Suzanne Vega
Royal Albert Hall
London, UK
November 17, 1986
Bonus Tracks: Songs not released on video from the 18th

Transfer: .wav file > Peak Proc 6 (pitch adjusted) > iZotope RX / ozone 5 (mastered) > Peak Pro 6 (post production) > xACT 2.39 > FLAC

NOVEMBER 17th
01 Some Journey
02 Small Blue Thing
03 Undertow
04 Luka
05 Language
06 Cracking
07 In The Eye
08 The Queen And The Soldier
09 Gypsy
10 Calypso
11 Straight Lines
12 Marlene On The Wall
13 Left Of Center
14 Neighborhood Girls
15 Knight Moves
16 Tom�s Diner
17 Black Widow Station
UNRELEASED BONUS TRACKS
NOVEMBER 18th
18 Undertow
19 In The Eye
20 The Queen And The Soldier
21 Gypsy
22 Calypso
23 Knight Moves
24 Black Widow Station

Known Faults:
-Calypso (November 18th): splice

In 1986 Suzanne Vega's career had taken off, she was on a European tour and played back to back nights at the Royal Albert Hall. She mentions how surreal it had been to her in a 2010 interview saying �I remember playing the Royal Albert Hall for two nights in 1986, and that was stunning; two years before that I�d been a receptionist answering telephones.�

Her debut LP had done very well in the UK and was on her way to becoming a star. The second of the two nights was video taped which 40 minutes were eventually released (frustratingly they did not release the entire performance).

The bulk of this share is a complete audience recording of the, imho, superior first night. Suzanne sounds much more relaxed and confident. The audience clearly loves her and this dynamic makes for an outstanding performance. By comparison she seems more tentative on the second night. One confirmation the released performance is from the 18th is when on the 17th Suzanne's messes up the lines to "Small Blue Thing" singing "Like a marble or an eye" a second time in place of "Made of China, Made of glass".

Both raw transfers that landed with me were pretty rough, the first night had practically no low end and ran 20 cents slow. After pitch adjusting it, I restored much of the low end and tweaked the mid-range, it's quite a nice listen now...samples provided.

The 18th was even worse, first off, it ran a massive 190 cents slow, in addition it was an extremely low end recording buried under a mountain of hiss. After pitch adjusting it, I went about cleaning it up and though it still containing a modicum of hiss I find it now tolerable without too much annoyance.

I was extremely happy to finally land these two shows and I hope you get just as much pleasure out of them as I got out of working on them.

Thanks to my old trading compadre MR for the files, artwork included...

mjk5510


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