Taj Mahal
Fillmore West
27-29 November 1969
San Francisco, CA
VG audience recording

Lineage: audience master > wav > flac

Mastering: None, essentially. Recordings were indexed on sector boundaries. Start and end of
each part (and the two tape side changes) were faded in and out over several hundred samples
or so, not enough to really notice but just to avoid digital clicks from sudden starts and stops.

Track listing:

Disc 1 / Part 1 (49:09):

01. Unknown (instrumental) 5:56
02. Divin' Duck Blues 2:27
03. E Z Rider 3:27
04. Going up to the Country and Paint My Mailbox Blue 3:22
05. Six Days on the Road 2:58
06. You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond 4:39
07. The Cuckoo 7:36
08. Statesboro Blues 2:39
09. Ain't That a Lot of Love 3:48
10. unknown [start cut, tape side change] 1:05
11. She Caught the Katy (and Left Me a Mule to Ride) 3:28

Disc 2 / Part 2 (55:29):

01. I Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Steal My Jellyroll 3:13
02. Done Changed My Way of Living 6:07
03. Take a Giant Step 4:24
04. Checkin' up on My Baby 5:19
05. Farther on down the Road 6:14
06. unknown shuffle [start cut, tape side change] 2:17
07. You Don't Love Me 4:03
08. Keep Your Hands off Her 2:29
09. Bacon Fat 6:55
10. Corinna 7:32

The above timings are song timings, not CD track timings.

I'll be referring to the other recording on these two reels of The Kinks, previously
posted on Dime although it's dead last time i checked:

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=295687

The Taj recording is likely from the same night as the Kinks recording; the two were taped
by the same taper on the same reels. Here are some notes and background:

Some years ago i received a box of master reels to transfer, all recorded in the S.F. area
in 1969 and 1970, and including a variety of artists. I think most of these are in
circulation, how widely i don't know. They were all recorded by the same taper, and these
were the original reels. Most were 5-inch spools but a few of the earliest recordings were
on 3.25-inch spools. The taper re-used tapes frequently, often recording over older shows.
Sometimes recordings were made on both sides of the tape (mono, although recorded on both
channels) and later a single channel of each side was re-used for a new one-channel recording.
Tape box and reel labels often referred to older recordings that no longer existed, and even
the accurate listings often gave no dates or venues. So there's uncertainty for many of these
regarding exact date/venue.

This Taj Mahal recording shares tape with The Kinks show mentioned above. It is in two parts,
one on each tape, just as the Kinks recording is. Here is how the parts lay out on the tapes:

tape 1 side 1: Taj part 1 (minus last two songs)
tape 1 side 2: Taj part 1 (last two songs) + Kinks part 1

tape 2 side 1: Kinks part 2 + Taj part 2 (first half)
tape 2 side 2: Taj part 2 (second half)

It's interesting that there is no incompleteness where one band ends and the other begins.
Usually when there was a tape-over, the newer recording ends and we pick up in the middle of
the previous recording, usually in the middle of a song. But where the Kinks part 2 ends on
tape 2, the Taj recording picks up as if it followed the Kinks performance.

Bill Graham was sometimes creative in the format of his shows; sometimes one headliner would perform,
then the other one, then the first one again. Perhaps it's possible that this night had Taj, then the Kinks,
then Taj again. There are no songs in common between the two parts, also indicating they may come from the
same night. But some other possibility could be the right one, including that the second part is from
an unrelated, different show. The second part has more distant vocals, thus if it is from the same
night, the taper must have changed location before recording the second part.

I'm not a tremendously dedicated Taj Mahal fan, so there are several song i can't ID. If anyone
can add these song titles i'd be grateful.