Return To Forever March 27, 1983 Boston, MA @ Boston Opera House - early show Nakamichi CM-100/CP-1's > Sony WM-D6 (Dolby B in) > Maxell UD XLII-S > Nak Dragon [Dolby B out] > RDL FP-UBC6 > MOTU 896 > Wave > Izotope RX/CEP 2.0/Izotope Ozone > Wave (44.1khz,16-bits)> FLAC > CDR (from master, but processed and remastered: less bass, no hiss) Disc One: 01 - medium untitled [The Overture]* 02 - short untitled [Caprice]* 03 - long untitled [The Phantom]* 04 - No Mystery Disc Two: 01 - The Romantic Warrior 02 - Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant 02 - Song to the Pharaoh Kings Al Dimeola - guitars Chick Corea - keyboards Lenny White - percussion Stanley Clarke - bass * Cited by Lenny White [?] in the recording as `untitled', but we're told these works were released with titles shown as studio recordings on band member solo albums. "Overture" by Chick Corea on GRP SUPER LIVE, "Caprice" by Lenny White on PRESENT TENSE, and "Phantom" by Al Dimeola on KISS MY AXE. NOTE FROM ONE OFFICIAL "BLIND" B80 PROJECT TEST GROUP LISTENER: "Definitely the best sounding audience recording I have ever heard-- while listening, I keep having to remind myself it was recorded onto a cassette tape and is not an official release. (On the other hand, it has far too much dynamic range for an official release, which is a good thing). Not a particularly strong fan of RTF, I nonetheless found myself entranced by this recording, due in no small part to its incredible sound: rich midrange, micro-level detail, and powerful bass impact. Balrog's original capture is already stunning: after hearing a sample of the acoustic set from the raw master, I didn't think it even needed any remastering. But Lestat has indeed found a way to bring out more detail across the sonic spectrum without introducing any harshness or tonal imbalance, and has reduced hiss without creating the artificial sound of most noise reduction efforts. Among the most impressive sonic highlights for me: the pounding percussion of the intense Ommadawn-like passage toward the end of the third untitled track; the bracing attack of the piano tones, the richly detailed bowed bass sound, the precision of the zither-like guitar playing on "Romantic Warrior"; and the nearly incandescent glow of the Patrick Moraz-like synth solo toward the end of "Pharaoh Kings." What more can I say? This is a wonderful performance by RTF that might make fans of those who may previously have been lukewarm to them, and the sonics make it a true audiophile experience. Hats off to the Balrog/Lestat/Gromek team for surpassing even their usual high standards!" - "NorthNYMark" REMASTER SUMMARY: All work done at the 24 bit resolution, before downsampling. EQ work to reveal detail, as the audience heard and felt it. No attempts to alter band-crowd-venue sound balance. If crowd sound as real and detailed as band sound isn't desired, please pass this by and stick to soundboards or industry releases. No compression employed. Conservative noise reduction applied to compensate for unfavorable signal to noise ratio during quiet band moments and to further reveal midrange frequency detail. INDEPENDENT SOUND ANALYSIS: Several trusted 'beta testers', including Barry, Gromek, JoeDestroyer and others SOURCE AND AUDIO WORK AT LENGTH - Yet another top shelf pre-1990s analog AR easily rivaling many from the post 1990 DAT era, and in fact quite simply the best sounding raw master AR I have ever heard - analog or digital. What's more, `It's a Sony' ;} Until now I hadn't heard a Sony [deck] capture even close to one from a Nakamichi 550 for either warmth or spectrum-wide detail. This one has both to spare. Like any it nonetheless required considerable work and testing of results by multiple listeners in a wide variety of playback systems to give up the best it has to offer. The superb dynamic range actually required creation of a whole new EQ paradigm involving much more subtle settings than even Balrog's other wonderful raw captures did. They remained needed to fully display all the recording's realism, but particularly in high frequencies they had to be adjusted to roughly 1/10 the level of intervention even the next best one needed. The source is that good. Every effort was made to reveal all possible detail in each tone of each instrument as far as it occurred in the band's PA mix, and we're pleased with the result overall. Lower crash cymbal tones make one important litmus, as does even audience clapping. About the only annoyances involve considerable tape hiss, which in cases like this make noise reduction unavoidable, a strange sound in very quiet sections resembling NR artifact but in the raw master transfer, and a bit of `swish/swirl' in some lower cymbal tones. Roughly 40% of hiss came out successfully thanks to availability of excellent tape noise samples in isolation and new restoration software superior to its predecessors. Signal meantime remains completely intact. When the goal is complete noise elimination, as it frequently has been with many a remaster attempt by others, NR inevitably damages signal and simultaneously inserts intolerable `watery' artifact. Both are completely avoided here - at a cost of tolerating some tape hiss but it's considerably reduced from even raw master levels. The `swishy' property in some percussive metals will be inaudible to many but tends to be more noticeable in cheaper and/or cross-wired playback systems. This property is also responsible for many slowdowns in the mastering process as it