Huh! Interesting. Honestly, I feel like I'm always the LAST guy to get his hands on stuff so I will enjoy this moment.
Copies at my local in Winnipeg today. Won’t get a chance to listen until tomorrow. Solid gatefold though, looking forward to cracking it open.
If you get a chance, could you take a peek at the dead wax for clues re: mastering and pressing plant?
Weird. I asked my favorite record store about it today and the owner told me all she could see was Oct. 22. So it looks like Canada got it first. In any event, I hope it's not like Craft's release of Bill Evans' On a Friday Evening. Pre-ordered it direct from Craft in April, and it never came through. Stores got it, other customers got it, but I was told they couldn't fill the order 'til this month. Found it online immediately.
Can't wait to hear this new ALS Live in Seattle! For several weeks now I've been listening to some late period Coltrane. Live in Japan and Offering The Temple University gig. And also The Olatunji Concert. I've probably listened to Olatunji a dozen times in a couple of weeks. The Olatunji tape evidently was just recorded too hot. There's distortion. But when I put the wav files in an editor and look at them I kind of get the impression that the tape was transferred and the cd was manufactured without doing hardly anything to the audio. Hopefully no one actually created this eq on purpose. From 60 Hz or so up to 4000 Hz it's all at the same level. There's no slope. It's shrill sounding. So if you fix that and you level everything out between the two channels it starts to sound better. Then if you collapse the stereo spread a bit it all comes together and starts to sound pretty decent. Collapsing the stereo spread also fills in a couple of places where the left channel drops out. Drops out to nothing. The longest drop out is during the bass solo at the beginning of My Favorite Things. Now the bass is still leaning to the right but there's something over there in the left channel also. Anyway, can't wait for the new one!
If it's not mentioned in any review, then it's likely not notably poor quality. That said, I have read in a couple of places that the recording was made well with good equipment.
Yeah they get into a bit in the liners. Apparently this club had two mics run from the ceiling. Makes me wonder if there are other recordings from the venue. Does anyone know? It says the recorder flipped the tape and thus lost some fidelity BUT means he got the whole performance. The liners are good actually. Quite in-depth.
That’s the inference I took, as well. Plus, the excerpt featured on the online advertisement impressed me enough to make me pull the trigger.
The recent Harold Land release, Westward Bound, was also recorded at the Penthouse on different dates from’62-‘65. Quality’s good, gets slightly better across the set, and this Coltrane gig is a couple months later in 1965 than Land. Listening to one of the ‘65 tracks from the Land set now, and it sounds great! Hopefully the whole ‘Trane thing is of similar quality.
I'll take it, anything is better than this. Sheer noise from a amateur who doesn't know how to set his levels.
They used to broadcast shows from The Penthouse. In recent years, recordings by Cannonball Adderley, Wes Montgomery, Harold Land, and others have come out.
Didn't see this posted yet, the article traces the 56 year journey between concert and record. How John Coltrane’s Seattle recording of ‘A Love Supreme’ was found, thanks to 2 local saxophonists – The Seattle Times
One of the worst recordings ever made. Distortion, bad mixing, I did better by recording in the audience with basic microphones. And if you manage to listen to this horror, it gets worse throughout the show ! It's so sad when you realize the historical importance of this concert, so powerful, so intense, to be ruined by such a bad recording made while the equipment was semi-pro (dixit the liner notes). Shame on whoever was in charge that night
Well, the Olatunji that I am listening to now is quite listenable. Still has some issues but it's easier on the ears now. Just took 15 or 20 hours of tweaking. I'm very glad they released this because it's very important music. It needed to come out warts and all.
Here's a promising word on the audio quality from a review in The Atlantic: Even with the three extra musicians, the group almost certainly hadn’t rehearsed the piece. If you turn the Seattle tape up, you can hear Coltrane giving directions. (The recording, while cleaned up by modern engineers, is impressively high quality for an amateur tape.) Yet the leader recedes somewhat from view, happy to give space to other musicians. Friesen described an almost magical effect of watching the group.
I listened to the rest of the Harold Land recording from The Penthouse in ‘65, and it’s among the better ones that have come out in recent years on labels like Resonance. It’s not as smooth as the recent Bill Evans Behind The Dikes, but it’s very good, and Philly Joe’s drums and cymbals sound very natural. I hope ALS live in Seattle doesn’t get pushed back any further.
So, Canada is the lucky country where it comes to this release. And britain is ‘back of the queue. Why does that sound familiar….?
