The Mahavishnu Orchestra
Music Hall
Cleveland, OH
4.21.1972
emperor nobody remaster


original torrent notes

According to John McLaughlin, Columbia refused a live release of this show. John McLaughlin himself feels that this show in Cleveland is one of the best that The Mahavishnu Orchestra has ever done. As Irony would have it, Columbia asked their engineer and Gregg Bendian to assist with the release of this live CD. A mix was made and sent for approval to John McLaughlin. No word from Columbia since.

1. introduction
2. Meeting of the Spirits
3. You Know You Know
4. The Dance of Maya
5. The Noonward Race

John McLaughlin - guitar
Jan Hammer - keyboards
Jerry Goodman - violin
Rick Laird - bass
Billy Cobham - drums

The concert billing was:
West, Bruce and Laing
Procol Harum and
The Mahavishnu Orchestra

nobody notes on the remaster

This isn't currently on the tracker and only circulates (as far as I know) from 2 sources, the silver CD bootleg "Wild Strings" (sourced from what sounds like a slightly generated cassette tape) and what sounds like a first-generation DAT from the soundboard master of the mix mentioned in the original notes above. This second, cleaner source unfortunately suffers from a horrifying digital clipping that comes in towards the end of "The Dance of Maya" and continues through to the end of the set, making the second half of this (absolutely face-frying) performance essentially unlistenable.

I grabbed this version from another tracker and set about the arduous process of making the nasty and unfortunate clipping issues go away, and I was fairly successful if I do say so myself. It wasn't really all that hard, given that the bulk of the disastrous noise was in the kick-drum sound, making it easier to isolate and eliminate all the deleterious, nails-on-a-blackboard-in-Hell distorto-crunch. I should also mention that although this commonly circulates as being from the Emerson Gymnasium on the campus of Case Western University, it is indeed from the Music Hall as TMO didn't play Case Western until February of 1973 (and with a more "Birds of Fire"-oriented setlist).

As for the performance, I don't know what to say other than Columbia are, once again, idiots. According to what I read the hang-up with the official release of this came in 2004, when the suits at the label offered the five band members 1972 scale wages (!!!) for their services... what amounted to $250 apiece. So I guess the band politely refused and the thing got shelved forever, another lost diamond left to languish in the greedy vaults of shame because some asshats, deaf to anything but the illusion of profit, can't even show a shred of respect for what a whole lot of people think is THE BEST CONCERT RECORDING ever made of what yet more feel is THE BEST BAND EVER.

I took the time to fix this up and make it sound the best I could because we'll likely never get to hear this on the official release for which it begs, but on balance I think this version sounds pretty damn spiffy so have at it and see what you think... at least we'll get it circulating without mountains of hiss and ear-splitting clipping anyway.

Once again the situation makes but two demands, and those are simply that you groove like you mean it and that you share like you'll die if you don't.

e. nobody
oakland, ca
usa

lineage: FLAC files from another tracker>WAV via Trader's Little Helper>SoundForge 9>FLAC 8, sectors aligned, via TLH>Dime-a-dizzle>you