RONNIE SPECTOR

venue: Nightstage
location: Cambridge MA USA
date: 1992-12-11 [December 11, 1992]

source: audience MASTER
recording location: front of balcony
recording gear: Nakamichi 300 microphone(s) (cardioid capsules) > videocamera (exact make & model # not remembered)
lineage: 8mm MASTER (pb on same camera as recorded) > Pioneer SG 9500 [EQ] > Sound Forge 4.5 [digital conversion] > CDR > Exact Audio Copy [wav files extracted uncompressed] > DeGlitch [glitches detected & corrected] > Sound Forge 4.5 [good L ch pasted into muffled R ch to create mono, mike bumps removed, dropouts repaired, pre-encore applause shortened] > Traders' Little Helper [flac files level 8 created, SBEs checked, checksums created] > torrent creation > www
total running time: 49' 17"
file size: 174 MB
sample rate: 16 bit / 44.1 kHz [CD compliant]
imaging: mono (cf. MIXDOWN NOTES below)
sound quality: 8 (out of 10) samples in comments
recorded and mastered: Isotope Feeney
title: I Saw Ronnie Kissing Santa Claus
label: Philippic
artwork: yes


01 stage announcement: apology for late start (due to transportation problems caused by blizzard)
- - introduction
- - Frosty The Snowman
02 Do I Love You?
03 I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
04 Baby, I Love You
05 Say Goodbye To Hollywood
06 So Young
07 Any Way That You Want Me
08 Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree
09 Walking In The Rain
10 (The Best Part Of) Breakin' Up
11 Be My Baby
12 Sleigh Ride
13 I Can Hear Music


PERFORMANCE NOTES
This wasn't specifically a xmas show, but apropos to the time of the year some 'Christmas Gift For You' classics were added to the stew: 4 songs (out of 13 - - - a healthy ratio, almost better than my ratio on DIME!).

Adding to the seasonal vibe was the fact that the on day of this show, Boston was in the middle of a blizzard - - - what older folks around these parts (not young like me!) like to call a Nor'easter. I'm not 100% on this, but I seem to remember calling the club to make sure there was gonna BE a show, and they assured me there was. So off I went. Some people coming in from the suburbs may have bailed, but being a [then] lifetime Boston habitue, I was well-seasoned [ha-ha] by winter weather, and knew how to drive in the snow (just go slow).

So the performance got off to a pretty late start, as the band was stuck somewhere on I-95 coming up from (I guess) N.Y. But the audience was assured that RS would indeed perform (some of that can be heard at the beginning of this recording). According to my archival labeling of the ticketstub, the opening act was Mary Lou Lord. She may have been called upon to go long (dunno).

LOCAL COLOUR DEPT.
There was restaurant (named either Butch's or Butchie's IIRC) underneath Nightstage. They had a deal where if you ate at the restaurant before a particular gig for which you had a ticket, they reserved you ringside seats for the show. I don't know whether he took advantage of this parlay or not, but seated at a table right up front (visible from my crow's nest view in the upper level) was major Ronettes fan Willie Alexander (Lost, VU, Boom Boom &c.) . . . too tall to be anonymous.

The person leading the cheer for an encore was not a club or band person, but local (luminary?) Bill Tupper. This was his thing: at any show he was at he would jump up on stage (uninvited) when the band disembarked, grab an open mike and exhort the audience to cheer for more. I guess everybody's got a thing. In the immortal words of Jimmy Durante, ". . . Everybody want to get into the act."

PERFORMANCE NOTES
Whatever 'sex appeal' is, Ronnie Spector was oozing with it: flirting with audience, blowing kisses and ooohs, responding semi-orgasmically to drum beats. Hard to know whether that was all just showbiz or if that's really her, but whatever it was, she had me sold!

The sound of the band was a bit Vegas-y, and the single synth attempting to replicate the lush string arrangements of those early Ronettes sides was a bit thin. But then again, what more could a small combo do? Also, at one point RS revealed that a couple of bandmembers were M.I.A. (due to the weather I assume). Don't know who the absentees were or what instruments they would've played. Actually, I don't even know who the bandmembers present were. They didn't get proper introductions, just first names. I usually try to research these things for archival purposes before uploading a show, but this paucity of information (Al, Ray, Gary) made even the slimmest prospect of identification beyond me. [If you're out there, my brothers, come forward.]

Historical note: (original Ronette) Nedra's daughter Sophia was a backup singer.

