Neil Young & Crazy Horse
February 7, 1984 late show (1984-02-07)
The Catalyst
Santa Cruz, California
House soundboard feed > Sony TC-D5M > Dolby B encoded TDK MA 90 (metal tape) cassette master.
Transfer: (grner1 - 2022-08-10]: Nakamichi Dragon (Dolby B decoded > Sound Devices MixPre-6 II @ 32bit (float) / 96kHz > Pro Tools (normalize, minor seamless fixes, tracking on sector boundaries and down-sampling - no EQ or DNR) > WAV files > xACT (tagged Flac level 8 files). This is being shared as both 16/44.1 and 24/96 file sets.
01 Rock 4:20
02 talk 0:13
03 So Tired 3:32
04 Violent Side 6:21
05 I Got A Problem 3:22
06 band intros 0:40
07 Stand By Me 4:17
08 Your Love 3:53
09 talk 0:53
10 Powderfinger (false start) 0:24
11 talk 0:46
12 Powderfinger 5:23
13 Barstool Blues 4:17
14 Welfare Mothers 5:00
15 Touch The Night 11:51
16 Tonight's The Night 8:56
17 encore break 0:37
18 Cortez The Killer 7:46
19 [cuts in near beginning] Cinnamon Girl 3:26
total time - 75:57
Neil Young, Ben Keith, Frank Sampedro, Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina
Notes: I think that the four 1984 Catalyst shows were the only live appearances of this Crazy Horse configuration with Ben Keith added on sax. This was during a short period when longtime Catalyst monitor sound man Roger Buffalo was working at the house soundboard. With his help we ran a long cable along some fairly exposed spots from where the board was located, across the main balcony stairway and up a white wall to our spot. At any moment one Neil's guys might have wondered, "what's this"? But they didn't. That setup was used for a few more shows before being abandoned as too risky. We just couldn't leave a line permanently duct taped across those high traffic stairs. Three decks were plugged into this feed, with this cassette being the first in line. The recordings spread far and wide quickly, but these new transfers fix numerous dropout issues.
Neil's sound crew also recorded, but accidentally forgot to record one of the shows. Five or ten years later I was contacted by a local friend who knew of my recordings and was friends with Neil's guys. I agreed to loan them the master of the show that they had not recorded and actually managed to get my master back. Dimer musigny23 had recorded audience masters of these shows and his 4 audience masters were also given to them. He unfortunately never got his masters back, though Dat copies survived. Neil's people were going to try to synch up the soundboard and audience masters, but apparently musigny23's deck had speed issues that prevented them from being able to do it. (Nowadays those issues could certainly be dealt with.)
Many thanks to all who helped to make this happen, but especially Randall Kane, the now deceased owner of the Catalyst, for supporting the music there for so long. You can imagine the hysteria of having Neil appear with very little notice at a club of this size! Here’s a link to the trailer for a documentary about the Catalyst that was released in 2010 that includes an interview bit with Randall and gives a some idea of what it was like at The Catalyst back in those days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Y_ZmcdhO0
Please support the artists and live venues any way that you can. Enjoy and SHARE!
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