Renaissance
Ebbets Field, Denver, CO
7th August 1974


This is a remaster/restoration of a performance that was broadcast live to air on KBPI FM. The show is from Renaissance’s second year of touring in the US, and the tape appears to document the entire concert.

Many concerts from the Ebbets Field venue were broadcast throughout the mid 70s. This was an initiative of two college friends who had an audio company (ListenUp) and offered to do the live sound in exchange for promotion, all in collaboration with the venue and local radio stations.

Various versions of this show, all from the same source tape, have been circulating. This tape appears to be the only known surviving document of the performance. For an off-air recording, it is entirely clean of FM transmission artefacts such as heavy compression (ubiquitous in the 70s), poor reception fuzz or squelch noise shaping. This leads me to suspect that it is actually a recording of the live feed as it was being sent to air (as the radio announcer’s intro is included) - i.e.; a pre-FM. The dynamics of the drums alone, which pound through at times due to the live nature of the mixing, suggest this as possible.


The Date:

This performance has been listed as either October 1973 or sometime in 1974. The earlier date is incorrect, as there are comprehensive date listings for artists appearing at Ebbets Field during 1973, and Renaissance is not among them. Also the setlist is typical of their 1974 tour, and they announce songs being from their ‘recent’ album Turn of the Cards, which was released in May 1974.

The band toured the US extensively in 1974, from April through to December, possibly in (3?) seperate stints. While there is no definitive date for their appearance at Ebbets Field, there is an advert listing them as ‘coming next’ after Papa John Creech who played Thurs-Sun Aug 1-4, and before Return to Forever who began a run the next week on Thurs 8th (a good week to be in Denver!). As the venue rarely opened Monday, that places Renaissance appearing either Tues 6th or Wed 7th August (possibly both). Concerts were usually broadcast on Fri or Sat, and a midweek show would have been unusual. Setlist.com has them in New Jersey only a week prior, so as they would have had to come more than halfway across the continent, I’m going to guess the 7th as being more likely. Confirming there was no earlier appearance, Jon announces this is the first time they’ve visited Denver, and its taken them year (from when they first toured the US in late 1973).

For the advert, see:
https://queencityjamz.blogspot.com/2019/12/ebbets-field-denver-1974-listings.html


The Sources:

My huge thanks to friend and dedicated Renaissance collector prologueau for his assistance. He sent me 5 copies of this show, acquired over the years:

‘Tomotaka’ - CDR from a Japanese trader in the late 1990s.
‘Dime 2006’ - a version seeded sometime between 2004-2006, with little credited information.
‘gongadee’ - uploaded to dime around 2008, with a lineage of FM > ? > cassette > cassette.
‘metrocubo’ - from his archive (traded CDR/cassette?), also uploaded to dime, around 2010.
‘Open Up Eyes’ - a 2008 boot CDR on the Japanese Blue Cafe label (#194).

After careful comparison, it was evident that both ‘Tomotaka’ and ‘Dime 2006’ were inferior generation copies, both having significant hiss, general instability and a grainy, smudged feel to the audio (all indications of multi-generational tape copies). ‘Tomotaka’ was quite muffled, erratic and had lost detail. ‘Dime 2006’ was brighter, but had some minor tape flutter, and the treble sounded gritty, as though it’d possibly been run through a graphic equaliser.

The remaining three were far better, with ‘gongadee’ being very slightly more stable and transparent. It was also the complete broadcast (with intro music). Surprisingly, ‘Open Up Eyes’ was a decent version, although a little hard sounding and having been denoised with primitive software that gated the treble, muffling the music during the quieter sections - so unsuitable as a remastering source. Although gongadee has scant lineage information, it sounds the lowest generational copy, and hence I’ve chosen it as my source.

As mentioned, all 5 versions derive from the same original source tape. They all had the same cuts to announcers, and a tape flip at exactly 45 mins (very fortunately just on the applause at the end of RH - although that may be an edit made later for copies). They also had identical problems in common: the same dropouts, patches of damaged tape, channel imbalances, and a very prominent hum throughout. This indicates that these issues are either on the master tape, or a low gen copy from which all the others derived. I suspect metrocubo, gongadee and the ‘Open Up Eyes’ source are not far from the master.


Remastering Notes:

• Created master file. All processing done at 32 bit in RX8 adv unless otherwise noted.
• Remove prominent 60Hz hum, plus harmonics. Removed higher harmonic buzzes in quiet sections.
• There were frequent stage microphone feedbacks creating wolf notes in the music. I’ve attenuated many of these during the music, but left them as authentic to the performance during the non-music sections.
• Repaired a 1/3 sec dropout when Annie’s mic was accidentally cut. It is a jarring moment, and easily repaired.
• Weirdly, there were two sections when the waveform of one channel was inverted: for about 2 1/2 minutes during BF, and around the drum intro to TIDU. These were precisely located and the waveform rectified.
• Azimuth was aligned adaptively. It changed incrementally, starting well aligned but becoming nearly 8 samples out by the final song.
• No overall eq was required, the recording was nicely balanced. However the right channel had slightly more hiss and less top end signal than the left, resulting in a stereo image skewed to the left channel. Began by matching the eq of the right channel to the left (shelf starting at 2kHz, and stepping up to +4dB @ 6kHz). Of course, this resulted in additional hiss into the right channel. Using left as a reference, a denoise threshold was set to reshape the noise of the right channel only, thus balancing the hiss levels across both channels. It is still present, but relatively mild I think, and I didn’t want to impact the music any more than necessary. It’s hiss, it’s authentic.
• Repaired several macro dropouts / channel irregularities.
• Repaired micro dropouts where they occurred, plus two patches of ‘bubbling’ from more significant tape damage; in the middle of BF and about a minute into RH. Reduced the stereo spread above 4kHz to feed signal from one channel to cover dropouts in the other (Ozone Imager). As the vocals and drums are panned centre, this filled in the dropouts without noticeably impacting the stereo image.
• Patched the tape flip at end of RH with applause from earlier.
• The bass kick drum in CYU was mixed prominently (on some versions, notably ‘Tomotaka’, it almost sounds like a drum solo with band accompanying). This needed attenuating, achieved using RX8’s Music Rebalance module.
• Adjusted some overall volumes. CiB was particularly quiet relative to other tracks, and was boosted along with John’s piano intro to the following piece (deconstruct: +5dB to tonal information, leaving noise steady. This worked well since there is no percussion during these sections). There were other occasions when the live mix noticeably changed, and these were smoothed out.
• Pitch check accurate to within 5 cents (referencing piano), no adjustment applied.
• Master to -0.6dB, track to flac.


01 - Intro Larry Bruce 0:15
02 - Welcome to Stage and Intro Music 1:54
03 - Can You Understand? 10:34
04 - Intro Jon 0:35
05 - Black Flame 6:38
06 - Intro Annie 0:40
07 - Things I Don't Understand 10.00
08 - Intro Jon 0:31
09 - Cold is Being 3:10
10 - Intro Annie 1:28
11 - Running Hard 9:22
12 - Intro Jon 0:35
13 - Ashes Are Burning 14:51


Annie Haslam - lead vocals
Jon Camp - bass, vocals
John Tout - piano, keyboards
Michael Dunford - guitar
Terence Sullivan - drums


This is a highlight soundboard recording from Renaissance’s golden period in the mid 70s, and, in the absence of any better source appearing, I believe this remaster may now be a definitive version.

This edition: March 2022.

A Hogweeds remaster, in the interests of making the world sound a little nicer. Enjoy.