Jethro Tull,
National Exhibition Centre (NEC),
Birmingham,
UK,
25 September 1989

I originally seeded this show in my early days on dimeadozen, way back in August 2008. This is a rather rare concert, as I couldn't find it on the net before transferring it to digital, and even since then it has been rarely seen. It comes from a bunch of cassette tapes that Cristina, a former tape collector, sent to me. Most of those tapes were later supplanted by better sources, but this show remained the exception. Cristina doesn't remember who sent it to her, but she seems to remember it came directly from the taper. Either way, it is still very low generation. I still have the cassette tapes, but have no means of transferring them anymore. Thankfully, my old rip was decent enough, so I can work on the files that I seeded back then.

This is a pretty good audience recording, in stereo too. The first part is, however, marred by some occasional uneven tape speed here and there. It is mostly tolerable, except for the end of side one of my cassette tape (from the very end of the "Black Satin Dancer" medley to "Jack-A-Lynn"), where it becomes really annoying. It wasn't the physical speed of my cassette tape: back then I tried to rewind it, re-rip it, but the same tape drags happened in the same spot sounding the same, and didn't happen on the other side of the cassette tape. Hence, whatever caused that flaw was introduced a generation earlier. After the tape flip, the problem settles down. The encore is slightly more distorted, possibly because the taper went closer to the stage, but it still sounds pretty good.

This is one of the first dates of the "Rock Island" tour. Although the album itself isn't the most popular around Jethro Tull fans, the tour itself was pretty interesting: the songs generally came out better onstage, the title track and "The Whaler's Dues" in particular. Plus, the setlist featured several rarities: this was the first tour where "Cheap Day Return" and "Mother Goose" were played live, and it also featured the return of "Requiem" (unplayed since 1976), "SeaLion" (first time since 1975) and other cool rarities like "Black Satin Dancer" (complete with the middle section!), "The Pine Marten's Jig" and a short instrumental rundown of "The Third Hoorah" (never played live before) at the end of the show. Add a lot of humour to the mix and you get a fairly good recipe for a good tour, in my opinion! The band's playing is solid throughout, thanks to the powerful rhythm section of Pegg and Perry. However, Martin Barre seems to have had some problems at the end of the concert, causing a couple of hilarious train wrecks on "Kissing Willie" and "SeaLion". This is one of the last shows, if not the last, to feature the song "Undressed to Kill" before it was quickly dropped from the setlists, never to return again. I forgot to mention this the last time around, but Fairport Convention's Ric Sanders features on violin on "Budapest".

01 Intro Tape [00:28]
02 Strange Avenues [04:00]
03 Steel Monkey [04:55]
04 Big Riff and Mando [06:54]
05 Thick As A Brick [04:03]
06 Rock Island [06:44]
07 Requiem / Black Satin Dancer [06:11] (tape wobbles starting at 5:46)
08 Cheap Day Return [01:09] (tape wobbles throughout)
09 Mother Goose [01:41] (tape wobbles throughout)
10 Jack-A-Lynn [05:34] (tape wobbles throughout, tape flip at 4:51, no music missing)
11 Another Christmas Song [04:42]
12 My God [10:17] (incl. Bour�e and Soir�e) (cut at 10:06, no music missing)
13 Undressed To Kill [06:52] (cut at 5:42, no music missing)
14 The Pine Marten's Jig [01:29]
15 Drowsy Maggie [02:54]
16 The Whaler's Dues [08:30] (small cut at 0:28, flaws at 7:11-3)
17 Budapest [11:42]
18 Farm On The Freeway [05:50] (tape flip, start missing)
19 SeaLion [02:08] (instrumental)
20 Kissing Willie [04:25]
21 Nothing Is Easy [04:58]
22 Aqualung [08:12]
23 Locomotive Breath [05:13] (cuts in, no music missing)
24 The Third Hoorah [03:38] (instrumental)
- Total time: 122:41

Ian Anderson: lead vocals, flute, acoustic guitar, mandolin
Martin Barre: guitar, mandolin
Martin Allcock: keyboards, acoustic guitar, bouzouki
Dave Pegg: bass, mandolin, backing vocals
Doane Perry: drums, percussion
+
Ric Sanders: violin (on "Budapest")

Recorded by: unknown
Tape originally collected by: Cristina
Tape transferred, edited and reworked by: JacoZappa

Lineage: Memorex DB90 low generation (1st or 2nd) cassette tapes -> Majestic Tape Deck -> Hercules Soundcard -> CDWave editor (transfer to wav) -> Audacity (speed correction, edits) -> wav -> flac files seeded in 2008 -> SF10 (phase offset corrected, clicks removed, balance between channels adjusted, slight eq) -> wav -> flac

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