John Prine
3/10/90
Ventura Theater
Ventura, CA

Wonder Deck Cassette Master >CDR >FLAC
XLII Master Transferred Via: Sony TC-D5M->EQ->HHb CDR 800 PRO
CD Master >FLAC (Level 8) Via xACT 2.28. FLAC Tags Via xACT 2.37

Recorded By Rick Williams
Transferred & Tagged By OldNeumanntapr

Disc I:
01. Donald And Lydia
02. Blue Umbrella
03. The Bottomless Lake
04. Spanish Pipedream
05. The Late John Garfield Blues
06. You Got Gold
07. Aimless Love
08. Angel From Montgomery
09. All The Best
10. Souvenirs
11. Grandpa Was A Carpenter
12. Linda Goes To Mars (cuts)

Disc II:
01. The Accident
02. Saddle In The Rain
03. Way Back Then >Sailin' Around
04. Illegal Smile
05. Dear Abby
06. Great Compromise
07. Dancin' On The Wall
08. Sam Stone
09. That's The Way The World Goes 'Round
10. Me Myself And I (cuts)

OldNeumanntapr Notes-
This was another show recorded by my friend Rick Williams. The ‘Wonder Deck’ was a 1975 or 1976 Sears And Roebuck monaural cassette recorder. It was built by Panasonic, and made ‘wonderful’ tapes, for what it was. Rick did not consider himself a taper, but just a fan who wanted a recording with a simple to use recorder. He never traded his shows. They were for his own benefit. The recorder had an auto level control, and would raise the recording levels for the between-song banter all by itself. I tried over the years to get Rick to use better gear but he declined. When the Wonder Deck broke after many years of use he briefly used a Sony WM-D3 and Sony ECM-909 stereo mic but disliked it because of the external mic and the need to manually set the recording level. He now uses an Edirol R-09 with built in mics, but I believe that he sets the recording level manually.

I borrowed a bunch of his cassette masters to transfer a few years ago, and this is one of them. It was recorded up front in the Ventura Theater a couple of years before the new owners changed the name to the ‘Majestic Ventura Theater. The Ventura Theater, built in the early to mid 1920s, has long since had the theater seats removed on the floor and is a dinner theater with three tiers of dinner tables. The sound is much better up front than in the balcony, though I have heard that the balcony has since been closed off after a wall was constructed between the last tier of tables on the floor and the bar area. I think they were trying to improve the acoustics of the front part of the theater. I think the last time I recorded there was for John Prine in 1999. Enjoy the recording. This is all that exists, as there was most likely more of the show that was not recorded when Rick ran out of tape. I used a stand alone EQ during the transfer to correct some frequency response issues.

Do NOT Sell, Do NOT Convert To MP3!