RECORDING NOTES
Captured from one of the tables up against the railing on the 2nd level balcony: my magic 'exploitation location' for this club. [It wasn't hard to find me if you knew where to look.] You didn't need to be one of the first thru the door to snatch that prime real estate, as most people who got in line early for this general admission venue were focused on getting a seat up front on the floor level (which I'm sure = what I would have been interested in if it weren't for the taping thing). Camera placed (and hopefully successfully concealed) on the table, mike cord running down under the table to microphones situated on the floor just peeking out over the ledge. There was an array of lights on the on the front of that ledge, and it was a concern that these intense klieg lights would give off an electrical field which the microphones would then pick up and register as 60 cycle hum. Sometimes this did happen slightly, so I tried to insulate them by wrapping them in clothing as part of the camouflage routine. But (to quote longtme Boston Celtics coach and guru Red Auerbach) "You take what the defense gives you." A lot of local music history was successfully expropriated over the years using this setup.

But this time there was a snag . . .

MIXDOWN NOTES
When I got home and started to spot-check my results, I was dismayed to discover that while one stereo channel sounded fine, the other one was completely muffled. In wrapping mikes up for insulation and concealment, one of them (including capsule) must have gotten COMPLETELY swathed by jacket or sweater or whatever I was using. I was dejected, but things could've been worse. At least I had one completely good sounding channel. It could have been both channels distorted/muffled. Or no audio at all. And over my many years of taping, I'd had such calamities a few times.

Nevertheless, based on the simple algebra that two channels = twice as good as one, I was bummed. I desperately wanted to retrieve SOME information from the bad channel so as to get some semblance of a stereo recording. As I strategized, I reasoned the best I could do was EQ the bad channel to filter out the schmutz, and blend it subtly with the good channel. To that end, I ran both channels thru Sansui AX-7 4-channel mixer, panning the good channel at somewhere between 10 - 11 o'clock, and the (heavily EQed) bad channel hard R - - - hoping to achieve a very narrow stereo mix, but one with at least some differentiation between L and R.

It wasn't what it should have sounded like if all had gone well, but at least there was some stereo separation.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

However all these years later, when I noticed that xmas was just around the corner, and fished my listening CD for this show out of the bonepile to prep it for a season-appropriate upload, and listened to it (for the first time in years) with fresh ears, I came to a disturbing realization about that mix.

It sucked!

I think in my zeal to undo the Bad Thing that had happened, and to assuage my disappointment, I couldn't 'see (or hear!) the forest for the trees.' Anything you wanted to hear was in the L ch, and all that was in the (much lower db) R ch was hiss and distortion, with a few bursts of differentiated sound information (mostly during applause segments) here & there. Instead of a rescued stereo mix, it came across as a lopsided mono mix (with added distortion). Ughhh. So back to the mixing board.

After I extracted wav files from CD, I pasted the good-sounding L ch into the R ch. I rationalize this as being in the true spirit of the Spector 'Back To Mono' Phil-osophy [ha-ha]. I mean, if anything's gonna be mono, it should be vintage Ronettes material, right?

There are now ways to realistically simulate [stimulate??] stereo ambience. But these tools weren't available when I was first translating my recordings to digital. Back in the day (3 decades ago) I was basically just transferring the raw recordings (prob. with a little analogue EQ and minimal editing) to a new medium (originally PCM, then DAT, finally CD). That was it. For this upload I toyed with the idea of applying an ambience treatment to the mono soundfile (BRIEF example of what that would have sounded like in the comments section). But listening back to things, I noticed other issues that could do with some digital tweaking (cf. WARTS below). There may now be ways with digital tools (or AI) to successfully rehabilitate the lunched channel to create a 'true' stereo mix. So rather than just applying one bandaid to quickly get something prepped for a timely upload, a full-blown digital re-working from scratch is invited. But that's another project for another day. Maybe for the 35th anniversary?

Besides all that, there are a couple of maladroit edits (jump cuts) at the head of this mix: a stage announcement explaining that the band had gotten held up in transit (blizzard), and some restless crowd noise as people are waiting for things to get started. I wanted to include a little of that to communicate the overall 'feel' of the event.

WARTS
Ronnie Spector's voice is a little low in the house mix. This might be more noticeable in the present mono iteration.

I also notice from the brickwalled waveform that I had done nothing to expand the dynamic range compression inflicted by camera audio limiter. Similar to my rationalization for the recording being presented in mono, I can also defend this as being ideologically consistent with the PS Wall Of Sound approach. (I don't know if I really believe any of this, but you gotta tell yourself SOMETHING).

WALL OF BOUNDS
Puh-leeeze don't upload this elsewhere (or I'll send Phil after you!!).
I know, it's only 45 minutes --- but it's a MIGHTY 45 minutes.

- IF -

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