Mahavishnu Orchestra
30 December 1973
Venue: Masonic Temple Auditorium
Location: Detroit, Michigan
Source: Soundboard (Master)

Lineage: Memorex 120 cassette > Nakamichi DR-1 (azimuth adjustment) > Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi HD > Audacity (24-96) > FLAC 6

Track Listing:

01 Intro
02 Meeting Of The Spirits
03 Trilogy
04 Sister Andrea
05 You Know You Know
06 The Dance Of Maya
07 Sanctuary
08 Awakening

Notes:
Here is an uncirculated soundboard recording, capturing the Mahavishnu Orchestra concert in Detroit at the Masonic Temple during their Birds Of Fire tour in 1973. Not even an audience recording of this show has circulated previously. It's worth mentioning that the band did also play at two other Detroit venues earlier in the year, so this recording should not be confused with those. This tape was in fact specifically dated, revealing it to be what is undoubtedly the holy grail for Mahavishnu collectors: this was the final show performed by the original incarnation of the band, which split up after months of growing tensions. With John McLaughlin being the sole survivor of the band split, many fans will tell you that while perfectly talented, the future incarnations had the sound and feel of a completely different band. The December 30th 1973 date has been said to effectively mark the end of one of the greatest bands of the early 1970s.

Like in the notes of the Boulder soundboard, I want to make a clear disclaimer that this new recording has zero connection to the tapes previously shared by Wolfgang's Vault. These new Detroit and Boulder tapes were purchased from the collection of former sound engineer Craig Schertz (well known as long-time Genesis front-of-house). While the extent of Craig's connection to Mahavishnu is not known, these were the only two tapes of the band in his collection, and his tape ID numbering system indicates that he didn't have any others. Perhaps he was a fill-in for the band's regular FOH, or rather these tapes were traded to him by their FOH. However, Craig also seemed to do short stints with other bands when Genesis were on break, and the time frame of this Detroit show easily fits during Genesis' holiday break, though we may never know the full backstory of these tapes.

Again, the story of this recording wouldn't be complete without talking about the physical tape itself. As explained with the Boulder show, each of these shows were recorded on a Memorex 120 tape. Many who have dealt with old tapes may attest that Memorex is one of the worst brands of blank tape stock from the 1970s, plus the fact that old 120 minute tapes were known to be troublesome in general due to being so thin. Both factors are a recipe for the tapes snapping, being stretched, or being eaten. If Boulder was bad enough, this tape was even more of a nightmare to work with.

When the tape was offered for sale and purchased, it was said to have been broken and needed splicing. Upon receiving the tape, I came to find that it had already been reshelled and repaired. Unfortunately the new shell still didn't look trustworthy, and the splice was done very poorly, so I had to redo it all anyway. By a stroke of luck, there was about 10 minutes of silence at the end of Side A/beginning of Side B, which is where the tape was broken, so no parts of the recording were lost.

Like Boulder, the tape deck stopped during the digital transfer sometime during the first side due to tensioning. After failing twice with attempting to digitize Boulder, with this Detroit tape I immediately went to manually winding the tape from one end to the other and back. While I was still terrified of the tape snapping or stretching, the next attempt at digitizing was successful. Well, Side A was successful. Once it hit the end, the tape broke right where it connects to the empty spool. If you've ever had to reattach the leader tape to a cassette hub, you know how much of a pain it is. Though once that was fixed, Side B was successfully digitized.

Like with Boulder, sometime later I realized that my PC had done a Windows update that reverted my soundcard's driver settings to default without my knowledge, so while all my other settings and the resulting file properties appeared as 24bit - 96khz, they were in reality only captured at 16bit - 48khz. Luckily, after correcting my driver settings, while very nerve-racking with the occasional squeaking, the tapes were digitized again without issue.

The facts that both of these Mahavishnu tapes have been hiding for 52 years, being poor tape stock, squeaking, breaking, repairs, and tension issues hindering attempts to digitize, are all nothing short of a miracle that they fully survived to now circulate, especially this historical final show in Detroit.

Enjoy the music and be grateful we are able hear these special recordings. If you have uncirculated tapes, please consider sharing them before they end up forever lost to time. None of us will last forever, but recorded music history can.

Images for all shows as well as full size images for this show.

Images for this show: