Melbourne Memoirs Vol. 5    re-transfer

 

National Tennis Centre

Melbourne, Australia.

14 - October - 1989.

Attendance: 16.000 (sellout) - Support: Weddings Parties Anything, BB King

 

 

Disc 1 (54:19)

 

01. All You Need is Love (PA)

02. Where the Streets Have No Name

03. I Will Follow

04. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

05. All I Want is You

06. MLK

07. The Unforgettable Fire

08. Exit

09. Gloria

10. Desire

11. All Along the Watchtower

12. Help

13. Bad

 

 

Disc 2 (55:30)

 

01. October

02. New Year's Day

03. Pride (In the Name of Love)

04. Angel of Harlem

05. When Love Comes to Town / The Midnight Hour

06. Love Rescue Me

07. Star Spangled Banner / Bullet the Blue Sky

08. Running to Stand Still

09. With or Without You

10. - Harry's Game (PA outro) -

 

 

Recording Equipment - History

Toshiba Analog recorder > Stereo line in clip-on microphone > Analog Master (TDK SA-90 cassettes) > Black Onkyo TA-2600 > Digidesign 002 Rack interface > Sony Oxford Limiter > Sound Forge 10 > FLAC

 

Taper: Boyacrobat

Location: higher balcony on right (Adam's side) row 26

 

Re-transfer: D.G. (Blackout)

Additional notes (by Blackout): Following recent disussions with the legend Boyacrobat about his famous Lovetown Melbourne recordings I convinced him to revisit some of his tapes for a possible retransfer session of some of his masters. The feeling was that some distortion may have crept into the original transfers that he performed and released several years ago. Indeed this turned out to be the case upon examination. The tapes were originally recorded *very hot* by his portable Toshiba cassette recorder due to the voltage that the mic he used for recording was injecting into the unit, which was unavoidable. There is small amounts of distortion due to this but the bigger problem was that when transferring the tapes for release, the level was also *very hot* coming off the tape and the deck he used for the original transfers did not have the headroom to handle these hot tapes and was driven into distortion and clipping when playing back. This time the transfer was done with a pro deck, a mint-condition Black Onkyo TA-2600 and into pro-tools via the Digidesign 002 Rack interface. Some other problems were corrected such as speed issues, frequency-phase correlation and image stabilisation and a more gentle maximizing from Sony Oxford Limiter. No EQ. Final FLAC was done with Sound Forge 10. The entire signal chain was handled with care and with the utmost attention to detail. The result is a far superior recording that is higher resolution with far less distortion and more headroom/punch with clarity. This is truely the definitive ultimate recording / transfer of this classic Melbourne Lovetown recording for your collection!

 

Comments

This is an upgraded version of the so-called 'Melbourne Memoirs vol. 5' taped by 'boyacrobat'. It is a fresh transfer by 'Blackout' using a pro-deck and remastering the stuff. It offers brilliant sound quality with pretty good clarity and a solid sound. The original high clipping has now been reduced, and it sounds now like some tape-hiss in the background. Bad contains two skips at 0:11 and 0:24 that cut off a few seconds of the song. Likely an "exc-" in terms of sound quality.

 

Exit was played for the only time during the LoveTown tour. The show seemed to finish with Love Rescue Me, but the band returned for three more songs.