the (first?) great Central Park fire
Mahavishnu Orchestra
John McLaughlin: guitar
Jan Hammer: keyboards
Jerry Goodman: violin
Rick Laird: bass
Billy Cobham: drums

Central Park
N.Y.C. New York, U.S.A.
August 8, 1972
touring "birds of fire"
unknown gen. audience recording
runtime: 84:25 (minutes/seconds)
setlist:
1: meeting of the spirits > 15:34
2: you know, you know 10:37
3: dream 24:09 (spliced, tape flip)
4: one word 13:33
5: resolution (Jack Bruce) 2:25
6: dawn 15:07 (spliced at 13:07)

lineage:
unknown audience recording >
unknown number of analog tape copies >
maxell xLII 90 minute cassette copy >
played on tascam 112 into soundforge (wav) >
flac (sb's aligned) torrentially yours.
a this and that production.
do not sell this recording.
share freely, losslessly and gaplessly.
this recording was made by a fan for fans
and personal enjoyment only.
not for $ profit.

notes:
this is the same place that Mahavishnu Orch recorded
what is their only officially issued (on LP or CD)
live record, "Between Nothingness and Eternity"
which was recorded just over a year later than this show,
in Aug. of 1973. although this concert does include one
(only one) song (Dream) played in the official record, the
performance here is clearly much more raw and less polished
than the 1973 one when this band's intensity was at its peak.
still, this wasn't exactly a typical garage jam either.
1972 was when this band's inner flame was still mounting, so
here you get 3 songs origially heard on their groundbreaking
fusion classic debut album, "the Inner Mounting Flame".
the recording is of typical early 70's audience quality,
and is pretty enjoyable for this era. there are 2 interruptions in it,
one in "dream" which seems to be almost inevitable with that song,
and the last one, Dawn. the 1st one is almost unnoticable.
the second is a little more so but not much is missing.
since it doesn't seem to be very widely circulated yet,
there probably aren't too many generations in this tape copy,
only a little tape noise. not much at all for a recording this old.
the length suggests this is probably close to a full show.
they were playing some longer shows in 1973,
but most in 1972 were 90 minutes or a little less.
a few were a little longer.
in 1973 many say this group set the standard of what measures
jazz rock fusion music, and in 1972 there was alot of experimenting
along the way to get there. even at this earlier stage,
every show this band played was different than every other,
and every version of each song was different than any other too.
at this point the (original) band had been together close to a year,
and this was not New York's 1st look at the master drummer Billy Cobham,
but it may be the 1st visit to Central Park for the Mahavishnu Orchastra.
since Central Park was one of the hottest showcases for concerts in NYC area
at this time (in temperature and music) and Mahavishnu Orchestra one of the
hottest bands in the world, just starting to get popular around this time,
this was a pretty special engagement for the NY McLaughlin fan population.
New York was one of the 1st places anywhere to get to hear the mahavishnu,
in their earliest days, when their flame was pretty similar to that from a
cigarette lighter, but most of that was in small club gigs.
things had changed considerably from that point by the time of this concert.
it doesn't seem to be a very well circulated one either since a few folks
have been asking, is this recording for real?
I wasn't there, and didn't make it, so I cannot be sure, but I hadn't heard it
before digitizing this tape, and any new Maha show is undiscovered lost audio
scriptures of the bible of fusion music.
looks like a new page has been found.
if you have any still missing pages of the Fusion Music Bible to share
please do. there are still many missing pages.
and every one has something very important to say in it.
and folks will be glad to know, there were no casualties from this fire.
no serious injuries, no firefighter injuries at all, just (probably) a few
of the usual concertgoing incidents, and no burned or damaged buildings or
property. mahavishnu fire burns clean,
and doesn't burn flesh (except that of the mahavishnu orchestra's fingers.)