Deafening Sound Of Audience

Remaster
1. Reduce Audience contributions to recording (Yells, Whistles and talking).
2. Correct dynamic suppressions resulting from Audience contributions.
3. Dynamic adjustment of tonality to re-balance sound.
4. Correct stereo imbalance.
5. Patch missing sections.
6. Re-track, keeping natural split in show at intermission and end, before encore.

And now for round two….
            Pink Floyd ceremoniously announced the upcoming UK performances of their 1988 tour by sailing an inflatable bed down the Thames River in front of the British Parliament on January 28^th 1988. After a successful 1987 reunion, the band was set to hit the road again. The first show of the tour was in Auckland, New Zealand on January 22^nd and was followed by 9 performances at the Entertainment Center in Sydney, Australia. An inflatable pig paraded near the Sydney Opera house to let the people of Australia know that Pink Floyd was back, after a long time away. In his book Inside Out, Nick Mason comments that the experience was much more enjoyable (and warm) than the last time they were in Australia in August of 1971 when the weather was not as hospitable. The Pink Floyd drummer must have forgotten the two Australian shows they performed in March of 1972. Still, a long time between visits so 9 shows in Sydney was not unreasonable to schedule. Ten more shows were given in Australia before heading to Japan to close the East Asian tour with 8 shows in that country. After resting during the month of March, the band was off to America. They began in Los Angeles on April 15^th and, 10 performances later, found themselves at Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts for a 2-night stay. This recording comes from the second performance which was given on May 8^th. To our knowledge, there is no known, circulated audio recording of this show. There is an audience recorded video but no audio, until now.
            Pink Floyd did not play Massachusetts during the 1987 tour. The closest they came to Foxboro was their show in Providence, Rhode Island on October 16^th. Of course, there was virtually no difference in the setlist between the 1987 and 1988 tours. Anyone who attended both the Providence ’87 and Foxboro ’88 shows would have noted that only the addition of ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ during the 1988 gig distinguished the two. Nick Mason recalls these events by noting in his book, “during the show in Foxboro, Massachusetts the flying pig snagged somewhere and was ripped to pieces by an over-enthusiastic or fanatically vegan audience”. Was the Foxboro crowd overly rowdy? Listen to this recording and decide for yourself. Sadly, our intrepid taper found himself surrounded by some most enthusiastic patrons. As the show begins you can hear audience members screaming and yelling; the tenacity of which would suggest that they were either high on drugs or not really interested in hearing the music. Eventually, someone (our taper?) tells them to quiet down and listen to the show. One of the guys does apologize but then starts screaming later on again. Fortunately for us there are fewer disruptions as the show goes on but such is the fate of those attending a Pink Floyd concert. Our taper provides these memories for us….
            This would not be the first time Floyd concert attendees spent more time disrupting others than listening to music. In fact, the famous spitting incident in Montreal, at the end of the 1977 tour is credited by Roger Waters as being one of the events that sparked the development of THE WALL. But that was certainly not the first time Roger had been annoyed by fans showing a lack of respect or interest in the performance. July of 1977 was particularly bad as Roger’s intolerance for audience antics finally shone through. At Madison Square Garden on July 3^rd, he broke from the quiet and personally meaningful song “Pigs on a Wing” to swear at a fan who had just set off some fireworks. Later in the show he referred to others who did the same as a special type of stupid person. The next day, again fireworks were set off in the middle of a song and Roger makes a derogatory remark towards the person who did it. In this context, it is understandable how the spitting incident in Montreal could occur two days later.
            Of course, during these 1980’s tours, large stadiums were now used and the use of fireworks was no longer tolerated. Still, that did not prevent many from being disruptive on their own. Given the size of the crowds at these events it is not surprising that a few uncontrolled people will be present. Our taper does a great job capturing a good performance under difficult circumstances. If live recordings are meant to reproduce the concert experience then this recording achieves that goal.  

Notes from the Re-Master
            This show comes to us directly from the taper as data WAV files digitally encoded from the master tape. According to the taper, the show was recorded using a Sony WM-D6C with Sony ECM-150T microphones. The complete show is here. Only a small segment was patched but all the original music was captured. With great quality and adequate acoustics, the first task was to address the contributions made by the overly zealous audience members surrounding our taper. Variable frequency whistles, minimally variable frequency yells and occasional talking all needed to be dealt with. To cut these out would have been too disruptive to the flow of the recording. Similarly, static notch filters would have introduced too much of an artificial processing sound to the show. Considering the options, dynamic filtering was chosen to reduce but not eliminate these non-performance sounds. Though still present, their volume is greatly reduced now so they are not as injurious to the listening experience.
            The dynamics of the show also needed adjustment. There was no clipping during the recording but a peak limiter was active much of the time to deal with the high volume of the recording. Some dynamic variability was re-introduced in order to produce a more natural sound within the recording. Pops, clicks, dropouts and other segmental recording errors were repaired as well as possible. Tonality and balance were also adjusted to correct problems with those aspects and then finally the show was tracked keeping the intended breakpoints in the performance.

Dodano:  14.12.2008