OFF: ABB, _Fillmore East, 1970_

[Paul Mather]

Carl writes:

>      That never bothered me--I mean, I appreciate the purity of an
> original recording, but I also appreciate that you *can* take two
> partially good recordings and make one excellent recording out of
> them.  If it sounds good, do it.  It's not like they're trying to
> deceive you or anything: they've simply said, "We've spliced it."
> So what the hey :)

Hey, I love _The Fillmore Concerts_, but do too much of that studio
trickery and you start messing with people's minds! :-)  Where does the
line between studio and live performance end?  How much messing can you
do and still call it live?  And, you fix up too much in the studio and
you create a false impression of what the band are like live.  Start
polishing it too much, and it begins to become too fake.  Call me daft,
but I actually *like* the little flubs, mistakes, and recoveries, like
leaving in the "sorry... power failure" bit in _Hawklords Live_... ;-)

I do appreciate what can be done with live material and stitching,
though.  Frank Zappa often took live guitar solos and then crafted
studio tracks around them (e.g. "Inca Roads"), which is probably the
opposite of what is normally done, i.e. to take studio material
(overdubs) to patch up something and pass it off as "live."

Frank was nothing if not a master editor.

Cheers,

Paul.

obCD: Frank Zappa, _You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore, Vol. 2: The
                        Helsinki Concerts_

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"I didn't mean to take up all your sweet time"
        --- James Marshall Hendrix