrented before from master, if at all. It hasn't been circulated
much, even on cassette. It's an enjoyable show too, seems to get better
as they get the sound together. I've never seen GG in Cleveland but
I'm told they've enjoyed playing there. (A couple of earlier GG Cleve
shows from 75 and 77 were seeded recently on dime by another source
and both sounded like pretty good shows). I like any Gentle Giant show
that's at least a decent quality recording, and if you feel similarly,
you'll like this too. I've heard at least 50 of them, and many vastly
inferior quality to this one. This guy liked to use Dolby, I'm not sure
if he did on this recording or not (particularly if his deck had Dolby,
he was probably the one to talk me into using it for the Boston show
which was 9 days after this one.) but I copied it without using any
Dolby and did not use any noise recuction. I boosted the highs and low
end by 1db, seemed to help a little bit, but no other processing except
normalization and DC offset was used to make this file.
Do not sell this recording.
Trade freely and losslessly.