HAPPY THE MAN
Stan Whitaker: guitar, lead vocals
Frank Wyatt: keyboards, sax, flute, vocal
Kit Watkins: keyboards, flute
Rick Kennell: bass
Mike Beck: drums, percussion
Wilmington, Delaware (USA)
October 25, 1977
audience recording
runtime: 78:25
tracklist:
1: open book 10:25
2: Stumpy meets the firecracker in Stencil Forest 4:55
3: hidden moods 5:05
4: The moon I sing, Nossuri (songbird of the night) 7:41
5: I forgot to push it 3:49
6: New York dreams suite 9:42
7: knee bitten nymphs in limbo 3:05 (end cuts)
8: ibby it is 8:19
9: Mr. Mirror's reflection on dreams 10:13
10: leave that kitten alone, Armone (fades in) 7:18
11: service with a smile 3:16
12: morning sun 4:32
lineage:
audience recording master tape (unknown deck, mikes and tape) >
? > CD > CD extractor (wav) > flac (sb's checked) > torrentially yours.
a this and that, happy go lucky production.
Do not sell this recording.
Share freely, losslessly and gaplessly.
comments:
one of the band members says that "the people here appreciate sophisticated
music more here than in Duluth or Plattsville". the band seemed to appreciate that,
this was a good show, and the crowd liked it. appears to be close to complete except
that knee bitten NIL is cut, and since the official version is 5:22, this is unfortunately
probably missing about the last 2:30 or so of it. Tracks 1 and 11 fade in,
at start of show and probably at tape flip time, but don't seem to be missing too
much there. Quality is probably a B, may be from the master tape > CD, or possibly
with one analog or CD copy in between. probably recorded on an auto levelling
deck, it is in stereo and all the instruments come through clearly but the between
song talk is either miked very low or not at all and is difficult to hear at times.
not much crowd noise at all during the music, moderately clappy after most songs,
but not enough to ruin the listening experience, or call it a happy go clappy production.
(I thought about that, but this is better than that.) There is some clipping in a few
tracks, probably in the original tape > CD transfer to CD of this recording, but only in
a couple of the tracks and it never gets bad enough to be too noticable. I have balanced
the levels out in all of it so it's a more consistent level and it sounds pretty enjoyable.
I don't know who taped this show, but thank you for taping and to J.D. for kindly sharing
a CD copy of this which was extracted to provide this posting.
sorry about the knee bitten tapecut nymphs in limbo. I don't think they have that one in
their playlist. but the taper did a good job otherwise with this, just didn't flip the
tape accordingly after NYDS (been there, done that.)
tracks 1 and 2 on my CD sound like just 1 song, so I put them together into 1 track here.
this show was when they still had just 1 album out (Happy the Man) but they are performing
music from the second one (Crafty Hands) and apparently not any of what would be their 3rd
album, recorded in Feb. of 1979 but not released until 1983 and thus appropriately titled
"3rd- better late..."