Jonathan Wilson
2014-04-04
Bi Nuu
Berlin

Sound Professionals SP-CMC 8 Cardioid > Sony RH 1 > Hi-MD (PCM mode) > Sonic Stage > wav > Audacity1.3 (level adjustments, trackmarking, some limiter for close applause) > TLH > flac 8

recorded 4 meters from stage, right of center

TRT: 126:55 min

01. intro
02. Fanfare
03. > Illumination
04. Fazon
05. Desert Raven
06. Dear Friend
07. Can We Really Party Tonight?
08. Magic Everywhere
09. Natural Rhapsody
10. Angel (Bob Welch / Fleetwood Mac)
11. Future Vision
12. Moses Pain
13. Valley Of The Silver Moon

- encore
14. encore intro
15. Out On The Weekend (Neil Young)
16. Trials Of Jonathan

Jonathan Wilson - vocals, guitars
Jason Borger - keyboards, 12-string guitar
Omar Velasco - guitars, keyboards
Richard Gowen - drums
Dan Horne - bass

w/ Conor Oberst - vocals tr. 15

What is this? Postmodern-psychedelic-hippie-folk-rock? Sounds strangely out of time, more like the 70s.
I'd never listened to Jonathan Wilson or seen him live, it was more a byproduct of beeing away from home and looking for something to do - but I must have been the only one in the audience so ignorant - the club was full, a generation spanning mixture of males in their 50's and females in their 20's.
2 - 3 guitars, incl. 12-string, lots of keyboards, drum and bass, lots of slide and no fear of guitar soloing or orgies of feedback, neither of long songs with a slow buildup and a proper, drawn out ending, rarely less then 5, rather up to 12 minutes - a timetrip, yet not a boring one, always some little details and variations to discover.
I was absolutely happy with the show and it turned into something even more memorable when he asked Conor Oberst on stage for the first song of the encore and they did an "Out On The Weekend" cover. Looks like Jonathan Wilson is the producer of Conor Oberst forthcoming Album.

The club was full, but the audience very well behaved, only a little chatter during the quiet parts (of which there were not too many), the sound system decent, the music rather loud, so I had good recording condicions. Had the levels rather low, 'cos the opening band had been loud already, after lowering a couple of spikes I raised the levels afterwards by 4 dB.
The show was a little too long for the md, ran out about one minute into the intro of the last song, saved and changed the md as fast as possible, but about one minute of the instrumental intro to Valley was lost, hardly noticable, 'cos it was instrumental and mostly feedback, so I joined the 2 parts by a crossfade.

All in all the recording sounds very nice.