SHAKTI with JOHN McLAUGHLIN
Recorded live at The Hammersmith Odeon, London: 27 July 1976 (complete set)

From the first of two consecutive evenings at the Hammersmith Odeon, both of which also featured The Billy Cobham-George Duke Band and Weather Report, hence the short running time of the set. Shakti were the second band on stage this night.

Source - Stereo audience recording, from centre front of balcony.
Recorded on Sony TC-152 analogue cassette deck from Sony ECM99 stereo mic.
Original cassettes have since been transferred to 1/4" tape at 15IPS, then to DAT at 48k, then to CD-R (via SADiE hard-disk editor) and finally as a single FLAC file coded with Media Monkey. File Size: 258Mb.

Very little tape-noise and no peak distortion. Slight fuzziness due to HF saturation of the original cassette tape, especially on Track 3. The balance of the band is generally good. There is very little intrusive audience noise other than during very quiet passages.

The recording has been edited over the years (sorry), but no more than a couple of minutes or so of music have been lost.

NOTES
Track 1 fades in, but only on the drone instruments.
There is a fairly major edit (but less than 1 minute of audio lost) near the start of Track 1 to remove the sound of late-comers bargeing past the recording position.
Track 3 fades in to cover the change-of-side on the original cassette recording. I'm unsure how much audio was lost.
Information on the drone players is sketchy. I'm sure Eve McLaughlin was present, but I can't remember where I got the name "Naira" from.

1. Joy
2. Lady L
3. What Need Have I For This? What Need Have I For That? I Am Dancing At The Feet of My Lord, All is Bliss, All is Bliss

Total running time: 49.36

John McLaughlin, guitar
L. Shankar, violin
Zakir Hussain, tabla
T.S. Vinayakaram, ghatam
Eve McLaughlin & Naira, sruti box