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MC5 - Soldier Field July 18th, 1970 (upgrade) (1970)

Track listing:
  1. Ramblin' Rose 3:11
  2. Tonight 3:04
  3. Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa (Rocket Reducer no. 62) 3:17
  4. Looking At You 5:47
  5. I Want You Right Now 12:01
  6. Black To Comm 3:51

Notes


I must begin by saying this is the worst quality recording I've ever attempted to improve. The only reason I even considered doing this is the rarity of the recording. The Stooges & MC5 were great, underappreciated bands back in the late 60's/early 70's and consequently quality live recordings of these groups are few and far between. Going on this principle, I decided to improve the sound of this recording so it is at least somewhat listenable. As much as the sound quality is, for the most part, much better on this version than the original transfer, don't expect to be blown away. In all honesty, there really wasn't much to work with. As is stated in the original torrent details (included below), this recording was transferred by the original taper from the master reel to his pc. Unfortunately, the reel was in such bad shape that many very noticeable tape anomalies were produced upon transfer. Among these are such things as severe drop outs in both channels, fading in and out (due to worn, poorly stored, over played, stretched and/or quite simply damaged tape), clicks & pops, severe hikes and dips in frequency response and amplitude, etc., etc. These are just some of the problems encountered when attempting to clean up a source recording such as this. It would be interesting to have heard the tape before it had undergone so much deterioration to see how much the overall sound quality really did suffer. Overall, I suppose this show does have a certain tonal quality or sound but because of so many defects in the tape, the quality does tend to waiver quite often from track to track. I have tried to match the sound of each track as much as possible. The beginning of the tape is obviously in the worst shape. Complete sections on track 1 are lost due to severe damage to the reel. As stated in the original notes, it eventually starts to clear up. Unfortunately, most of the 1st track is marred by tape defects.
As much as I have attempted to describe the original condition and consequent quality of the source recording, I'm not going to go into significant detail as to how these effects were remedied. It would honestly take hours to explain what was done to each track. I'll just say that a lot of Eq'ing, level dropping and boosting, and channel balancing was done. Also, I declicked every track. Don't worry, no noise reduction was used. The declicking simply removed the clicks and pops, leaving the music (or what can be heard of it) virtually unscathed. As much as this was a frustrating endeavour, I did feel somewhat gratified at the final product. I can't recommend this recording to really anyone who isn't a huge Stooges and/or MC5 fan. They'd probably throw-up in disgust. But to Stooges/MC5 fans out there who are hungry for any live recordings of these groups that they can get their hands on, I say dig in, hopefully your ears make it out alive!