HW: Camden 1977 tidied up for trade

[Mark Edmonds]

Hi All,

OK, I'm going out on a limb here. I have what I hope is the best available
version of the excellent Camden Music Machine June 10, 1977 gig available
for trade. If you like this HW era then you have to have this. It's a
cracking gig and apart from a honker of a bum chord at the beginning of High
Rise, the band doesn't put a foot wrong.

Track list:

Reefer Madness
Hassan I Sahba
Forge of the Vulcan
Brainstorm
Wind of Change
Steppenwolf
High Rise
Robot
Spirit of the Age
Damnation Alley
Uncle Sam's on Mars
The Iron Dream
Master of the Universe (encore)

Running time: 79m 46sec

Sound quality:

On the whole, I would rate this as a high 7, rising to 8 and dipping to 6 in
places.

Details:

First off, thanks to all those who sent me tapes of this gig (plus the June
11 show). I used the good quality "Forge of the Vulcan" CD for the work
because it seems there are two distinct Camden tapes available of which one
is definitely wrong. If you have a tape which suddenly stops in Spirit of
the Age, bangs into the *middle section only* of Master of the Universe and
then bangs into the post-vocal section (the big organ chord riff) of
Damnation Alley then chances are, your tape is sped up by about 7%. Although
it might sound exciting, the tempos are completely wrong. For example, the
sped up version of the Camden Uncle Sam runs at over 170bpm!! The correct
version runs at about 150bpm and for a point of reference, the PXR5 version
is about 145bpm. Steppenwolf sounds completely nuts at the wrong tempo.

The main problem with the Vulcan CD is that although it sounds clean, it is
strangely lifeless so I did some work on it. First thing was to swap
channels as Dave's guitar was on the left. Then to try and spice it up a
bit, I added some midrange (not too much or it gets nasal). I tried doing
other things to give it more edge but I always ended up with something that
degraded the sound too much. Then, as usual, the balance across the
recording was skewed and inconsistent so I set up envelope controls to try
and keep things central. It doesn't always work but it's better than having
the sound coming all from one side.

As for the track joins, the music is continuous up to Spirit of the Age
where I had to fade it out. There is then a quick fade up into Damnation
Alley and this version has some of the main vocals. Music is then continuous
to the "thank you" after The Iron Dream. Master of the Universe is
incomplete so this has the end of the first section, the complete middle
section and the first half of the third section - more than the other tape
version.

There are some minor problems with the sound. In the quiet bits (Forge of
the Vulcan and Wind of Change) there is a quiet clicking in the left. I
tried everything to get rid of this and it worked if listening on speakers
but headphones showed up the processing so I had to let it stand. There is
also a strange treble artifact in Damnation Alley on the cymbals (they sound
swooshy) and the only way to fix this would have been to drop the treble
EQ - no cymbals in other words so again, I left it. The sound also breaks up
slightly towards the end of Robot.

Finally, on the CD burn, there is a small click between Steppenwolf and High
Rise. I haven't worked out what causes this as if you burn with the 2 second
gap, it plays fine or if you play the WAVs individually or strung together
on the PC it plays fine - it just cocks up on the CD. Oh, and there are none
of those maddening 2 sec gaps except before the encore.

Anyway, I've blurbed enough. If you want to trade, please contact me on
<mmje at mmje.demon.co.uk>.

Cheers,

Mark