tended to `pop out' badly until the right EQ balance was found, rendering things harsh, unnatural sounding and `fatiguing'. It is now no worse than in the raw master and should bother few if any listeners. It could ultimately be a Sony issue but we'll probably never know. - Lestat NOTES FROM BARRY: What I remember most about this show was how quiet the audience was during the songs. I had the impression that the place was full of students from the nearby Berklee College of Music, where Al di Meola briefly studied during the early '70s before replacing Bill Connors in Return to Forever. At one point, you can hear Chick Corea, who was born in Boston's inner suburb of Chelsea, comment on the warmth he felt from the audience. There's another source of this show in circulation that was taped by glasnostrd19. This recording is listenable at concert volume on audiophile-quality equipment. No constraints are placed on the dynamic range as is the case in commercial live recordings. For this reason, the peaks may exceed the capabilities of consumer-quality audio systems resulting in distortion from frequencies that cannot be properly reproduced. To obtain audiophile-quality equipment at an affordable price, consider getting high-end headphones, a headphone amplifier, and a CD player from eBay or other sources of pre-owned audio equipment. You will find that it's well worth the expense. On a personal note, my goal in taping concerts has always been to achieve time travel. I want go back in time and relive musical experiences that were much too important to me to allow them be heard once and lost forever. And I want the experience to be available to everyone who loves the music. Anyone who has ever taped a concert knows that there's a price to pay, not only in terms of money spent and risk taken, but in the way it diminishes your own enjoyment of the show. You have to monitor the mikes and the deck. If you allow yourself to get too much into the music and forget about the equipment, you screw up. So it's sort of being the designated driver. You can enjoy yourself, but not too much. The reason I bring this up is to point out how much Lestat's remastering work makes up for the enjoyment lost at the time the recording was made. Now I can relive the experience while completely relaxed. Other than the absence of venue ambience, it's not much different from being there. With no equipment to worry about I can let the music carry me to places I've never been. I sincerely hope it provides the same enjoyment for you. - Barry NOTES FROM JOE THE DESTROYER - WRITER AND MUSICIAN: "RTF 1983 Ever since Louis Armstrong and others brought the music of New Orleans to the masses, "jazz" has been a music of wit and witness, covering a wide variety of styles from Don Redman's big-band arrangements to John Zorn blowing on duck calls. Being the conversation of well-versed musicians, jazz comfortably embraced each season's young comers through the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, so it was only fair game for jazz musicians to appropriate rock music's clangorous sound, heavy rhythms, and loud volume, and make it their own -- arguably never more so than in Return To Forever. RTF weren't the first to do so -- that distinction belongs to the perpetually ground-breaking Miles Davis, and the musicians he assembled -- but they did it better, applying the ideas of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane to the instrumentation and sounds of bands like Yes and even Led Zeppelin. Listen to Stanley Clarke, who stands firmly on the ground of both Jimmy Garrison and John Entwistle and is just as likely to quote either. Chick Corea evokes Patrick Moraz, but is no stranger to Bud Powell. Lenny White erases any sense of difference between Elvin Jones or Mitch Mitchell, and Al DiMeola owes as much to McLaughlin as Jeff Beck. Unfortunately for them, jazz was about to be faced with a challenge that by its very nature it could not meet: punk would deny any place for intelligence in music, taking pop music into the texture-dominated formula of 80s synth-pop. This focus on the lowest-common-denominator eviscerated the wit from popular music, and jazz musicians were forced into the safely bland R&B which corporate radio dishes out as "light" or "smooth" jazz today. While some jazz musicians do continue to push musical horizons, it isn't widely heard and has no influence on music in general; those who pursue it must content themselves with obscurity or rehashing classic styles (or, more likely, both). In that sense, jazz is now truly dead. But we need not concern ourselves with that here: this is Return To Forever in 1983, a band which simultaneously remembered the past while probing the future; a band which crackled with energy and possibility. Here they are, epitomizing this last robust expression of jazz music in America -- a wave which had already peaked and passed -- before most of it settled into the quiet submission of museum-like memory. The return of RTF in 2008 at least offers some hope. This is not jazz for the elevator. It was the last revolution of intelligent American music. In 1983, RTF may have already lost the war on radio, but they were still quite capable of winning the battle for listener's ears. So sit back and enjoy Barry's wonderful live capture of Return To Forever -- not safely contained in a multi-track studio, but wild and on-the-prowl, the way they were meant to be heard. With any luck, you may never hear music the same again. Joe"