Stevie Wonder December 18th, 1983 San Carlos, CA @ Circle Star Nakamichi CM-300 > Nakamichi 350 (Master tape) > Nakamichi 550 / Nakamichi Dragon > Korg MR-1000 (capture at 96Khz, 24-bit) > Sound Forge (adjust levels, tear it into mono L,R channels) > iZotope RX spectrum editor to remove mic noise, squeeking chairs, etc. > Har-Bal (Harmonic Balancing Equalizer) > iZotope RX-Advanced (noise reduction, spectral editing) > Sound Forge (put it back together, adjust levels) > Adobe Audition 3.0 phase correction, spectral editing > iZotope Ozone 3 (stereo imaging) > iZotope RX-Advanced (downsample, dither) > CD Architect > EAC > flac > CDR Disc One: 1. See Love In Your Heart 2. Band Introductions 3. Tiger By The Tail 4. Jingle Bells 5. Merry Christmas Baby 6. Did I Hear You Say 'I Love You' 7. Superwoman 8. You And I 9. Too Shy To Say 10. Taboo To Love 11. Send One Your Love 12. Girl From Ipanema 13. Silent Night 14. I Can't Help It 15. Creepin 16. Ribbons In The Sky 17. Intro to 'Overjoyed' 18. Overjoyed 19. Fingertips / Motown Story Disc Two: 1. Uptight 2. For Once In My Life 3. I'm Black And I'm Proud 4. My Cherie Amour 5. Signed, Sealed, Delivered 6. Higher Ground 7. You Haven't Done Nothin' 8. Livin' For The City 9. We Can Get It Straight 10. Go Home 11. The Human Mix 12. Go Home (Reprise) 13. Sir Duke 14. I Wish 15. Isn't She Lovely Disc Three: 1. Sunshine Of My Life 2. Superstition 3. Campaign For Love 4. Introducing Jon Gibson 5. Ebony & Ivory 6. Audience Appreciation 7. As (original cut) 8. Master Blaster Jamin' 9. Do I Do 10. Happy Birthday ------------------ (opening for Bob Marley) October 4th, 1975 Kingston, Jamaica @ National Stadium unknown audience > cassette (unknown gen.) > KAZO remaster > CDR 11. 3:31.57 12. 4:39.64 13. 3:00.37 sunshine of my life 14. 9:16.55 i shot the sheriff 15. 7:00.37 superstition total time: 27:29.25 12-18-83 Notes: Musicians: Stevie Wonder Keyboard, Vocals, Harmonica Nathan Watts Bass Ricky Lawson Drums, Vocals ("The Human Mix") Lenny Castro Percussion Michael O'Neal Guitar Ben Bridges Guitar Ronnie Foster Keyboards, Sax Bobby Malach Sax Larry Gittens Trumpet Susie Green Vocals Alexandria Brown Vocals Shirley Brewer Vocals Guest Artist: Jon Gibson Vocals Notes: Before anybody complains about the length of this description, I'll just say that I've waited 24 years before releasing an unbelievable concert into the wild, and spent over 300 hours mastering it so you all could enjoy. I figure that gives me the right to say as much as I want. ---- A friend called me up months before this concert and told me Stevie was playing up in San Francisco as a favor to Bill Graham. Stevie wasn't on tour, but he was playing five or six nights, two shows a night. So I got tickets very late, and was sitting near the back of the auditorium. I was seeing the late show on the last night -- the very last performance. After the first song, Stevie talks for about 10 minutes. He says the concert got bad reviews in the press. So Stevie wanted to do something different this night. In addition to his normal songlist, Stevie sings Christmas songs, Jobim, James Brown, and other cover tunes of some of his favorite artists. These aren't just cover tunes, these are insanely hot Stevie Wonder covers of these songs. There are many surprises on this recording, including a 20-minute section of songs done in a Bossa-Nova style (including Silent Night, Girl From Ipanema, and his own Send One Your Love). When he's done having fun, he performs his own hits all the way from 1961 to present. But after listening to this show for a few years, there was something that always really bugged me about it. Stevie wasn't on tour, yet, the band was the most over-rehearsed I had ever heard. Why would they be this over-rehearsed I wondered? The answer came two years later, when Showtime aired a special concert: "Stevie Wonder -- Coming Home To Detroit." This Detroit concert was recorded a few months after this concert, and it sounds like these shows were the rehearsals for the Showtime TV special. As you listen to this show, pay close attention to the "oldies." Stevie plays these songs nearly identically to his original Motown recordings. In the many times I had seen Stevie before this show, he NEVER performed these songs in their original styles. This is why I concluded the band was so over- rehearsed, and why they were practicing for the Detroit TV taping -- Stevie's hometown, where he hadn't played in 20 years. Surely his hometown crowd would expect to hear these songs just as he had recorded them, so