Jeffrey Frederick & The Clamtones
Steve Weber & The Holy Modal Rounders
December 16, 1977 (1977-12-16)
Mountain Charley's
Los Gatos, California, USA

EX matrix mix from 1 channel soundboard and 1 channel AKG D1000 microphone reel master.
These recordings were shared here circa 2005 in their original unmixed form. This new 2018 version is a very much improved matrix mix. Many minor problem spots were smoothed over seamlessly and the tracking and titles have been improved with FLAC tags now added too.

There's a story that goes with this series of four shows from the San Francisco Bay Area in December, 1977. I did not own a working portable recorder when this show happened but I REALLY wanted to get a recording so I packed my very heavy Tandberg reel deck in my car trunk (for the record, the car was a 1963 Rambler Classic) to this storefront club on Haight Street in San Francisco, arrived during the afternoon soundcheck and politely asked if I could tape. The venue's sound guy directed me to bass player, road manager and defacto soundman Dave Riesch. He gave me permission to record, but did complain that they had allowed a lot of recordings over the years but never seemed to ever get copies later from anybody. I assured him that I would give him copies, though I had no idea of how long it would take to get them to him in a good enough version. To best assure that I got a full mix, I did one channel soundboard with the other channel a microphone. The tape did come out very well except that there was a very noticeable time delay between the two channels because the microphone was back at the front of house soundboard rather than close to the stage. Anyway, I became friends with them all throughout that long evening and Dave was nice enough to offer to put me on the guest list for three more nights later that same week at another small club, Mountain Charley's in Los Gatos with similar taping privileges.

I did not have any available time alignment capabilities during those pre-digital years other than running one channel through a second recorder to get the 2 channels better time-aligned and did not do any analog remixing either. It was just hard pans of each mix in the separate channels. I didn't do anything more with these recordings until the digital age when I saw Dave Reisch many years later (in 1998 when he came to my area backing Michael Hurley). I got his contact info and soon after that finally sent him digitally time-aligned but still un-remixed recordings of the shows. A few years after that I saw Dave again backing the Holy Modal Rounders on their 2001 "Bound To Lose" tour. He told me how much he loved these recordings because they included quite a few songs that he had completely forgotten about and was now doing again with his current band (The Freak Brothers). So then fast forward another 10 years and I finally made a new attempt to remix, retrack and better title all four shows. I had them all done except for the info files a couple of years ago so I called up Dave Reisch on the same phone number that I had from circa 2000 and he answered! I sent him the new version. It's taken another year for me to call him back again but I finally did. He said that hardly any recordings from that era sound any good but these are the exception. He had no song title corrections and had no problems with me sharing them here, although he was quick to say that he didn't have the rights to any of it. Anyway some of the song titles were "my best guesses" so any additional corrections will be much appreciated! (grner1 - www.dimeadozen.org - 2018-01-01)

CD1 - 77:25 - Jeffrey Frederick & The Clamtones:
101 [06:15] Oh Me Oh My
102 [06:14] Polar Cave Blues
103 [04:43] Debbie Delight (Sugar In, Sugar On the Rim)
104 [06:02] Toilet
105 [03:58] Baltimore
106 [00:32] talk
107 [04:26] What Made My Hamburger Disappear?
108 [04:24] Up She Jump
109 [04:55] Mind Your Own Business
110 [07:54] Poor Otto
111 [03:02] Griselda [lead vocal low in mix] >
112 [04:06] You're Gonna Look Like A Monkey
113 [05:09] Beer Shits
114 [05:42] Release Me
115 [00:32] talk
116 [04:13] The Slurf Song >
117 [05:01] Robbin' Banks
118 [00:17] talk and applause at end of Clamtones set


CD2 - 57:35 - The Holy Modal Rounders part 1 of 2:
201 [00:55] talk
202 [04:32] Black Bottom Blues
203 [00:34] talk
204 [03:46] I've Had It
205 [01:01] talk
206 [05:39] Year of Jubilo
207 [01:02] talk
208 [05:35] Blues In The Bottle
209 [01:22] talk
210 [05:21] City Blues
211 [04:47] Ringer - Stinger [lead vocal low in mix]
212 [07:18] Snappy Pussy
213 [00:59] talk
214 [06:08] The Belly I Idolize
215 [03:48] TV Song
216 [04:26] Sea Of Love
217 [00:22] talk

CD3 - 40:34 - The Holy Modal Rounders part 2 of 2:
301 [06:35] Pink Underwear
302 [00:34] talk
303 [06:16] CIA Man
304 [00:28] talk
305 [10:07] Euphoria > encore break

Jeffrey Frederick & The Clamtones encores:
306 [05:58] Jackknife / The Red Newt
307 [06:40] Let Me Down
308 [03:47] When The Lord Come To Gather Me (Come Gather Me)
309 [00:09] final thanks and applause

Jeff Frederick - guitar, vocals (Clamtones tracks only)
Jill Gross - vocals (Clamtones tracks only)
Steve Weber - guitar, vocals (Holy Modal Rounders tracks only)
Robin Remailly - fiddle, mandolin, guitar, vocals
David Reisch - bass, vocals
Ted Deane - sax, flute
Roger North - drums
Richard Tyler - piano

Lineage: 1 channel Sbd + 1 channel AKG D1000 microphone > Maxell UD 35-90 reel > Tandberg 9241XD (3.75 ips, Dolby B encoded)
Transfer: Tandberg 9241XD (3.75 ips, Dolby B decoded) > Macintosh with Digidesign Audiomedia III sound card > Pro Tools (time alignment, matrix mix, minor "nip & tuck" edits, normalization & tracking - no DNR or EQ) > AIFF > Xact (Flac level 8 files, tagged with sector boundaries verified).
Enjoy and SHARE!