Oregon
Amazing Grace
Evanston, Illinois
1975-11-07
WXRT Un-concert broadcast-January 18, 1976
Ralph Towner-acoustic guitars, piano
Glen Moore-bass
Paul McCandless-reeds and flutes
Collin Walcott-tablas, percussion, sitar
source/lineage 10/2026 (jswetch)-DIME share from tmat44 of FM broadcast captured via lineage shown at the bottom > Audacity> TLH> DIME
Goody's additional lineage, October 2026:
Audition (Pitch Bender, various amounts; levels adjusted; tracking improved; transitions smoothed)
Setlist:
01. Witchi-Tai-To 10:35
02. Brujo 7:08
03. Collin Walcott Intros 0:33
04. Cloud Dance 23:07
05. Rainmaker 10:14
06. Aurora 8:33
07 Stage talk 0:40
08. Yet To Be 5:53
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Runtime: 1:06:42
Here's a new take on an FM capture of the original Oregon. Some reading this may have picked it up in earlier shares from tmat44 (many thanks to him!). I believe he'd had this running in 2005 and 2015. This is a cassette capture of an FM broadcast on WXRT from Chicago. It's always been flawed though, because you'll hear that there was evidently at least one fader for mics onstage that was way too hot, and that does make about 10 total minutes of this hour plus show a bit of a rough listen when things on those mics or faders are in the spotlight. Fortunately, that means about 50-55 minutes of the 67 minute show are fine. There are complete tracks where that isn't an issue at all, and even those tracks that are affected have enough music surrounding the distorted bits to make hearing them worthwhile. The mic/fader issue seemed mainly to affect Ralph Towner's 12 string guitar and cymbals and a triangle in Collin Walcott's percussion kit. Samples will include an instance of this, so anyone not wanting in on such a share may make an informed decision.
Now for the very good news: this 2026 share has benefitted from new mastering on this end, plus Goody's help in getting the show tuned properly. He went above and beyond that in sending me back 2 versions of the tuned files with some thoughts on which might possibly lead to a better share. One of those was a set of Azimuth adjusted flacs, and the other was a set of wav's that had been tuned, but hadn't undergone the Azimuth work. His advice was to work on the wav's as I saw fit, and A/B those tracks against the Azimuth adjusted flacs. In the end the work done here on the WAV's with Audacity's EQ and Mastering tools sounded a little better to me, so they're now the flacs included in this share. Finally, track 6 (Aurora) had never been identified in earlier shares, but it's now here under its proper name.
Huge thanks, of course to Goody for his time, advice, and expertise. On top of that, I contacted Lauramareike (Dieter) about adding some artwork to this, as he usually does to my Oregon related shares. Dieter not only came up with the included artwork, but he also did the detective work to give us an actual physical location and date for this performance. He found that it came from Amazing Grace in Evanston, IL from a performance there on 1975-11-07. That's notable because this had always been shared as a WXRT Un-concert broadcast from early January of 1976.
Huge thanks to Goody for his help in getting this into the shape you'll now receive it, and to Dieter for that detective work in pinning down the where and when behind this show (plus his artwork). Final thanks again too to tmat44 for finding this recording in the first place, and sharing it with the rest of us.
tmat44's source lineage and some of his notes follow:
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Lineage: WXRT-FM => cassette => HHB CDR-830/CD-R/W => EAC => Nero Wave Editor (track splits, edits and fades) => FLAC frontend level 6 (align on sector boundaries) >
Notes: This is a decent-to-good recording from an FM source, but has a few flaws:
Track 08 fades before song's end (as I had run out of tape);
There is noticeable FM hiss during softer passages. In addition, there is a either a bad microphone or bad patch in the soundboard on some of the percussion instruments (cymbals most notably) as well as the sitar (actually Towner's 12 string).