Stevie Ray Vaughan
August 3, 1986
Concord Pavillion, Concord, CA

audience cassette master

1. Scuttle Buttin'
2. Say What
3. Ain't Gonna Give Up On Love
4. Superstition
5. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) [end cut]
6. You'll Be Mine >
7. I'm Leaving You
8. Mary Had A Little Lamb
9. Life Without You
10. Love Struck Baby*
11. Pride And Joy*

TRT 1h19m50s

*Doyle Bramhall, guest on guitar

When I was going thru my cassettes and came across this recording I just couldn't remember anything about the concert. And the writing on the tape wasn't mine. But the tape was labeled 'audience master' and I certainly did favor Denon blank tapes for my recordings for awhile. Eventually I remembered what happened.

My buddy, Zeke, with whom I played music for many years, asked to borrow my recording rig to bring to this show. He copied the recording to VHS HiFi for himself and left me with the masters. Zeke did very little concert recording (I would have started the tape sooner and left it running longer). Bonnie Raitt was the opener for this concert. Most of her set was also recorded.

Stealth audience recording by Zeke Bernstein (aka Bottleneck Slim)
Transferred by Easy Ed (2008 Dec. 15)

AudioTechnica AT853 AT853 (mono two channels) > Sony TCD6C cassette Dolby B on > Denon HD8-90 high bias cassettes

transfer: JVC KD-V6 cassette deck (playback with no Dolby) > Sek'd Prodif Plus > Sound Forge 8 (24 bit, normalize, track splits, bit rate conversion) > export to 16 bit .wav files > FLAC level 8 encoding align on sector boundaries. Not burned to cdr - no EAC.

The end of Voodoo Chile was cut. I did a one second fade to make it less abrupt. So, yes, I have hence deprived the world of one second of SRV - it was a hard choice to make. Other than that not a single second of the original recording has been left out, so don't be suspicious that it conveniently fits on an 80 minute cdr.

Recording with Dolby B boosts high frequencies by 10dB. Playing back with Dolby B cuts high frequencies by 10dB. But Dolby circuits vary from machine to machine and I didn't hear any tape hiss that seemed to need reducing so I transferred this with Dolby off, which resulted in a little extra brightness to the recording, which I deemed acceptable.

Zeke and I at one point formed a musical duo and we wanted a bluesy sounding name so he came up with Bottleneck Slim for himself (he played a 1930's National with a bottleneck) which forced me to come up with something, which is where my name Easy Ed was born (like fat people are nicknamed Slim and bald people are nicknamed Curly). It was always fun when Bottleneck Slim and Easy Ed would play gigs and women would ask "Why are you named Easy?" Zeke was a devoted student of the great slide players. You could play any live Allman Brothers recording and he could name the gig by listening to Duane's playing. He also loved Lowell George and Bonnie Raitt.

Zeke eventually became very ill, almost died, and got to the point where not only could he no longer play but he couldn't even hold a guitar. When he told me he was going to sell his National, I freaked and said "Sell it to me!" and he just gave it to me. It is currently being worked on by my luthier and then I feel honor bound to learn how to play it (and I will study the playing of Duane, Lowell and Bonnie).

In the mid 90's I lend the tapes to Gary Klainer, who made a cdr of the show and returned the masters to me. I don't know what equipment he used. The cd he made only had 10 tracks: Pride and Joy was omitted (it was in the days before 80 minute cdr's). I'm sure he has shared copies with people over the years. This, however, is a fresh transfer direct from the master cassette with detailed lineage.