The Band
Hollywood Bowl
Hollywood, CA
July 10, 1970
Liberated boot "Real Old Time Band"

I recently got some technology that lets me transfer from vinyl to digital, and one of the first disks I tranferred was this one, which happened to be the first boot I bought, over 30 years ago.

Great show that gave me, yet again, a deep appreciation for how good these guys were. Richard Manuel was really the soul of the band, as evidenced on tunes like Rocking Chair. And Robertson contributes some tasty licks, but I still have a hard time forgiving him. Great versions of This Wheel and Don't Do It.

I transferred from the original Rubber Dubber boot with an Ion ITTUSB turntable and Audacity to a wave file. Then I used Blaze Audio's Record Cleaner to take out most of the vinyl artifacts. (In the second sample, you can hear some of the worst of the remaining problems of crackling, but it isn't too bad. Noticeable also in the organ improv before Chest Fever.) Back to Audacity to divide the tracks and save as .wav files, and finally Trader's Little Helper to make the FLAC files.

There are still some features of the boot present, such as fade outs on some songs. The quality is probably B or B- for now, but pretty good for the time it was created. Samples provided below.

I can't find any of these cuts on official releases. Now, here it is for you to enjoy and share.

Tracks
The Shape I'm In
Look Out Cleveland
The Weight
King Harvest
Unfaithful Servant
Jemima Surrender
Rocking Chair
Time To Kill
Organ improv - Chest Fever
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - Across The Great Divide
Up On Cripple Creek
Strawberry Wine
I Shall Be Released
This Wheel's On Fire
Don't Do It