many years ago. There are too many great things about this concert to describe -- everything from the sound quality -- to the song list -- but there are also serious problems. So instead of describing why it's so good, I'll spend the remainder of the time describing the problems I faced during the re-mastering and why it took 24 years to be released. ---- Levels & Equalization The recording levels were different on L/R channels. This is relatively easy to fix if you know you shouldn't blindly boost the volume on the lower channel on analog recordings -- as it would cause other problems. Even worse, the equalization between L/R channels was different -- causing the c hannels to sound completely different than each other. Making matters even worse, the equalization seemed to change for every song too. Thanks to modern technology, software now exists to fix this type of problem. ---- Drop-outs I've stared at sonogram images of this concert for over 300 hours during this restoration project. Due to it's age, there are probably hundreds of drop-outs in this recording -- but you'll only be able to hear a small handful of them. ---- Rowdy Audience During As, the audience around me began to unravel. At the end of the concert, many people around me were trying so hard to get out of their seats and rush down to the stage, that they were literally climbing over anybody in their way. I was in their way and was knocked down twice. The recording during this 2-minute 23-second section is not salvageable. Therefore, I deleted this section, and created an alternate musical transition -- one that most people won't even notice. Enclosed in this release are two alternate versions of "As." "As (Backfill Cut)" and "As (Original Cut)" are the two alternate versions. The backfill cut fills in the 2:23 minute section of my recording with an alternate, and lesser quality recording of the same concert. The original cut is my recording, as is, and you can hear me getting knocked around a few times. When burning a CD, there are three separate CUE sheets that correspond to each of the versions of "As." Use which ever version suits you best, and burn with the CUE sheet provided. ---- Stolen Master The master tape of Volume-2 of this concert was stolen many years ago. The last 90 minutes of this show are taken from a 1st-Generation copy. I did my best to make this 1st-Generation copy sound as good as the original, but it still doesn't sound as good as the first 90 minutes. That's why the first 90 minutes is rated A- quality, and the last 90 minutes is rated B+ quality. Some of the songs on this section range from sounding 95% as good as the master, to only 75% as good. The varying quality presented a huge problem for me during the mastering process -- because my techniques literally had to change from song to song, and sometimes section to section within a song. ---- Tape Turns This was a long concert, and I didn't have the luxury of bringing more than two 90-minute tapes. I had to conserve tape space. As a result, there are some bad tape turns -- where a song is cut off. Here are the tape turn locations, and how I fixed them (sort of). Tape-1, Side-1: Tape ended in the middle of Creepin. By the time I turned the tape over, the song had changed styles. To fix this, I had to borrow a section of the song from an alternate recording of this same concert. Tape-1, Side-2: Turned the tape off as fast as I could after You Haven't Done Nothin' As a result, To fix this, I had to borrow a section of the song from an alternate recording of this same concert. ---- Audio quality The first 90 minutes is as near perfect as it can get. However, the second 90 minutes (the "stolen master") is far less than perfect. I had to make many, MANY compromises while mastering the second half of the show. Above all I favored music quality. During quiet sections, sometimes it wasn't possible to remove all of the hiss; so these sections may sound noisier than the rest of the tape. During two "talking" sections, the signal level was so low, and the noise was so high, that I had to revert to MONO just you could hear what was being said. These sections are VERY short; and as soon as the music begins, the noise goes away and the recording is back to full stereo. ---- I Finally ran out of tape This concert was 3+ hours long. The concert started around 10PM, and lasted until 2:30 AM. I didn't expect a 3+ hour concert, so I was unprepared. I ran out of tape during the very last song -- Happy Birthday -- about 30 second before the last note was played.